Synopsis

A returning American spacecraft crashes off the coast of Sicily after a mission to Venus, leaving behind a strange organism. Discovered in a sealed container, the creature rapidly grows into a powerful, hostile giant. As it moves from the countryside into Rome, military forces struggle to contain it while scientists search for a way to understand the alien life-form.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film was produced by Charles H. Schneer's Morningside Productions and distributed by Columbia Pictures. It was released in the United States in June 1957.

• Its working title was "The Giant Ymir." The name was removed from the finished film because Ray Harryhausen worried that audiences might confuse "Ymir" with the Arabic title "Emir."

• The creature's stop-motion animation was created by Ray Harryhausen. The Ymir was a small rubber-and-metal puppet animated one frame at a time.

• Rome was selected for location filming partly because Harryhausen wanted to spend time in Italy. Location work took place around Rome in September 1956, with additional filming completed in the United States later that year.

• The movie was the first of three collaborations between Harryhausen, producer Charles H. Schneer, and filmmaker Nathan Juran.

• The Ymir's vocalizations were made largely from elephant sounds played back at a higher speed.

• Harryhausen appears briefly as an uncredited extra in one of the zoo scenes, throwing peanuts to an elephant.

• The black-and-white film became one of Harryhausen's best-known monster showcases. Its creature design also influenced the look and posture of the Cyclops in "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" (1958).