DAILY FILM DOSE: A Daily Film Appreciation and Review Blog: Ray Harryhausen
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Showing posts with label Ray Harryhausen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ray Harryhausen. Show all posts

Sunday, 4 April 2010

Jason and the Argonauts

Jason and the Argonauts (1963) dir. Don Chaffey
Starring: Todd Armstrong, Niall MacGinnis, Jack Gwillim, Nancy Kovack

**

By Alan Bacchus

It’s difficult to enjoy ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ beyond its influence on some of today’s action/sci-fi/horror filmmakers. I can appreciate a good b-movie, but even within this pastiche context it’s a pretty awful film.

The famous Greek myth of Jason hero who intrepidly leads an army of warriors in search of the Golden fleece serves only to showcase the special effect of the great stop motion artist Ray Harryhausen and for most its running time we have to wait labouriously for these glorious moments.

Unfortunately Harryhausen’s matting and blue-screen process effects extend longer than his reach and look just plain awful, especially under super crisp high definition. But its his legendary stop motion creatures which are the showcase of this film and still awe-inspiring to this day,

Take for instance the giant statue set piece at the top of the film. As Jason and his bunch land at the beach on the isle of Bronze, one of his soldiers steals a scared pin and unleashes a statue who suddenly becomes animate. The attack of the statue on the Argonauts is choreographed and composed with truly awesome epic value and scope. The statue’s attack on the Argo ship straddling to edges of a channel is a glorious moment.

There's also the rock landslide scene, which has Jason's ship saved by the merman who provides a barrier to the rocks which allows it to pass. There’s also Jason’s toil with the multi-headed hydro snake which guards the fleece; and for cinephiles, the key set piece we sit and wait for, the film’s most famous scene, the skeleton sword fight at the end – a scene Sam Raimi famously reworked into ‘Army of Darkness’.

Like Harryhausen's last film 'Clash of the Titans’, as the heroes on earth battle the beasts the Gods in the clouds watch below and control the action like chess pieces on a board. Zeus in this film is played unmemorably by Niall MacGinnis, Dr. No Bond villain Honor ("Pussy Galore") Blackman shows up on Olympus though as the lovely Hera.

Somehow the producers had a relationship with the great Bernard Herrman who along with composing some of the greatest scores ever in the 50’s and 60’s for Hitchcock, did a number of these b-action monster movies. Scour through Herrman’s filmography and you’ll see a scattering of high profile hits and disposable b-movies. Unfortunately Herrman’s score can only bring the picture up a notch or so, as it’s a largely unmemorable music and not his best work.

So, unfortunately 'Jason and the Argonauts' hasn’t aged well, the acting atrocious and most of the process effects glaringly poor, but Ray Harryhausen’s set pieces still reign supreme and is at least worthy of fast-forwarding to.
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Friday, 5 March 2010

Clash of the Titans

Clash of the Titans (1981) dir. Desmond Davis
Starring: Harry Hamlin, Lawrence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Ursula Andress, Judi Bowker, Burgess Meredith

***

By Alan Bacchus

First of all, let me give you some context. I saw ‘Clash of the Titans’ at the age of 6 in theatre, and being a youngster of such an impressionable age the film has stuck with me as a seminal part of my childhood.

Though my memories of the viewing experience are sketchy, I do remember, even at a young age, noticing the sloppiness of its special effects. After all, I had already seen ‘Star Wars’, ‘Empire Strikes Back’, ‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture’ and ‘Superman’ in the theatre and so even back then I could discern that those hand cranked special effects weren’t up to snuff compare to those other films. But I also recall that not distracting me from the enjoyment of the film.

Though made in 1981, Ray Harryhausen managed to make a film which looked and felt like one of his adventure classics from the 50’s and 60’s – Jason & the Argonauts as the more directly comparable.

Well timed properly with the new Louis Leterrier version of the film, comes a Blu-Ray edition from Warner Home Video. Watching it after all these years confirms my impressions as a child. Harryhausen’s use of stop motion combined with matte and model photograph results in many of the same familiar compositions to used in ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ or the ‘Seven Voyage of Sinbad’ – sectioning off the frame into two halves, one for the live action and the other for the stop motion.

