***              Monster From Venus Attacks Rome.

It was the peak of sci-fi giant monster films, and so they made many, including this one. This one is kind of unique because it started with an idea from the guy who did the special effects: Ray Harryhausen. Ray's idea of a ymir went from a snow beast to a Venusian beast, and the movie was made.

A space ship crash-lands off the coast of Sicily. The ship was an American single-stage astro-propelled rocket that had went to Venus and back, but met a meteorite along the way. On board was a canister filled with a big blob of Jell-O, and it late hatched into a strange reptile-like two-legged monster with a human-torso that eats sulfur and because of a change in atmosphere, it grew at a tremendous rate. It was up to the sole survivor of the crash to capture the beast, bring it for study, and kill it when it obviously escaped. The thing climbed to the top of the Coliseum, and was blasted off of it.

This is suppose to be a very well done classic stop-motion movie, but I don't see how it's all that great. It's your basic King-Kong-ish story off a sympathetic monster that was captured, and then broke free and was killed. Only this one went nuts with silly plot lines. Venus, come on! Its backplot wasn't all that boring, just painfully embarrassing. Like most monster movies at the time, it had a quick love story, but this one was way too quick. It spent a total of about 30 seconds on love interest, and about 20 minutes on a little Sicilian kid who wanted to be a cowboy. These people need to get their priorities strait! Now your suppose to be feeling sorry for the monster, but personally, with the way my mind works, I can't feel sorry for a lab specimen. Besides, the monster runs around killing everything, even though he is just suppose to be doing it in self-defense. He even killed a dog! Poor little dog, I hate that monster now! The humans aren't too great to root for either. They were dumb and ill prepared. The monster escapes with ease, and they try to kill it by tossing thousands of grenades into the river for hours. This of course would cost a lot of money, and pollute the river, but they don't care! Plus, they run around talking with scientific babble, rattling off a bunch of big words, even though they are talking about unrealistic stuff. Basically, the plot is screwball, nuts, crazy, boring, dull, unoriginal, bland, stupid, and not well done at all!

But if you can bear through the dumb, boring, and silly plot, you get to see some great stop-motion action. The effects were really well done for the stop-motion parts. Ok, so the silly looking rocket crash wasn't done well, but the monster was. It looks good, it was designed well, and it looked realistic. He is there for a long time, so it's not to bad to bear through. He has some pretty good scenes, like the part where the humans try to poke him into a cage, the scene where he is running around in the sulfur fields, the scene where he battles that elephant, and of course, when he is walking around on top of the coliseum. It's kind of fun to watch, but since this movie comes off as a generic black and white 50's stop-motion monster movie, it's not all that worth it. Since some people consider this to be one of the greatest stop-motion movies of all time, go ahead and watch it if you're interested in this stuff. If not, don't bother unless you wanna watch them all.

So bad it's kinda funny plot

Great special effects (for the most part)

Great stop-motion (as usual from this guy)

Some people consider this to be a great movie.

Ymir vs. Elephant in Rome, Yeehaa!

Dull, boring, and stupid plot.

Very unrealistic.

And yet unoriginal.

Bad, short, "love story"

That annoying cowboy wannabe.

Who do I root for, the bad/good monster or the dumb humans?

What is that, some sort of Venusian Jell-O mold?

Credits