20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)

Director: Nathan Juran

Starring: William Hopper, Joan Taylor, Frank Puglia, John Zaremba, Thomas Browne Henry, Tito Vuolo, Jan Arvan, Arthur Space, Bart Braverman

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Monster from outerspace runs wild!

Plot: The first U.S. spaceship to Venus crash-lands off the coast of Sicily on its return trip. A dangerous, lizard-like creature comes with it and quickly grows gigantic.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? Yes.

Fun flick.  Ray Harryhausen's stop motion creature effects are fantastic and I LOVE the monster design.  I need this as a large action figure.

This behind the scenes pic is from the creature's Playgirl spread.

The story's pretty good.  Even though it may take more than half the picture for the creature to get to where it starts terrorizing folks, once he's unleashed - it's fucking on! 

It's such a treat, too, that we get a different setting than Washington D.C. or some other famous U.S. city. Having this mofo cut loose in Rome is all kinds of neat-o.  This is one of the better monster movies of the era and it would be one I would recommend to start with.  Harryhausen kept getting better and more creative with every picture.