While these moments aren’t neatly sewn into the fabric of the live action as CG graphics can do in today’s films, or even how Dennis Muren did back in the late 70’s early 80’s with the more expensive effects films, there’s an unmistakable pleasure in watching Harryhausen’s work. The movement of stop motion has always marvelled me because it’s a hybrid of traditional animation, and live action. Unlike CG the creatures created in stop motion are tangible three-dimensional objects with texture and grain and our eyes recognize this no matter how jerky it may be.

The film also features some admittedly awful worst blue screening. The scenes of Poseidon unleashing the Kraken for instance features a no frills superimposition of Jack Gwillim laid over an underwater shot of a gate opening. Bad matting lines can be seen surrounding the actor, who is shrunken into a tiny corner of the frame, In hindsight, these moments we have no problem forgiving as b-movie pastiche and nostalgia.

Despite the humour camp, there’s actually some solid fantasy storytelling at work. By following closely the Perseus myth, it's difficult to go wrong.

In the opening Perseus (Harry Hamlin) who was the favoured half-human, half-God son of Zeus (Lawrence Olivier), is saved from ritual slaughter at young age by Zeus and brought up under protection of himself and the other Gods of Olympus. But when Thetis (Maggie Smith) requests that her own earth-bound son Calibos be forgiven for his crimes and spared punishment, Zeus denies her and deforms the once handsome hero into a grotesque beast. This sets off a conflict between Zeus and Thetis with Perseus caught in the middle. Perseus finds himself armed with heavenly weaponry from the gods which he uses to fight off Cerebus, giant scorpions, Medusa, The Kraken and his arch enemy Calibos in order to save the girl.

Calibos for instance makes for a wonderful villain. We never see him as a handsome man, just the beast form, but considering the fact that he used to be engaged to Perseus’ new love Andromeda, Calibos’ goals and desires are deepened further than being a mere beastly villain.

The Greek violence is especially brutal – again, Calibos takes much of damage specifically when Perseus chops off his hand as an offering to Andromeda – now THAT’S cruel! The truly magnificent Medusa scene generates some spine-tingling suspense, ends with a nasty head chopping and some fun blood oozing from her dead corpse.

The acting collective all appear to be having fun with their roles. Lawrence Olivier as Zeus is both paternal and egotistical. Same with Thetis as played by Maggie Smith. The fate of her son is tragic from her point of view we understand her desire punish Zeus through Perseus and Andromeda.

Under direction of Desmond Davis and producer Charles Schneer "Clash of the Titans' showcases best Harryhausen’s innate skills in cinematic spectacle, in what turns out to be one of the better 80's fantasy movies.

"Clash of the Titans" is available on Blu-Ray from Warner Home Video
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Friday, 5 February 2010

Turner Classic Movies - Sci-Fi Adventures



By Alan Bacchus

It was the '50s, the height of the cold war, nuclear testing is at its peak and Joseph McCarthy is running wild. Out of this fervour and paranoia came a rash of topical sci-fi flicks playing against these post-war fears. Warner and Turner Classic Movies have packaged four of these not-so-classics — 'Them!', 'Beast From 20,000 Fathoms', 'World Without End' and 'Satellite in the Sky' — to form this DVD collection.


'Beast from 20,000 Fathoms' works as a structural template for modern-day creature/disaster movies. A nuclear detonation in the Arctic unleashes a prehistoric dinosaur frozen in the ice, which runs amok in New York City. Ray Harryhausen's stop motion effects make for some stunning scenes of sci-fi spectacle, with the creature toppling a lighthouse, destroying skyscrapers in NYC and its fiery death at the Coney Island roller coaster. Unfortunately, whenever the beast is not on screen it's a slog to watch. A love story between the hero scientist and a female palaeontologist slows the picture down to a crawl in between scenes of mass destruction.

The two lesser pictures are a couple of colour cinemascope b-movies: 'World Without End' and 'Satellite in the Sky'. World Without End features a 'Planet of the Apes' scenario where a team of astronauts on a space mission get transported 600 years into the future to a violent version of Earth where they have to convince the cowardly group of shut-ins to use violence and aggression to stave off an army of beast mutates. Production values and creature effects are especially poor, even within its b-movie context.



