RAY HARRYHAUSEN RETROSPECTIVE - PART 1

As a youngling, I would watch all manner of creature features, whether it was dinosaurs, giant animals, insects, mythical creatures or space aliens. On one of my birthdays, I was gifted a VHS tape called "Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies" a pseudo-documentary/trailer compilation that seemed tailor-made for me. It was eye-opening for me,  introducing me to many movies that I wanted to see, and most importantly, to the man who was responsible for several of the films shown in that compilation; it even opens with a short presentation of that man working on his "new film" at the time.
That man's name was Ray Harryhausen. 

Born on June 29, 1920, Harryhausen himself grew up surrounded by creature features and fairy tales, his life would be forever changed after he went to see a little movie called 'King Kong.' He fell in love not only with the film itself, but the process in bringing Kong and the other fantastic creatures to life.
We know it as stop motion animation, the art of creating a highly detailed scale model puppet with an articulated metal skeleton (usually referred to as an "armature"), then placing the puppet in front of a camera, shooting ONE single frame of film, moving the puppet a miniscule amount and shooting ANOTHER single frame of film, repeating the process over and over and over again, until the illusion of the puppet moving by itself is complete.
Did that explanation seem overly long? That's because it was, just like doing stop motion. Anyway...

After witnessing the cinematic miracle that is King Kong, he would go on to study and hone his craft, creating his own stop motion products including short films about military equipment during his service in World War II and several adaptations of classic fairy tales. But to most, Harryhausen is known for his work in motion pictures. 

The films he worked on are among the best and most well-regarded science fiction and fantasy films, inspiring many filmmakers like Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro, Tim Burton and Steven Spielberg just to name a few.  

For the next few weeks, I'm going to be looking at all 15 theatrically released films that Harryhausen worked on along with a few other surprises. This has been a long time coming for me as this is one of the retrospectives I've wanted to work on the most along with my Godzilla and Gamera ones. I hope you enjoy reading about these films as much as I enjoy talking about and watching these fantastic films...  

-RAY HARRYHAUSEN RETROSPECTIVE- PART 1

BLACK AND WHITE BEASTIES

MIGHTY JOE YOUNG
July 27, 1949

A large gorilla named Joe is discovered by a nightclub owner, and with permission from his owner, Jill, Joe is brought back to Hollywood, becoming a sensation. However, the life of glitz and glamour soon becomes too much for both Joe and Jill to handle.

When he was 18, Harryhausen got the chance to meet the man who did the stop motion effects for King Kong, Willis O'Brien, who encouraged him to hone his craft as a stop-motion animator. The two would keep in touch throughout the years.
Finally, O'Brien would ask Harryhausen to assist him on his next big project, a story about a giant gorilla written and produced by Merian C. Cooper, with a screenplay from Ruth Rose and directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack, the very same team who worked on King Kong and Son of Kong, a story that was known at the time as "Mr. Joseph Young of Africa." 

Right off the bat, while the basic story may seem like a copy of King Kong this is a more happier and upbeat tale. 

Joe himself is a wonderful character. While he is still a giant gorilla and can be fierce when he needs to be, he is still sympathetic, lovable and full of emotion. 

Our principle cast members are also good. Returning from King Kong is Robert Armstrong playing Max O'Hara, a nightclub owner. The character is similar to Carl Denham as he has the same amount of charisma and folly, but manages to find his conscience towards the end of the story.
Terry Moore plays Joe's human friend, Jill Young. While played as naive, Moore still manages to give an effortlessly charming and empathetic performance. 
Finally, Ben Johnson plays Oklahoma cowboy, Greg Johnson. Johnson was an actual cowboy/rodeo man so you could say he was simply playing himself, but I love his "Aw shucks" nice guy demeanor and he has great chemistry with Terry Moore. 

