This film marked stop-motion effects maestro Ray Harryhausen's first solo gig on a motion picture. It was the beginning of a career that would produce some of the most beloved science fiction and fantasy films in cinema history, responsible for inspiring generations of filmmakers and effects artists to come. With The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Harryhausen created one of the classic 'giant monster on a rampage' sequences of all time, when his 50-ton "Rhedosaurus" goes for an afternoon stroll through the streets of Manhattan. Every second, every single frame of the effects work was crafted by hand, by Harryhausen himself. He wouldn't have it any other way.
In the arctic wastes near the North Pole, an atomic bomb test (what else?) accidentally frees a gigantic dinosaur from its millennia-long slumber trapped in the ice. A scientist on hand for the test, Prof. Tom Nesbitt (Swiss actor Paul Christian), catches a fleeting glimpse of the monster during a blizzard but is thought by everyone else to have been hallucinating. Sure of his faculties, Nesbitt hypothesizes that a prehistoric creature has been released from suspended animation and is now on the loose. The mysterious sinking of a fishing trawler in Baffin Bay spurs him to contact the world's foremost paleontologist, kindly Dr. Elson (Cecil Kellaway), who humors Nesbitt out of professional courtesy but ain't buying his theory. Elson's attractive female assistant (Paula Raymond) is more receptive, however, and when another ship is sunk off Nova Scotia she helps Nesbitt gather evidence that his idea isn't such an outlandish one. The lone survivor of the first sinking identifies the sea monster that wrecked his boat from a sketch — the same drawing Nesbitt picked out earlier as the prehistoric leviathan he saw in the arctic. Elson is now convinced and lends his prestige to an effort to alert the military of the danger. He believes that the beast, a dinosaur of the rare (and fictitious) "Rhedosaurus" species, is making its way to its ancestral breeding grounds in the submarine canyons off the coast of New York City...
Which ultimately leads to ol' Rhedo's aforementioned Manhattan stroll. It's a bravura sequence, a genuine touchstone of classic monster movie cinema — and one which makes us forget about the somewhat tedious (though well-acted and nicely photographed) build-up to this point. Until the Beast hits the streets he only appears in the film very briefly, when Nesbitt first observes him in the arctic, with the sinking of the first ship, and in the terrific lighthouse sequence (in which the creature is seen almost completely in silhouette, a simple yet highly effective technique). Even the Beast's famous rampage through New York isn't that long — just a few minutes of footage — but can anyone who ever saw this as a kid forget the World's Dumbest Cop... the foolhardy patrolman who tries to fend off the behemoth with his .38 police special? (And who miraculously shows up again in the very next scene, part of a squad of shotgun-armed cops, despite having been swallowed whole!) Working within the constraints of a very small budget, Harryhausen achieved a milestone of motion picture special affects. By making clever use of light sources, as when the Beast moves in and out of the "shadows" between buildings, he camouflaged the weaknesses of his stop-motion model; by injecting a sense of character into his creation, he gave it more life than most modern CG artists, with millions of dollars to play with, have yet to master.
Of course, a cool monster requires a cool customer to deal with it, and Beast gives us that Most Manly Military Monster Masher of 'em all, Kenneth Tobey (The Thing, It Came from Beneath the Sea), to take charge in the crisis. He plays Nesbitt's Army pal Colonel Evans, put in command of New York's defenses when the monster attacks. Nobody could say lines like "It'd take a 3-inch shell to penetrate that skull!" with more authenticity. And who's that playing the marksman on whose shoulders rests the ultimate fate of the city? A young Lee Van Cleef, the corporal who claims he "picks his teeth" with grenade rifles. Don't worry, though... if you can load it, he can fire it. (It'd take another future spaghetti western icon, Clint Eastwood, to kill the monster spider in the 1955 giant bug classic, Tarantula.)
