*For the next week or so, I’m going to add a random film the great Ray Harryhausen worked on. The legendary special effects MASTER passed away on May 7, 2013 at age 92 in London and yes, the film world has lost a true giant as well as a fine and talented gentleman…

For years, I disliked most of Clash of the Titans because by 1981, I’d thought I’d outgrown the type of work Ray Harryhausen was doing and it seems that, despite the film’s OK success at the box office, some movie audiences just weren’t into so much classic stop motion animation in such a large scale film either.

Granted, it took me a few years and a lot of distance to find the movie actual fun to watch (instead of unintentionally funny for all the wrong reasons) as well as a classic in its own right, but I’m glad I gave it another chance. As Ray’s final studio film it’s a bittersweet sendoff that has one truly terrifying sequence and a few good to great ones that neither the CG-packed remake nor its sequel could come close to topping…

Yeah, yeah – the combination of star power and special effects doesn’t always work, Bubo the Owl makes me cringe every time he’s on screen and it would have been nice to see more of the Kraken (that I wish didn’t look so much like the Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth). Nevertheless, between creepy Calibos, the wild battle with the scorpions and that supremely frightening Medusa sequence (that I recall had some kids in one row terrified enough that their parents had to grab them and scoot out of the theater as others quickly scooped up that newly empty row), the film is a pretty solid one for Ray’s fans.

Sure, the much bigger-budgeted remake and its sequel offer up more dynamic action and some scarier-looking monsters (and more of them), but like the other films he worked on, Harryhausen infused more lifelike and almost “human” characteristics to his best creatures and that led to action scenes and in some cases “acting” scenes within them where his puppets took on lives of their own. That, and his hand animating and composite effects shots just work in a storybook sort of manner that justifies all that hard handiwork and planning.

While it was Ray’s last feature film, it was quite clear that his influence had brought forth some truly creative young monster makers who’d go on to their own mainstream and indie stop-motion successes. If Clash is your first flirtation with Harryhausen’s work, it might seem almost “old-fashioned” for the decade it appeared in if you stack it up against The Empire Strikes Back, Alien, and other sci-fi/fantasy films of the period. Anyway, double this up with the remake and see which one strikes your fancy. I think you’ll lean towards the older flick just because there’s an overall nicer sense of the mythology working in favor of the story characters much like it did on the Schneer/Harryhausen films of the 50’s and 60’s…