While Willis O'Brien received sole credit for the special effects ("Technical Creator"), his role was more of a supervisor. It was really Harryhausen who did the majority of the stop-motion animation. For his first film, the animation and live-action blending is damn near flawless. His work really does convince you that Joe is a real character, down to the expressions on his face. According to Harryhausen, a cameraman was sent to record footage of a gorilla at a zoo in Chicago, but all the gorilla really did was "walk across the screen and pick his nose." The footage gave him some idea of how a gorilla would move; the rest he had to figure out as he went. He even went so far as to eat a bunch of celery and carrots during his breaks to help get himself into the mindset of a gorilla. 
There's a wonderfully done scene where a bunch of cowboys are trying to lasso Joe, and the fusing of the rear projected ropes from the actors to the wires attached to the puppet is pretty seamless. Another stand out scene is when Joe is given alcohol by some rowdy, drunk patrons and goes on a rampage tearing up the nightclub and fighting off captured lions. 
And of course there's the final scene where Jill, Greg and Joe rescue kids from a burning orphanage. The miniature work is very convincing, and the entire scene has an orange filter over it, adding to the drama. 

I really don't have a lot of complaints with Mighty Joe Young, even if I could point out occasional special effects hiccup or some hokey acting, the positives far outweigh any negatives.
While it didn't do too well on its release, Mighty Joe Young is mostly seen as a hidden gem by those who watch it today. If you mention Mighty Joe Young today, most might assume you're talking about a certain other movie, but I'll talk about that one later. For now, I'll finish by saying I love Mighty Joe Young, it's among one of my favorite Harryhausen films.

Mighty Joe Young would go on to win the Oscar for Best Special Effects at the 22nd Academy Awards, which Willis O'Brien accepted.
O'Brien and Harryhausen would collaborate again doing stop motion dinosaur sequences for Irwin Allen's 1956 film 'The Animal World.' Sadly, O'Brien's career seemed to slow down in his later years. He would contribute the stop motion effects for films like 'The Black Scorpion' and 'The Giant Behemoth.' He even contributed to a few brief sequences in 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.'

WILLIS H. O' BRIEN
1886-1962

Willis H. O'Brien would die of natural causes on November 8th, 1962. He was 76. 

As for Ray Harryhausen, with work on his first major film complete, he was ready to go out on his own and carry on the traditions of stop motion set forth by O'Brien.

THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS
June 1st 1953*
(*Actual release date varies by source)

A nuclear bomb test in the Artic unleashes a large prehistoric creature from its slumber. One man is determined to prove the creatures existence as it begins to wreak havoc on its way to civilization.

Like most cultured men, Ray Harryhausen loved dinosaurs. One of his projects that never came to fruition was called "Evolution of the World." It was meant to be a documentary showing, of course, the evolution of life on earth complete with several dinosaur sequences. Unfortunately, only under 3 minutes of footage was ever completed (maybe include link to video from RickDaSquirrel) and Ray fully lost interest after seeing the 'Rite of Spring' segment from Disney's Fantasia and feeling that did it better than he ever could. The footage would, however, prove useful as a showcase of Ray's talents to a producer named Jack Dietz, who was beginning work on an upcoming film under the title "The Monster From Under The Sea"

However, Ray had another friend who loved dinosaurs like he did, and his name was Ray Bradbury. Today, Bradbury is probably best known as the writer of the novel 'Fahrenheit 451', but he also wrote a short story for the Saturday Evening Post about a prehistoric sea beast attracted to a lighthouse, thinking it to be another member of its species. 
Seeing similarities in Bradbury's tale and their film, the producers bought the rights to the story from Bradbury, reworked the treatment and changed the title of their movie to the name of the short story: The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms.

Beast is a relatively simple film, but an important one. King Kong may have come out 2 decades before, but it was this movie that really jumpstarted the "Monster on the Loose" genre of film. All the trappings are here, the ominous opening narration, a science experiment responsible for inciting the monsters rampage (in this case, a nuclear bomb test in the Artic, because THAT'S SUCH A GOOD IDEA), scenes of the monster wreaking general havoc before coming to a populated city, the scientists and experts desperately trying to find a solution to the oncoming threat, people running away in terror and conventional weaponry having little to no effect, it really all started here. We're just missing a few character archetypes.  
Thankfully this movie is paced pretty well so that even when the creature isn't on screen, there's never a moment that drags on for too long. 

The human characters are pretty basic by design, but they don't bore or annoy.
Our main lead is a physicist named Tom Nesbitt (Paul Christian), a man who survives his initial encounter with the beast, but nobody believes his claims. He eventually meets up with a paleontologist Dr. Elson (Cecil Kellaway) and his assistant Lee (Paula Raymond). While Dr. Elson is predictably skeptical, Lee takes a liking to Nesbitt and offers her help to identify the beast, using pictures of dinosaurs ranging from Charles R. Knight's famous artworks to what I can only assume are the films concept art. The two also develop a romantic relationship which certainly exists. 
It can also be fun to listen to Paul Christian try to say his lines without slipping into his Swiss accent. 

