The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a 1953 American independent monster film directed by Eugène Lourié, with stop motion animation by Ray Harryhausen.

Paul Christian stars as Thomas Nesbitt, the foremost surviving witness of the creature before it causes havoc while traveling toward New York.

Jack Dietz and Hal E. Chester arranged the production of a monster movie in response to the successful 1952 re-release of King Kong (1933).

While Lou Morheim and Fred Freiberger were solely credited for screenwriting, many contributed to writing the film, including Dietz, Harryhausen, and Lourié.

Prophetically, right after the blast, physicist Thomas Nesbitt muses "What the cumulative effects of all these atomic explosions and tests will be, only time will tell".

The explosion awakens a 200-foot (61 m) long carnivorous dinosaur known as a Rhedosaurus, thawing it out of the ice where it had been held in suspended animation for millions of years.

Plotting the sightings of the beast's appearances on a map for skeptical military officers, Elson proposes the dinosaur is returning to the Hudson River area, where fossils of Rhedosaurus were first found.

Meanwhile, military troops led by Colonel Jack Evans attempt to stop the Rhedosaurus with an electrified barricade, then blast a hole with a bazooka in the beast's throat, which drives it back into the sea.

Unfortunately, it bleeds all over the streets of New York, unleashing a horrible, virulent prehistoric contagion, which begins to infect the populace, causing even more fatalities.

It is decided to shoot a radioactive isotope into the beast's neck wound with hopes of burning it from the inside, while at the same time neutralizing the contagion.

This appeared exactly a week after Ray Bradbury had his short story "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" published in The Saturday Evening Post, which was later anthologized under the title "The Fog Horn".

[13] Eugène Lourié, Harryhausen, and Robert Smith contributed to the screenplay, adapting it from producer Jack Dietz's initial draft.

[17] According to author A. T. McKenna, at one point, there were plans to have the Beast snort flames, but this idea was dropped before production began due to budget restrictions.

[19] In a scene attempting to identify the Rhedosaurus, Professor Tom Nesbitt rifles through dinosaur drawings by Charles R. Knight, a man whom Harryhausen claimed as an inspiration.

[20] The dinosaur skeleton featured in the museum sequence is artificial; it was obtained from RKO Pictures' prop storage where it had been constructed for its classic comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938).

Unfortunately for Harryhausen, Steiner had too many commitments, but Buttolph composed one of his more memorable and powerful scores, setting much of the tone for giant monster film music of the 1950s.

Sources differ on the exact day it was distributed that month, though Harrison's Reports and the official websites of the AFI and Warner Bros suggest it was the 13th.

[38][39] According to Turner Classic Movies (TCM), The Beast was met with a mixed critical reception, but garnered unanimous praise for its special effects.

[26] Hy Hollinger of Variety lauded Harryhausen's effects, Lourié's direction, and the acting of Christian and Kellaway; he also felt the script and cinematography were documentary-like.

[23] The reviewer wrote: "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 theater seemed to be making for the hills.

Its initial proposal was allegedly titled The Giant Monster from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (海底二万哩から来た大怪獣, Kaitei ni man-mairu kara kita Daikaijū),[46][47][48] and the original story by Shigeru Kayama featuring Godzilla destroying a lighthouse.

[49] Authors Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski noted how Japanese critics compared the two films but felt that Godzilla lacks direct resemblance to it.

The Giant Behemoth (1958) was a British-American co-production panned by critics for its close resemblance to The Beast; Lourié accused himself of plagiarizing from it when scripting.

Writers have also ofted noted how upon the bomb's detonation in the movie, one of the characters states: "Every time one of these things goes off, I feel as if we were helping to write the first chapter of a new Genesis".