*For the next few days, 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…

OK, I don’t “hate” The Three Worlds of Gulliver at all, but as a kid, it did take me four attempts to sit through this classic family film without falling asleep. Sure, Ray Harryhausen’s “Superdynamation” effects and that lovely Bernard Herrmann soundtrack make this another perfect one-two punch for movie fans, but something about this flick has always rubbed me the wrong way.

It’s probably a combination of a few things from the silly refrigerator magnet names Johnathan Swift came up with being too nonsensical even for a kid to wrap a brain cell around (Brobdingnag? Glumdalclitch?), some languid pacing and seeing too much of Kerwin Matthews’ over-sized head (even when he’s normal-sized, his melon is a moon on his neck). Or it’s probably because Ray’s work here is “limited” in terms of the amount of stop motion effects (but you do get some great matte shots). The other technical work is fine, mind you – it’s just that compared to his more popular fantasy films, this one seems somewhat tame…

It could also be that in heavily reworking Swift’s original novel (which is a pretty amusing satire), modern Hollywood scribes Arthur Ross and Jack Sher replaced much of his bite with easily sopped up sugar water good for 1960 family consumption. Add that plus, yes, yes, I’ll admit it: for me, it’s Kerwin Matthews as Gulliver that really ruins the film in my opinion. He’s just such a big-headed loaf of freshly bagged Wonder Bread in this performance that you’ll think he’s going to turn into a giant piece of toast when he’s tied on on that beach by the Lilliputians.

At least Harryhausen could add a ton of brilliant effects to distract from Matthews’ work in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (which had some other actors that were lousy, but a great villain made up for that fact). Here’s it’s a phenomenal giant squirrel, a great giant alligator (well, “tiny”, as Gulliver is small in that sequence) and those pretty nifty mattes (and what looks like some incredible forced perspective work), but guess who’s in just about ever darn scene? Sure, as an “everyman” character, I suppose the casting works, but this is a film that begs and pleads to be seen with something more exciting, even if it’s more Kerwin Matthews (as in 1962’s Jack, The Giant Killer with well-animated but goofy-looking stop-motion creatures, awful masks and cheesy magic effects).

Probably the funniest thing about this film was something I discovered about 20 or so back when I was in a movie memorabilia shop here in NYC. There was a guy looking for a few posters for an article or his collection and this was one of the films he was researching.

When the clerk brought a few out to show, the guy laughed loudly and pointed out that both posters happen to do a very good job of obscuring Matthews’ crotch while somehow teasing that there was something under those photos in one poster and big red box in the other.This made me laugh as well and of course, imagine an outing to the movies circa 1960 for some unlucky parent with an eagle-eyed child:

Kid: “Mummy, what’s under that box?”

Mom: “Oh, that’s just his “Nothing Less than A Miracle In Motion Pictures!…”

or something like that.

And by the way, if you’re one of those people that hates movie trailers giving away the whole film in two minutes or so, well… check out the first poster at the beginning of this article where the entire film is given away in a single read. Oops.

That said, as noted above, I don’t HATE The Three Worlds of Gulliver at all. Hell, I’ll even watch it again when TCM does its inevitable Ray Harryhausen tribute (probably on his birthday). But I hope they extend it to show ALL of his works in their library and not selected films, as this one takes some patience to sit all the way through…