The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms

The Hollywood researchers have delved into the Mesozoic era to come up with a roaring reptile 100,000,000 years old and guaranteed to make any self-respecting paleontologist turn in his Phi Beta Kappa key. This occurs in "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms," which crashed into the Paramount yesterday. And though the sight of the gigantic monster rampaging through such areas as Wall Street and Coney Island sends the comparatively ant-like humans on the screen scurrying away in an understandable tizzy, none of the customers in the theatre seemed to he making for the hills. On sober second thought, however, this might have been sensible.
 
At any rate, the mere mortals in the cast are no match for the beast of the title—a nightmarishly photogenic, king-sized destroyer roused from an Arctic hibernation of many millenia by an experimental atomic bomb blast. Credit for this primeval speciman should go to Ray Harryhausen and Willis Cook, special and technical effects men, who have rigged an awesome apparition, seemingly the size of the Paramount Building, as destructive as a hydrogen bomb and as incredible, say, as a "rhedosaurus."

The script, on the other hand, is about as close to reality as "King Kong." But despite more than a suspicion of palaver, it generates a fair portion of interest and climactic excitement as the beast, first reported by Paul Christian, as a nuclear physicist who is understandably thought to be a mite daft by his associates, makes its way down from Baffin Bay to its original "home"—the deeps 150 miles off New York.

 

Although a heap of questions remain unanswered and a lot more are wrapped in 
pseudo-scientific jargon, the tremendous invader finally is killed with the help of the physicist, Cecil Kellaway, as an ill-fated paleontologist; the Army, headed by Kenneth Tobey; Paula Raymond, as the paleontologist's assistant, who is romantically paired with the physicist, and New York's finest, together with a contingent of G. I.'s armed with bazookas and a "radioactive isotope."

The wounded beast, it appears, is not only ensnarled in the mazes of a roller-coaster but also is carrying virulent germs that could be spread to the populace. Hence, the obvious need for a "radioactive isotope."

While the specific kind of isotope is never made known, there is one strikingly realistic observation, written perhaps in a capricious moment. An unbilled nurse, on seeing a report of the monster, remarks, "That's just where the item belongs—on the comic page."
 (New York Times, 1953)