As for our titular Beast, or "Rhedosaurus" as it's known, Harryhausen has stated that while Hollywood films usually glamorize the humans, he wanted to glamorize the creatures in his films and the results pretty much speak for themselves.
That's an important distinction to remember, as Harryhausen never once called his creations "monsters." They were always referred to as creatures.

Anytime the Rhedosaurus is on screen, it steals the show. It really comes across like an animal that doesn't know what environment it's in, and so its actions are more curious and reactionary rather than outright hostile. 
Not only is the stop motion on point, but the process of combining the footage of the real New York on top of the Rhedosaurus footage and even some added foreground elements is great. Harryhausen even managed to replicate the lighting and shadows of the surrounding buildings during the Rhedosaurus' walk through Manhattan. One of the best moments of that walk and another great example of seamless footage combination is when a lone policeman shoots at the Rhedosaurus with his little pistol, and when he goes to reload, the Rhedosaurus bites down on him and gobbles him up.
Special homage is paid to Bradbury's original story when the Rhedosaurus comes ashore to observe a lighthouse before smashing it to pieces.
There's a long standing piece of trivia that Rhedosaurus is pronounced "Ray-do-saur-us" and was named after Ray Harryhausen himself, but Harryhausen always denied this to be the case. I've always pronounced it like the color red.

To put it simply, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms is quintessential 1950's science fiction. It even went on to inspire many a filmmaker, just as King Kong did for Harryhausen. 
Eugène Lourié, the director of Beast would later go on to direct other giant monster movies like The Giant Behemoth (which most say is just a carbon copy of Beast) and Gorgo, another fan favorite monster movie from the UK. 
This film also caught the attention of a producer from Toho, and they went on to create their own iconic monster movie in 1954. The Beast walked through New York so Gojira could devastate Tokyo.
Despite not being as popular as Godzilla, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms is still a certified classic remembered fondly by monster movie lovers the world over.

IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA
July 18, 1955

A giant, irradiated octopus is stirred from the depths of the ocean and begins attacking ships on its way to terrorize the surface. 

After the success of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Harryhausen would come into contact with a producer who was so impressed by Beast, he wanted Harryhausen to work on his picture. Charles Schneer; would go on to be one of Harryhausen's most important collaborators. From this point on Schneer would produce nearly every single film he worked on. 

It Came From Beneath The Sea was based on an idea Schneer himself conceived of a giant octopus attacking the Golden Gate Bridge. Having to animate an octopus sounds like a pretty complicated task, having to deal with so many tentacles and have it come together in a believable sense. But if anyone could pull it off, it'd be Harryhausen. 

The octopus itself isn't really a character, simply a creature acting on primal instinct. For the most part, you're only going to see the tentacles and they are shot well. You'd never know it from watching the movie, but the octopus puppet only had 6 arms (wouldn't that make it a hexapus?) because of the films low budget, so Harryhausen had to make do. It might have made the job a bit easier honestly.
The highlight of the film is undoubtedly the attack on the Golden Gate Bridge. 

When it comes to the cast, Professor Joyce (Faith Domergue) was the only character I really felt any attachment to, mostly because of how unlike most female characters in 1950's creature features she is. She's much smarter and assertive than most of the other characters. That's not to say that they're awful, just unremarkable. I certainly didn't care for the love triangle between Joyce, Commander Matthews (Kenneth Tobey) and Dr. Carter (Donald Curtis.)
She does still let out a signature, over the top scream when the creature appears, but be honest, how would you react to seeing a big ass cephalopod come out of the water?

The cast isn't the only thing that holds It Came From Beneath The Sea back, there's also the fact that the movie has a very 'been there, done that' feel to it. Going from The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms immediately to this one and seeing the many plot similarities is pretty jarring, this ultimately makes this movie feel quite unremarkable to me. I wouldn't go so far as to say I hate it, I quite enjoy the sequences whenever the octopus is doing its thing, but out of all the films in Harryhausen's library, this isn't one I revisit very often.

