The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

The American military is on Operation Experiment in the high arctic. They denote a nuclear bomb which thaws out a gigantic dinosaur. Professor Tom Nesbitt encounters the beast but no one believes him. He is evacuated back home while the beast inevitably moves south. It leaves a trail of destruction and reaches New York City.Everything screams 50's sci-fi B-movie. The story is nothing special. The acting is mostly stiff and so is the directing. That is everything except Ray Harryhausen's work. This is his early stop-motion model animation and it is exquisite. The giant lizard eating the NY policeman is a major signpost in the field of special effects. It is cutting edge work brilliantly done by a fledgling master.

Eugene Lourie directed this expanded adaptation of the Ray Bradbury short story "The Fog Horn". Here, atomic testing in the Arctic unleash a prehistoric beast(later identified as a Rhedosaurus) that escapes into the Ocean, later destroying a lighthouse before making its way to New York. Paul Christian plays a scientist who desperately tries to convince authorities of the threat, but will of course realize this too late. The beast wrecks havoc, and being irradiated, creates a wave of sickness among the survivors before the climax at an amusement park. Exciting and smart film with excellent direction, though supporting players Cecil Kellaway and Kenneth Tobey steal the picture from the leads. Look out for Lee Van Cleef as the sniper who targets the beast for destruction with the isotope(way to go Col. Mortimor & Angel Eyes!)

First dinosaur-on-a-rampage movie (beating the much more famous Japanese Gojira by one year) is still one of the best of its kind, mostly thanks to Ray Harryhausen's sublime stop motion animation. After an H-bomb test in the frozen Arctic wastelands, a scientist (Paul Hubschmid) spots a giant reptilian creature before being wounded in an avalanche. At first his wild stories are met with disbelief by his colleagues except for an old paleontologist (Cecil Kellaway) and his attractive female assistant (Paula Raymond). However, as soon as the monster, a fictional species of dinosaur dubbed Rhedosaurus, attacks Manhattan, doubt turns into terror and the scientists, in cooperation with the armed forces, race against time to find a way to stop the beast. This was Harryhausen's first solo project after having done most of the animation for Mighty Joe Young (1949) together with his mentor Willis O 'Brien. Apparently, Harryhausen was a good student, since the result of his skill in animation proved at least as great as the master's own work on King Kong (1933). Many creature-destroys-city films would follow in its wake, but very few would come even close to this level of realism. And fun.

Out of all giant monster flicks made outside of Japan from the '50s, this is probably the one that stands out the most.I'll skip the synopsis since I'm sure people have seen the movie already, and others have commented on it.It's a fantastic movie with very real looking prehistoric dinosaur making its way to New York. It's the first movie of its kind, and is still one of the best. There're very little in this movie that you can point to to say it looks fake which is remarkable for something coming from the '50s. For its ground breaking realism, this movie scores high, and it shows in its popularity still after 60 years.It has already secured its place in the annals of motion picture history, and no doubt its a classic that will be around for a long time to come.