"The creature is harmless unless provoked... Let's provoke it!"

Such a shame - I love Harryhausen's special effects and they are as good as you'd expect here, but that's the only reason to watch this film. The Ymir is a fine creation, but far more animated than the rest of the cast. Apparently it was only set in Italy because Ray wanted a holiday there, but allows for some marvellous casual racism in the script for the Sicilian characters. Basically the screenplay is terrible - huge leaps of logic, poorly conceived characters, packed with hilariously bad lines ("fascinating... horrible, but fascinating...", "get that elephant out of there!!"). The Americans are also unintentionally idiotic, and militaristic to a fault - bullets don't work but keeping shooting anyway - bung some hand grenades in the Tiber - that'll flush it out! So much for the first alien lifeform on the planet being at all valuable - put a Sicilian zoologist in charge with his attractive but unqualified doctor assistant (the shoehorned romantic subplot is probably the most cringeworthy part of the whole affair). Nostalgics may call it a classic, but most of the fun to be had is by laughing at the constant stupidity on display.

Why is it always, always so costly for man to move from the present to the future?