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| 6/29/20 – 5/7/13 |
Ray Harryhausen brought his imagination to life. Like the fabled alchemist able to create a homunculus- breathing life into the inanimate, bringing back creatures from the pages of time and the myths / legends we mortals keep alive in our memories and tales. Though he didn't invent stop-motion animation; he raised the bar, perfected the art and always kept the inovation going. Harryhausen will always be remembered as a real OG and a titan of Hollywood with his decade-spanning work in the film industry. I'll always remember his work with fondness, for it sparked my imagination as a kid and furthered my love of the fantastic and bizarre. As a child I fully bought into the worlds he created and the amazing creatures that populated them. Even now, in this the age of CGI drenched IMAX splendor, Ray's work stands out with an authenticity unmatched by todays special effects artists.
When I was little I was infatuated with all things Harryhausen. I would sit for hours on end watching his movies when they would come on television on the weekends. Growing up we didn't have a VHS player till I was 11 yrs old so all my exposure to his movies came along with product commercials and breaking news interruptions. My most vivid memories always trace back to the (original) film "Clash of the Titans" -for its time a movie that had it all; a clockwork mechanical owl, insane creatures / monsters, Laurence Olivier as Zeus and the ubiquitous Burgess Meredith. Recalling a time when I was young and living in Massachusetts late at night the Medusa scene burned into my mind. The tension and build in the scene, the lighting and mood, the soundtrack and effects.. here it all came together bringing eerie life to this most famous of legends. Can't even fathom the work that went into making a scene like that, dreaming something like that up is the easy part (right?) but executing it at this level (3 decades ago) is a true art form. It always seemed to me that Harryhausen was more the director of the films than the actual director.. figure at least his creatures and effects were the main attractions in the films. Case in point; the Venusian "Ymir" from 20 Million Miles to Earth, he was likable enough -just out of place on our planet. You feel sympathy for him as the humans on this planet mistreat him, kept caged poked / prodded, till finally he takes a pitchfork to the back and goes totally sick-house on all the people in the barn. You also want to feel for the Ymir as he struggles with his addiction to sulfur -gotta figure where he came from that stuff was on every block. Poor, poor Ymir.
"The Valley of Gwangi" was a favorite of mine; the idea of cowboys wrangling dinosaurs seemed so logical, land that time forgot meets manifest destiny. Zounds.. online treasures abound you can actually download (free) a comic adaptation of the movie [here] that was put out by Dell publishing back in the day -I had no idea. When Harryhausen teamed up with Charles H. Schneer it was like the two of them decided to make every childhood fantasy of monsters myths and legends to life. Their productions were always pretty lavish in scope and effect, they seemed to make the most of the budgets given and of course the Dynamation was the main draw. Of course times and tastes change; to say nothing of technological advances -so it goes that by the time Harryhausen completed his last film the world was more interested in paying to be transported to a galaxy far, far away rather than watch a retelling of some dusty greek legend. Both Dennis Muren and Phil Tippett credit Harryhausen's work as being a major inspiration; Tippett's own "Go-Motion" was a natural progression and innovation over regular stop-motion. Its almost fitting that the "death of go-motion" came about with "Jurassic Park" a film populated with dinosaurs.
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| Concept art of "the Ymir" |
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| Gwangi vs. Elephant |
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| "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." |
