20 Million Miles to Earth

A US space mission returns from Venus but its rocket comes down in the sea off the Italian coast. Fishermen and a boy manage to rescue one of the astronauts, Colonel Robert Calder, along with something else from the wreckage: a small creature of alien origin. The animal is taken in and grows at an extraordinary rate, soon becoming a danger to the people around it and eventually to Rome itself.

The film was directed by Nathan H. Juran, working from a screenplay by Robert Creighton Williams and Christopher Knopf, and produced by Charles H. Schneer for Columbia Pictures and Morningside Productions. It followed Juran's The Golden Blade and came before The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman among the films he directed. William Hopper plays Calder, with Joan Taylor as Marisa Leonardo, Frank Puglia as Dr. Leonardo, John Zaremba as Dr. Judson, Thomas Browne Henry as Maj. Gen. A.D. McIntosh and Tito Vuolo as Commissario Unte.

Running 82 minutes, the film is a science fiction and horror release from 1957. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.3/10 from around 8,900 votes, and on TMDB it also stands at 6.3/10 from 175 votes. A critics' rating of 5.5/10 from 12 reviews places it somewhat below the scores given by audiences on both platforms.