But whenever I do watch it, I always stop and wonder: Is this what Godzilla could've been like? When the original 1954 film was still being conceived, it was proposed that the monster would be a giant octopus. Obviously, this never came to be and we ended up getting the Big G we know and love today. But there's always that "What If...?" that lurks in the back of my mind.

EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS
June 13, 1956

Earth is invaded by extraterrestrial visitors from a dead galaxy who seek to subjugate our planet. 

For their next collaboration, Harryhausen and Schneer traded danger from below to death from above.
The 1950's truly was the golden age of science fiction, ripe with radiated monsters as well as invaders from other worlds. Harryhausen initially had plans to do an adaptation of H.G. Wells' 1898 novel "The War of the Worlds", he planned to keep it in the same time setting as the novel and keep his models as close to Wells' descriptions as he could. But the job was instead given to Producer George Pal, who went on to do the fantastic 1953 film version.
After his final collaboration with Willis O'Brien on Irwin Allen's 1956 documentary 'The Animal World', he was approached by Schneer, who was caught up in UFO fever like many were at the time, and had the desire to make a movie about them.
After several screenplays were revised and inspiration taken from "Flying Saucers From Outer Space", a best selling non-fiction book by Donald Keyhoe, a final revised script was delivered by Bernard Gordon (Originally credited as "Raymond T. Marcus" because of suspected communist blacklisting shenanigans.)

The best thing about Earth vs. The Flying Saucers is that it doesn't waste any time getting to what you came to see. The first saucer makes it's appearance within the first 30 seconds of the film, and from there, they remain a constant presence throughout. You could even say they are the true stars of the film.

Dr. Russell Marvin and his wife Carol (Hugh Marlowe and Joan Taylor) are really the only characters worth following, as the rest of the cast are made up of mostly one note military members.
There also isn't much to the invaders themselves, aside from their chilling voiceover provided by well-known voice artist, Paul Frees, they come with a veil of peaceful intentions before going right to full on occupation of Earth.

As I said, Harryhausen's effects are the true stars of the film, and the titular Flying Saucers are instantly iconic. While their design is typical of what you'd expect a flying saucer to look like, the stop motion used to make these inanimate objects spin ironically gives them character and avoids the static fakeness seen in past alien invader films. You'll probably be too focused on the fluidity of the saucer's movements to even think about the fact that they're held up by piano wire, mostly because Harryhausen painstakingly painted out the wires frame by frame. 
Several sized models of the saucers were made by Harryhausen with assistance from his father, the sounds of the saucers were taken from recordings of the sewage disposal plant they filmed in for a rocket control center, and the effects of the death rays were achieved by filming footage of roman candles being fired and overlaying additional effects over them. There was no shortage of creativity and quick thinking during this production.

The aliens themselves are a mixed bag. We initially see them in these metal suits that look a little goofy to me. Even when we do see one unmasked it's not that unique of a typical "Grey" alien. Harryhausen had initially wanted to make the aliens more worm-like with tentacle arms, but like It Came From Beneath The Sea before it, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers did not have enough of a budget to do a lot of what he wanted so he had to settle for suit performers. 
The budget could also explain this film's excessive use of stock footage to portray the destruction wrought by the saucers including a plane crash from an air show and an actual ship being struck by a torpedo and sinking (the HMS Barham if you're interested.)

The climax of the film, where the saucers attack Washington DC is of course, the highlight of the film, and features many scenes of the saucers being shot down and crashing into a number of famous landmarks. Of course there is stock footage destruction a plenty, but Harryhausen does include miniatures to depict saucers crashing into Union Station, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol Building.
This would also be the last time Harryhausen would use stop motion to depict buildings being destroyed as he "...would never want to do that amount of work again, it was torturous." 

Any of this movie's faults can be overlooked simply for the fact that Earth vs. The Flying Saucers never felt boring, the ratio between human/alien action kept me watching and entertained.
Harryhausen has said that Earth vs. The Flying Saucers is his least favorite film he has worked on, due to him preferring his work on fantasy over science fiction. But he still gave it his all and delivered a film that continues to stand against the most iconic alien invasion films like The Day The Earth Stood Still and the aforementioned The War of the Worlds.
40 years later, Tim Burton would pay loving homage to this film in 'Mars Attacks!'

