Introduction
As a master of visual effects, the case could easily be made that Ray Harryhausen is one of the most influential figures in cinema history. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Peter Jackson, John Landis, Joe Dante, Tim Burton, James Cameron, and countless others have all stated they first became interested in movies partly because of Harryhausen’s work.
Any kid who grew up in the 50s, 60s, or 70s that had even a passing interest in movie dinosaurs or fantasy films, worships this man.
In the history of movies, Harryhausen was the first superstar technician. When you went to one of his films you didn’t care who the director was. You didn’t care who the actors were, or even what the movie was about. All you knew was that you were going to witness some new visual wonder. You were going to be transported to a magical place.
Stop Motion Beginnings
Ray Harryhausen was only 13 years old when he went to see the original King Kong in a theater in 1933. For Harryhausen, it was a life-changing event. After leaving the theater, he stated he never felt the same. He would return to see the movie over and over in an attempt to figure out how the visual effects were created.
Harryhausen knew it wasn’t a man in a monkey suit, but couldn’t figure out how Kong and the dinosaurs in the film had been brought to life. After some research, Harryhausen learned that Kong had been made using a technique called “stop-motion animation.”
The process involves the manipulation of armatures and models that can be moved in small increments. A technician will move a model a little bit, take a picture, move it again, take another picture, and so on and so forth. After doing this 24 times, you end up with one second of the film. It’s painstaking and time-consuming work.
Ray Harryhausen was intrigued. He soon started making numerous home movies using this inventive technique. Then, after several months, he had worked up the courage to approach Willis O’Brien. O’Brien was the man who had headed up the special effects team behind King Kong.
Harryhausen asked the older gentlemen if he would be willing to take a look at some of his film clips. To the young man’s amazement, O’Brien was more than happy to talk and share some of the secrets of the stop motion trade.
Mighty Joe Young
O’Brien was obviously impressed with the young man’s talent and work ethic. Subsequently, he asked if Harryhausen would be willing to help out on a new project called Mighty Joe Young. Released in 1949, the film was one of the most technically ambitious movies made up until that time.
Mighty Joe Young features an extremely large gorilla named Joe who is brought to Los Angeles to star in a nightclub. Then, after getting drunk and being harassed, Joe escapes and destroys the establishment. This before finally redeeming himself by rescuing children from a burning orphanage, always a sure-fire plot device.
By his own estimates, Ray Harryhausen had performed nearly 85% of all of the animation work in Mighty Joe Young. Even though Mighty Joe was just a model, the film had featured some of the artistry that Harryhausen would soon come to be known for. He was deftly able to communicate a strong sense of emotion through the title character. As a result, he seems just as real as any “actor” in the film.
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
After his tutelage under O’Brien, Harryhausen’s next project was a solo one. It was called The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953). The film went on to become a huge hit for Warner Brothers in the early 1950s. Made for a ridiculously small budget, Harryhausen put in long hours to create some of the spectacular sequences in the film.
Perhaps the most famous scene is when the title dinosaur takes a stroll through midtown Manhattan. A none too bright policeman walks up to the monster and starts shooting. The dinosaur responds by leaning over, picking up the man by the head, and then eating him. Audiences were thrilled. The success of this film helped kick off all the “giant monster on the loose” movies that were so popular through the rest of the 1950s.
It Came From Beneath the Sea
Harryhausen next created three black and white films in the same vein for Columbia Pictures. The first was It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955). The film is about a giant octopus that attacks San Francisco and destroys the Golden Gate Bridge.
Once again, Harryhausen was forced to work within a small budget. Realizing that very few of the shots featured the entire octopus, he decided to economize by giving the creature only six tentacles instead of the customary eight. Audiences didn’t seem to care and were awed to witness the destruction of several well-known landmarks.
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
Not wanting to be typecast by giant monsters destroying major cities, Harryhausen followed this film up with The Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956). Directed by Fred Sears, the film grossed over $1.2 million on a minuscule budget.
The Earth vs. the Flying Saucers also featured similar memorable visual effects, including the climax when the space invaders lay waste to Washington D.C. We get to witness The Capitol Building, Union Station, Supreme Court, and Washington Monument being destroyed in spectacular fashion.
20 Million Miles to Earth
Harryhausen’s third film for Columbia was 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957). The film featured an original creature called a Ymir. Brought back by an expedition to Venus and taken to Rome, the beast escapes from a local zoo. It subsequently has an intriguing duel to the death with an elephant.
After that, the Ymir runs amok through the eternal city. This is before being killed by a bazooka on top of the Roman Colosseum. All these films had turned sizeable profits. As a result, after 20 Million Miles to Earth, Harryhausen decided to the time had come to tackle a larger budget film shot in color.
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
The end result of all of Harryhausen’s hard work was The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1957). The film ranks as one of the artist’s all-time greats. Full of eye-popping visuals, it showcases some of Harryhausen’s most breath-taking creations: a Cyclops, a Roc (giant two-headed bird), a dragon, and a sword-wielding skeleton.
