*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…
With Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1949 film Mighty Joe Young, stop motion animation fans saw the torch passed from the past master of the technique, Willis O’Brien to his willing, eager and more than able apprentice (and future master), Ray Harryhausen. Where 1925’s startling The Lost World and 1933’s epic King Kong helped pioneer stop motion (and its more comedic sequel, Son of Kong added a neat dinosaur chase scene to the list of O’Brien’s classic scenes), Mighty Joe Young was pretty much Harryhausen’s film from start to finish.
O’Brien hired Ray as an assistant animator, but based on different accounts, ended up letting the young man handle the bulk of the actual animation while he supervised the technical aspect of the special effects. While the film’s story was provided by King Kong co-writer/co-creator Merian C. Cooper and has some direct thematic resemblances to that earlier film (to the point were some less astute viewers think it’s an actual Kong sequel), Joe’s smaller size, demeanor and human-like qualities were greatly enhanced by stellar animation, some fantastic action scenes and a really great use of humor throughout that makes it nowhere as dark as Kong, nor as silly as its rushed into theaters sequel…
Continue reading
You can probably consider the 1955 film It Came From Beneath the Sea as (and I quote) “The ONLY six-tentacled giant octopus movie you’ll ever need” and call it a night, but this would be a pretty damn shorter than usual column. Actually, this was another fun Charles H. Schneer/Ray Harryhausen co-production put together to show off Ray’s stop motion animation brilliance and yes indeed, it succeeds quite well on that front.
1969’s The Valley of Gwangi is a bit of a bittersweet classic for many fans of Harryhausen’s work. By this time, stop motion animated fantasy films weren’t drawing the audiences they did ten years earlier, so this film didn’t get the promotion it deserved. It wasn’t the first cowboy meets dinosaur flick at all – that honor goes to 1956’s 
For some fans of giant monster movies, Godzilla is their gold standard, but I’m a Rhedosaurus man, myself. 1953’s The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms is a smaller-scale picture when compared to Toho’s epic genre entry and it’s also not as sprawling and dynamic as King Kong in terms of impact. On the other hand, Ray Harryhausen’s work here is superb and at a mere 80 minutes, this one goes down easy and doesn’t wear out its welcome one bit.
From the moment you hear Bernard Herrmann’s outstanding main theme that sets up the thrilling adventure ahead, director Nathan Juran’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad sets itself squarely in fantasy film history as a true classic. Of course, having Ray Harryhausen on board and in full charge of the film’s effects work at the height of his talents makes this one an absolute must-see as well as one of the best genre films ever made. It’s a perfect blending of talents by all involved and it’s probably the one film Harryhausen worked on I’ve seen the most times as have many who’ve been influenced by it over the decades. This film was yet another hit for Harryhausen and producer Charles H. Schneer and also introduced the word Dynamation into the movie lexicon (later rechristened “Super DynaMation” and later, “Dynarama”), which amusingly enough, ONLY refers to the stop motion technique the master perfected over time and became an immediate means of letting his fans know who was behind the visual effects in that latest cinematic treat they wanted to catch…
While it has some great creature and scenic effects, some terrifically lousy acting and ridiculous dialog plus a few plot elements nearly sink 20,000,000 Miles to Earth like the doomed spacecraft that brings the Ymir into movie monster history.
Without Ray Harryhausen’s still impressive special effects, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers would probably have been just another 1950’s “B” movie lost to the ages, only popping up on one of those cheapo compilation DVD’s you see as impulse items at some big box stores. However, thanks to those awesome saucers and some fine destruction of federal property by some rather cranky aliens, the film has been a favorite as well as an inspiration for other flicks from Independence Day to Mars Attacks! and more. The somewhat clunky acting and use of WWII stock footage don’t hurt the film one bit because they’re usually only a few minutes from one of Harryhausen’s cool animated saucers blowing the heck out of something or simply flying across the sky…
Forget about today’s overblown CG effects, many of which make modern movies worse than better. Ray’s best work was all about blending fantasy into the assorted realities of the worlds he created and transporting viewers to places and making them forget about the outside world for about an hour and a half or so.
"DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!" 