20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH
June (?) 1957

A rocketship crashes off the coast of Italy, carrying with it a mysterious egg brought back from the planet Venus, which soon hatches, revealing a strange creature that gradually grows in size.

Harryhausen followed up one movie about aliens with another one with just a single alien based on one of his own ideas. Initially, he planned on a movie about a Scandinavian giant called "Ymir" which later changed into a movie about a giant cyclops creature resembling a satyr attacking present day-Chicago. 
Meanwhile, Scheer had formed his own production company called Morningside Productions. This would help to offer Harryhausen more creative control for his projects. Eventually, the concept evolved to featuring a more reptilian animal and the location was changed to Italy from the shores of Sicily to the city of Rome. But why Italy specifically? The honest answer was that Harryhausen wanted to vacation there. Filmmaking isn't easy, but it does come with certain perks, and you can't say he didn't make the most out of his time. 

20 Million Miles To Earth can be seen as Harryhausen's ultimate homage to King Kong, the film that started him on his career path. Not since Mighty Joe Young have we been asked to sympathize with one of Harryhausen's creatures as he is continually mistreated and abused by humanity and even other animals when all it wants is to be left alone. Even though the US army members seek to merely capture it for scientific research, the Italian government seeks extermination of the creature for its actions of self defense with the continued action of all parties leading to an inevitable conclusion. 

Speaking of, our human cast is once again a mixed bag. 
The movie opens on the most Italian Italians that ever Italianed, the worst of all being a boy obsessed with Texas cowboys. I get that the movie needs a reason for the creature to be unleashed onto the world but I feel like we could do better then selling it to a professor to buy a cowboy hat. 

Faring better are the trio of Colonel Bob Coulder (William Hopper), Marisa (Joan Taylor) and Dr. Leonardo (Frank Puglia.) Dr. Leonardo plays the always needed curious scientific mind and while Bob and Marisa are initially at odds with each other, (both have their reasons) they warm up to each other and form a relationship, I guess...

The creature, or Ymir as it's known (not it the movie though,) is of course the main event. Aside from its performance as a scared animal that fights back when provoked, it's a fascinating creature design, a bipedal, lizard-like alien with a unique looking head. He's got these whiskers that look like a mustache, a design element that was actually carried over from his initial concept for the Martians in Harryhausen's unrealized War of the Worlds adaptation, which leads me to dub this face: "The Harryhausen Face." 

Harryhausen once again outdoes himself with his animation making the Ymir feel like a real character. And its distinct roar is also iconic. If you're curious the roar came from recordings of elephants, and along with the Ymir's rampage through Rome, Harryhausen also animated a fight between the Ymir and an Elephant. It's a pretty brutal fight which helps add to the believability, you almost forget that these are only puppets. Harryhausen himself makes a cameo in the film as a guy at the zoo throwing peanuts at an elephant. 
Uh, Ray? Ray, is there something you need to talk about? 

Like King Kong before it, 20 Million Miles to Earth is a wonderful and tragic tale of a creature run amok that I would easily rank among Harryhausen's best works. 

Before I end this part, there's one more bit of information to bring up. The last 3 movies I've talked about were initially shot in black and white, despite Harryhausen wanting them to be in color. Unfortunately, they didn't quite have the budget to afford color filming. 

But in 2007, with the help of a company called Legend Films, It Came From Beneath The Sea, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers & 20 Million Miles to Earth were digitally remastered and given a colorized version. The process was supervised by Harryhausen himself, so unlike Ted Turner's foray with King Kong, these were done with consent of the original creators. As it should be. Also, unlike "Kolor Kong", the results are far better implemented and look really great! I highly recommend picking up the colorized versions if you can find the box set. They come with a unique feature that allows you to switch between color and black & white while you're watching the films (assuming you're using a player that has an 'angle' button on the remote)

Ranking

I don't normally partake in this, but I figured it'd be neat to actually rank the films as I talk about them. 

So far Mighty Joe Young is my favorite and It Came From Beneath The Sea is not the worst, but certainly my least favorite. But we've got 10 more movies to talk about so this could and will wildly change later.

Join me next time for Part 2 where we look at Harryhausen films that officially entered the world of color films. Also, Dynamation. 
I'll explain, don't worry.

Till next time, I have been your host Gryphon 
and thank you for joining me here in my lair. 
So long...

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