While this may sound like a children’s movie, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad also contains scenes of startling horror. One such example is when the giant Cyclops uproots a tree trunk and uses it as a giant battering ram to crush some of Sinbad’s men.
When coming up with the design for the Cyclops, Harryhausen had purposely made its legs bend backward at the knees. This was so no one in the audience would possibly think that what they were seeing was a man in a suit. When the film was finally released in 1958, audiences were completely awed.
Actor Kerwin Matthews, who starred as Sinbad, had attended the premiere of The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad. When he saw the final product, the actor stated he “just couldn’t believe it.” The added visual effects made the picture feel like a completely different one than the one he thought he had worked on.
The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad would go on to become the highest box-office grossing film that summer. Subsequently, the film became the 6th highest-grossing film for the entire year. The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad continued to make lots of money as it was re-released several times well into the 1970s.
Mysterious Island
After the artistic and financial success of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Harryhausen’s next two projects continued to branch off into other fantasy realms. The first was The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1960). This was followed by Mysterious Island (1961). Film critic and historian Leonard Maltin described Mysterious Island as having a “breathless pace.” That’s not too far off the mark.
Based on a novel by Jules Verne, Mysterious Island tells the story of a group of Civil War soldiers who find themselves stranded on a remote island. There, they run across a cross-section of strange creatures, This includes giant flightless birds, crabs, bees, and cephalopods. All of this is climaxed by a volcanic eruption, which destroys the island.
The film once again showcased Harryhausen’s seemingly boundless imagination even as he struggled with subpar budgets. As just one example, to build the giant crab that attacks the men on the beach, he re-used the actual crab shell from a dinner he and his wife enjoyed at a restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.
Jason and the Argonauts
Harryhausen’s next film dealt with the subject of Greek mythology. Many critics consider it to be his masterpiece. Jason and the Argonauts (1963) pushed – and in some cases even went beyond – what was considered possible in stop motion photography at the time.
When animating a battle with a nine-headed Hydra, for example, Harryhausen had quickly realized that he had bitten off more than he could chew. Trying to keep nine different independent heads in sync, and have them interact with human actors turned out to be a difficult challenge.
Many times, Harryhausen had to stop the process in order to try to remember “was that one head going forward…or was it backward?” This was but a small taste of what Harryhausen was up against when he began work on the film’s most celebrated sequence in which Jason and his men duel to the death with seven sword-wielding skeletons.
In order to achieve the desired effect, everything had to be carefully planned and orchestrated. To begin the process, the actors rehearsed each shot with a series of trained swordsmen. They then fought the same fights against thin air, with the camera capturing their movements.
When he got into animating the sequence, Harryhausen quickly realized he had made some major miscalculations. He wasn’t dealing with just one model, but seven of them. With many on the screen at the same time. In addition, each skeleton had a head, two arms, two legs, a neck, elbows, knees, ankles, etc.
Math Problems
Seven skeletons, each with approximately 12 movable joints. Even with only five of them on the screen at the same time, that’s still sixty (5 x 12) possible movements in a single frame. To get a second of film, multiply 60 by 24 and you have 1,440 potential changes. We’re talking about a scene that lasts over five minutes. Therefore, multiply 1,440 x 60 x 5. That’s 432,000 separate movements needing to be accounted for in the sequence.
The powers of concentration that were required for Harryhausen to pull this off are simply mind-boggling. Just being able to keep track of all of those simultaneous movements seems almost impossible. Once Harryhausen started working on a shot, he realized that he couldn’t stop the process.
If he made even one mistake, such as a sword coming down and reversing itself before connecting with its target, Harryhausen had to start all over again. For this reason alone, many film scholars regard the final skeleton sequence in Jason and the Argonauts as among the most awesome achievements in all of film history.
Many experts and critics rank this sequence alongside that of the chariot race in Ben-Hur (1959), the car chase in Bullitt (1968), as well as the parting of the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments (1956). It’s one of the more incredible sequences ever committed to celluloid before computers came along.
First Men in the Moon
Harryhausen’s next project continued to showcase his immense imagination. Based on an H.G. Wells novel, First Men in the Moon (1964) tells the story of Victorian-era astronauts who manage to travel beneath the lunar surface.
The film starts off fun enough, but as critic Leonard Maltin remarks, it soon develops a “chilling set of teeth” as the explorers discover another civilization that reveals its plans to invade and conquer Earth. This along with a giant animated “moon-cow” proves to be not as docile as it first appears.
One Million Years B.C.
Harryhausen next traveled to Hammer Studios in England to remake One Million Years B.C. (1966) using stop motion techniques. The studio provided Harryhausen with plenty of encouragement. However, as usual, not much in the way of money was given towards the film’s artistic budget.