'Satellite in the Sky' is actually an interesting movie. In fact, it's the most science-oriented film of the bunch. A fictionalized story of the birth of American space exploration, starting with the breaking of the sound barrier by test pilots, and then the first manned mission into space. A technical glitch in the mission results in a harrowing fight to rescue the men from the clutches of deep space. 'The Right Stuff' or 'Apollo 13' this is not, as the production values are no better than Ed Wood's cardboard models and fishing wire.



The movie to cherish and celebrate, however, is 'Them!', which is atomic age genre filmmaking at its best — giant ants, mutated from nuclear fallout, fighting the U.S. military, with American civilization at stake. Unlike the other films in this set, the production values, from special effects to production design, are surprisingly top notch. In fact, 'Them!' was Warner's top grossing film of 1954.

Back in the day, Hollywood studios didn't waste too much time with their B-movies. Not only do their highly literal titles tell us exactly what to expect, the average running time for these films is a scant 83 minutes. It's a trend I wish Hollywood today would adhere to ('2012' clocked in at 150 minutes). So have fun with these pictures.
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Tuesday, 15 January 2008

IN PRAISE OF RAY HARRYHAUSEN



It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955) dir. Robert Gordon
Starring: Kenneth Tobey, Faith Domergue, Donald Curtis, Ian Keith
***

Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers (1956) dir. Fred Sears
Starring: Hugh Marlowe, Joan Taylor, Donald Curtis, Morris Ankrum
***

Sony Pictures has released a couple of must-haves for sci-fi cine-buffs. Sony has slowly been reissuing Ray Harryhausen classics in reverant 2-Disc special editions with superb packaging, menu screens, commentaries and special features documentaries.

For those who aren't familiar with Ray Harryhausen, he is the great special effects genius who mastered the art of stop motion animation. Though Mr. Harryhausen would probably object to being called an animator as he exclusively worked with live action photography - specifically merging and matting his stop motion creations with shot footage.

Harryhausen got his break working with his idol Willis "King Kong" O'Brien on the Merian C. Cooper production of "Might Joe Young" (1949). After making a name for himself for his solo work on "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" he hooked up with schlock producers Charles Schneer and Sam Katzman in the mid 50's producing some of the 'great' classics of early sci-fi.

I use quotes around great because "It Came From Beneath the Sea" is really schlocky - a bad film, really. When a gigantic octopus reaks havoc on a nuclear submarine in the Pacific, two scientists and a Navy officer join forces to stop the massive beast. Same with "Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers" - a simple story of humans battling malevoent aliens with a penchant for destruction. Before Roland Emmerich started blowing up national monuments these films reveled in destroying treasured architecture. In "Beneath the Sea" Harryhausen takes down San Francisco - Fisherman's Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge - and in "The Flying Saucers", it's Washington that takes the pain. In these films Harryhausen and director Fred Sears create some of the cinema's most indelible images - see above.

Of course, these films are b-movies, and most of the dialogue and plotting are excruciatingly dull. In "Beneath the Sea" there's an attempted love triangle that doesn't create any sparks. And there's way more screentime devoted to dialogue and exposition. Indeed, it's tedius, and it's all filler for Harryhausen's beautiful sequences.

Sony's fine DVDs are colorized under supervision by Harryhausen himself and offered in a neat "ChromoChoice" viewing experience, which allows the viewer to toggle between color and black and white. Each disc features a filmed conversation between Tim Burton and Harryhausen. It's fun to watch the mega-successful Burton show pennance to the elder statesman. Each DVD features a boatload of interesting and informative featurettes, including a lesson on how old style stop motion is painstakingly created.

Harryhausen kept making films into the 70's and his last was 1981's "Clash of the Titans". Since then Phil Tippett assumed the reigns as the stop motion master. With CGI, its a rare art form, especially in live action film. It's a shame because there's a rough and organic quality to stop motion that CGI can't capture unless consciously recreated. Thanks to Sony Harryhausen's films will always remain readily available. Enjoy.


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