Ray Harryhausen probably never in his wildest dreams thought he'd ever make a film with Laurence Olivier, but that's what happened in 1981 when the legendary stop-motion animator suddenly discovered that Hollywood thought he was cool again in the wake of special effects-heavy blockbusters like Star Wars and Superman. Harryhausen's previous film, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, had barely been noticed upon its release in 1977 while everyone was still reeling from the aftermath of George Lucas' Star Wars, but by the end of the '70s any movie with a special effects shot written into the script had a good chance of being greenlit, and Harryhausen suddenly found himself faced with the possibility of making a movie that had two elements he was unused to dealing with: movie stars and a decent budget.
After focusing on Sinbad adventures throughout the '70s, Harryhausen turned for inspiration back to one of his biggest critical and box office successes, Jason and the Argonauts. In Jason, the gods of Olympus spent their time meddling in the lives of mortal men, which were depicted as clay chess pieces to be maneuvered by the likes of Zeus and Hera. Harryhausen and his producer Charles Schneer got the idea of casting the Olympians with a bunch of international stars, with the greatest actor of all time, Laurence Olivier, playing Zeus (the rest of the Olympians included Maggie Smith, Claire Bloom, Ursula Andress and Sian Phillips of I, Claudius). Burgess Meredith came onboard as a Greek playwright and L.A. Law's Harry Hamlin played the legendary Perseus, whose quest to save his love Andromeda from the deadly Kraken is interrupted by all manner of stop-motion mythological monsters.
Jason and the Argonauts featured acting as bad as anything ever seen in an Ed Wood movie, but there was something about the period that allowed its location photography, costumes and acting to percolate together with Harryhausen's dynamic and striking special effects and create a mythological reality that worked quite well. Clash of the Titans wasn't so fortunate. It has a naïve charm that's all the more potent for the cynical time in which it was made, but the acting styles (particularly of Hamlin and the other younger performers in the picture) and Desmond Davis's often pedestrian direction and hand-held camerawork fail to give the film the mythic feeling it required. And while many of Harryhausen's effects are beautiful and effective, there are enough techniques clearly not updated from their '50s counterparts that the mood of the piece is often broken.
Not helping matters was the addition of a mechanical owl character named Bubo, a clear and present attempt to capitalize on the popularity of Star Wars' R2-D2. Most of the actors in Harryhausen films have enough difficulty reacting to unseen creatures that are simply supposed to frighten them: finding an invisible creature funny was beyond the thespic talents of just about everyone in the Clash of the Titans cast. All that having been said, the movie has its moments and its great scale and ambitious story makes it a proper send-off for Harryhausen's great career. The animation set pieces overall are first rate; Harryhausen shows particular skill at blending the performance of Neil McCarthy as Calibos with his own stop-motion version of the character, and his vision of an immaculately white Pegasus taking flight with Perseus onboard is certainly the most flawless version of that particular mythological creature ever put on film. The highlight of the movie, and certainly a highlight of Harryhausen's career, is his brilliant Medusa sequence, a masterpiece of lighting and design which creates a truly disturbing and menacing monster in the snake-haired, reptilian harpy whose looks can turn men to stone. It's unfortunate that the set pieces that follow this milestone serve as anticlimaxes: an encounter with giant scorpions grown from Medusa's blood (or ichor) plays like a poor man's version of the giant crab fight from Mysterious Island, and the climactic vision of the Krakenthe single "Titan" from the film's misleading titlesuffers from inadequate scaling effects.
Warner's DVD doesn't seem to be all that special at first glance, but its features are unusually good, from a fifteen minute interview with Harryhausen to the "Map of Myths and Monsters" feature which allows you to pull up little mini featurettes on each creature in the film, with Harryhausen talking about their design and execution in surprising detail. That and a crystal-clear transfer make this an excellent bet for Harryhausen fans, or just children of the '80s who grew up thinking this was a great movie!
LOGIN
REGISTER
RSS
HOME
