The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

If you’ve ever wanted to know from where the idea for Godzilla originally spawned, look no further than 1953’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. It inspired not just Godzilla but virtually every atomic-age giant monster movie that followed it. In fact, it was the first movie to feature a creature awakened by the blast of an atomic bomb. This film may have been the second most influential giant monster movie following the original King Kong.

An atomic bomb explosion conducted in the Arctic by the U.S. military frees the beast from 100 million years of frozen slumber. Professor Tom Nesbitt (Paul Hubschmidt, billed as Paul Christian) first sees the creature while trying to rescue a fallen colleague. Dismissed as a reaction to stress, his sighting is ignored. To no avail, Nesbitt pleads with his military employers to listen to him. When a series of “sea serpent” sightings is reported along the Atlantic coast of the U.S., Nesbitt attempts to convince Professor Thurgood Elson (Cecil Kellaway) to launch an expedition to find the monster. Elson waves him off but his beautiful assistant, Lee Hunter (Paula Raymond,) doubts that a man of Nesbitt’s intelligence would fabricate such a story.

Hunter approaches Nesbitt and asks him to look at sketches of all the known prehistoric creatures to see if he can identify what he saw. In a rather ridiculous scene that tries to hatch a romance as well as further the plot, the pair go back to Hunter’s apartment to review drawings of dinosaurs over coffee and sandwiches. Nesbitt selects a drawing of a “Rhedosaurus,” a beast that lived 100 million years ago. Nesbitt theorizes that if he can find one of the people who sighted the “sea serpent” to corroborate his chosen sketch, Elson will have no choice but to green-light an expedition. Of course, if Nesbitt traveled to find the witness only to have him say, “Nah, that’s not it,” this would be a much shorter movie.

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms excels when the Rhedosaurus appears on-screen. Powered by the genius of stop-motion effects artist extraordinaire, Ray Harryhausen, the creature moves like a living, breathing animal. Particularly striking is an attack on a Maine lighthouse. The monster, silhouetted in the moonlight, topples the structure like a toy. Other notable scenes include the creature’s initial appearance in a blizzard, the rampage through New York, and the final showdown at Coney Island. Unfortunately, the rest of the film, gets bogged down in predictably hokey dialogue and military machinations. The ham-fisted romance between Nesbitt and Hunter, while unnecessary, manages to be one of the more subtle aspects of the film.

One unique aspect of the film is that the Rhedosaurus’ blood carries a disease that begins to infect the soldiers sent to fight against it. But, in the haste to reach a tidy conclusion, this element is discarded as quickly as it was introduced.

For its time, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms was a visual delight. Audiences could easily look past the dull beast-less scenes in anticipation of its next appearance. By today’s standards — even with the stellar animation by Harryhausen — the film just doesn’t have the ability to bowl an audience over. Fans that can appreciate either the amount of detail and patience required for Harryhausen’s effects or the film’s genre influence should add a star to my rating. But, other than the effects, it has little else to recommend.