One Million Years B.C. was shot against the stark lunar-like landscapes of the Canary Islands and includes a great battle between a Ceratosaurus and a Triceratops. Also, there is As another memorable sequence that takes place when an Allosaurus attacks a village of peaceful prehistoric inhabitants.
One Million Years B.C. did extremely well at the box office. This was no doubt helped by an image of the film’s star Raquel Welch posing in a cave girl outfit. The image would become one of the iconic posters of the 1960s. To this day, it can be found in countless college dorm rooms across the country.
The Valley of Gwangi
Harryhausen next decided to resurrect a project his mentor, Willis O’Brien, had conceived back in the 1930s but had never gotten off the ground. The Valley of Gwangi (1969) features an Allosaurus who is captured by a bunch of cowboys around the turn of the century and turned into a circus attraction.
Of course, the dinosaur gets free and makes a meal of several townsfolk before being cornered and dying in a burning cathedral. The film’s plot is very reminiscent of the original King Kong, which Willis O’Brien had worked on back in 1933 and the “Kong” references didn’t stop there.
If you watch the scene in the film where Gwangi makes an appearance at the end of the river, you’ll see him use his forelimb to scratch his ear. It’s identical to the exact same movement the Tyrannosaurus makes in the original King Kong when he makes his first appearance. It was Harryhausen’s tribute to his former mentor.
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
It would be another four years until Ray Harryhausen got started on his next project. For this one, he would go back to familiar territory in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), starring Caroline Munro and iconic Doctor Who Timelord Tom Baker. The tone for this film was much darker than the original Sinbad. However, it still did quite well, both critically and at the box office.
There are two key scenes The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is best remembered for: Sinbad’s battle with a six-armed statue of the Hindu Goddess Kali, and the climactic battle between a Griffin, representing the forces of good, and a one-eyed Centaur, representing evil. The miniature set for the latter is breathtakingly beautiful and features a giant fountain spewing water inside a colorful cave.
Clash of the Titans
As the 1970s drew to a close, Harryhausen made one more Sinbad film. Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger was released in 1977 and starred Patrick Wayne and Jane Seymour. As one could predict, the film was yet another smash-hit. The Sam Wanamaker-directed film grossed over $20 million on a $3 million budget.
Clash of the Titans (1981) would be the final feature film to feature Ray Harryhausen’s special effects work. Also, for the first time, the animator was given a sizable budget to work with. The film’s producers actually went out and hired some big-name stars (such as Laurence Olivier). This was to add some prestige to the picture.
Harryhausen was still able to amaze stop motion enthusiasts. One of the characters was Medusa, a woman whose very stare would turn men into stone. The character has a head full of writhing snakes, all of which had to be animated independently. In addition to that, she’s illuminated by a flickering fire.
Not only did Harryhausen have to animate the monster, but he also had to change the lighting in every frame to match the crackling flame. In order to do this, the animator needed to use a rotating wheel that would simulate the dancing light. The final effect is truly a sight to behold.
Clash of the Titans was a major box office success upon its release on June 12, 1981, grossing $70 million on a $9 million budget. However, after the film was released, Harryhausen knew it was time to retire. New technologies had conspired to make his style of special effects too quaint and work-intensive.
A Special Oscar
A movement began to pick up steam to create a special Academy Award for Harryhausen. This was to honor him for his lifetime of contributions to the film industry. Science fiction author and long-time friend Ray Bradbury found out about this special Oscar. He insisted that he be the one to present it.
During his remarks at the ceremony in 1992, Bradbury related how he and Harryhausen had first met as teenagers back in the 1930s. He remarked how they had both been just “crazy about dinosaurs.” That they had made a pact to “never grow up” and to always hold dear the things in life they enjoyed as kids.
Probably the most moving moment in the award presentation came at the end as Harryhausen and Bradbury were walking off-stage. Master of Ceremonies Tom Hanks ad-libbed a few words into the microphone that were completely unrehearsed:
“…Some people say Casablanca or Citizen Kane…I say Jason and the Argonauts is the greatest film ever made.”
Remembering a Titan
Ray Harryhausen’s contributions to film history are nearly incalculable and when he died in 2013, you could feel the tears being shed by every child who had grown up with his magnificent creations. One of these individuals was Guillermo Del Toro. The director of Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and Nightmare Alley summed up Harryhausen’s legacy this way:
“Growing up with Ray Harryhausen allowed my generation to dream of a monster-filled future. He legitimized fantasy as a medium for true artistic creation…He was a true pioneer, a man who picked up the mantel of stop-motion…and single-handedly, carried the torch for two or three generations…It is impossible to imagine Star Wars, Jurassic Park, or The Lord of the Rings without the work Ray did…He was a minister of monsters…His creatures made millions of lonely children smile and hope for a better world…a world populated by cyclopses and griffins and the children of the hydra. No one will ever fill the void left by Ray Harryhausen. He was a precious anomaly, a comet passing by.”
