Ray Harryhausen – Movie Musings

Harry Hamlin takes on monsters in Clash of the Titans

Director: Desmond Davis

Cast: Harry Hamlin (Perseus), Judi Bowker (Andromeda), Burgess Meredith (Ammon), Maggie Smith (Thetis), Sian Phillips (Cassiopeia), Claire Bloom (Hera), Ursula Andress (Aphrodite), Laurence Olivier (Zeus), Susan Fleetwood (Athena), Tim Pigott-Smith (Thallo), Jack Gwillim (Poseidon), Neil McCarthy (Calibos), Donald Houston (Acrisius), Flora Robson, Freda Jackson, Anna Manahan (Stygian Witches)

It’s almost impossible not to have a soft spot in your heart for Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion magic. The best of Harryhausen – and for me surely that’s his superb Jason and the Argonauts – has a magic that few other films can match. A magic born of awe at the technical skill and patience needed to bring it to the screen and the boundless imagination behind them. For all that they are no more real than the CGI of today, there is an emotional connection you can form with watching something where you know each frame was painstakingly hand-made, that you can’t quite feel for the scope of a computer-born Marvel world. Clash of the Titans was the last hurrah for Harryhausen. It’s far from perfect, and even in 1981 it looked dated and almost a relic from another era – but it still carries enough entertainment value.

We’re back in the mythology of ancient Greece. As a boy, Perseus (Harry Hamlin) and his mother are sent out to sea to drown by his Grandfather King Acrisius of Argos (Donald Houston), jealous of her love from Perseus’ father, the God Zeus (Laurence Olivier). Zeus orders Argos destroyed by the Titan sea monster the Kraken. Years later Princess Andromeda (Judi Bowker) of Joppa is due to marry Calibos (Neil McCarthy), son of the Goddess Thetis (Maggie Smith). But Calibos is cursed by Zeus, turned into a monster for his crimes. Andromeda is cursed by Thetis to only marry a man who can answer a riddle (set every night by Calibos). Perseus – using gifts from Zeus – discovers the answer to the riddle, confronts Calibos, cuts off his hand and is set to marry Andromeda.

But when Andromeda’s mother Cassiopeia (Sian Phillips) claims her daughter is more beautiful than any of the Gods, Thetis condemns the Andromeda to be consumed by the Kraken, or the city to be destroyed. To stop this, Perseus – with the quiet help of Zeus and his winged horse Pegasus – must travel across Greece to obtain the head of Medusa, who turns all who look upon her to stone.

Well, in case you were in any doubts (and I really struggled to write those last couple of paragraphs), one of Clash of the Titans main faults is that it’s plot is a mess (a combination of several Greek myths into one story) and lacks either a clear narrative thrust or a clear villain. It’s without focus, flabby and has so many sub-clauses in its structure, you either need to concentrate or just switch off and take it on a scene-by-scene basis. It’s summed up by the meaningless title which – for all Flora Robson’s Stygian witch shrieks “a titan against a titan!” mid-way through the film – barely relates to the plot.

The film also suffers from an over-abundance of characters (Gods, Kings, warriors, monsters) many of them only vaguely outlined. But with so much going on (and so much plot to cover in the slight running time) it all pulls focus from our two leads. Harry Hamlin’s Perseus is a dull, uncharismatic figure who it’s hard to get interested in. Judi Bowker fares a little better as Andromeda, but her brief moments of proactivity are only byways before she becomes a damsel in distress, chained to a rock. Neil McCarthy as nominal villain Calibos is undermined by only getting to play the character in close-up (in all other shots he’s all too obviously replaced by a tailed stop-motion monster), and in any case the character is barely given any decent motivation or background.

It doesn’t help these underpowered leads that there are a host of famous actors picking up pay cheques around them. Laurence Olivier made no secret of the fact that a large cheque (and only a week’s shooting time) was what bought him on board as Zeus (although the part is a good fit for his grandeur). Claire Bloom and Ursula Andress signed up for similar reasons. Maggie Smith (who was married to the screenwriter) seemingly did the film as a well-paid favour. Burgess Meredith repackages his role from Rocky as a poet turned advisor to Perseus. I will say Tim Pigott-Smith does a decent turn as the head of Joppa’s royal guard. But these are paper-thin characters, given what life they have by the actors rather than the script.

But Clash of the Titans is all about those Harryhausen set-pieces, with everything else just over-complicated filler to get us from place-to-place. Desmond Davis’ uninspired and flat direction doesn’t help, with the action too often presented in basic medium shot and frequently over-lit – a lighting set-up that doesn’t help to make the effects look particularly convincing. The film feels confusingly pitched, part a kids film, part an appeal to nostalgic adults. Neither seems to particularly work, and the film ends up looking rather uninspired.

This was the last hurrah for this sort of stop-motion. Star Wars had reset the table completely for adventure films like this. Clash of the Titans feels like a feeble attempt to address this challenge – right down to the irritating robotic owl Bubo, a clear rip-off of R2-D2 right down to his bouncing movement and dialogue of beeps. The film goes for making things as big as possible – the gigantic kraken, the huge scorpions – but everything in it looks a little tired.

Davis’ uninspired direction and the film’s flatness doesn’t help – or its general air of fusty, dusty oldness. If Jason and the Argonauts has all the charge and energy of a young man’s film (from its sharp direction, pacey plot, neatly drawn characters and Herrmann’s score), this really feels like a middle-aged Dad trying to be hip. The Kraken’s destruction of Argos seems to consist of little more than a few toppling pillars. The beast is slow, cumbersome and takes forever to do anything. An extended sequence where our heroes fight a two-headed dog is both dull and laughable. The only classic piece of stop-motion here is Medusa. Surely no coincidence that this is the most atmospherically shot sequence, with lighting that helps to hide the joins between stop-motion and reality in a way the rest of the film ruthlessly exposes.

Clash of the Titans is a film you can feel a nostalgia for – but really it’s actually rather naff. It’s badly plotted – surely the story could have been told in a cleaner way than this confused mess. Too many actors either phone it in, or fail to deliver the charisma needed (Todd Armstrong in Jason is no Olivier, but at least he had a matinee idol robustness Hamlin lacks). It’s limply directed. Worst of all, too much of the stop-motion looks a little silly – the film failing to cover up the cracks and too frequently exposing the joins rather than disguising them. Show this one to someone first, and you’ll never get them back to watch the best of Harryhausen. While I always enjoy it – for nostalgia if nothing else – its a cult classic, but no classic.

The Argonauts take on dreadful monsters in Jason and the Argonauts. You gotta love it.

Director: Don Chaffey

Cast: Todd Armstrong (Jason), Nancy Kovack (Medea), Gary Raymond (Arcastus), Laurence Naismith (Argus), Niall MacGinnis (Zeus), Michael Gwynn (Hermes), Douglas Wilmer (Pelias), Jack Gwillim (King Aeëtes), Honor Blackman (Hera), John Cairney (Hylas), Patrick Troughton (Phineus), Nigel Green (Hercules)

Watching this film it’s impossible not to get swept up in childish glee. It’s one of the most gloriously entertaining, wonderfully imaginative and brilliantly enjoyable films ever made. Watch this at the right age and it’s got you for life. Its best remembered of course for its wonderful Ray Harryhausen stop-motion effects – but to be honest the whole film is a brilliantly assembled package from start to finish, full of thrills and spills. I love it, I’ll always love it, and it’s got to be one of the best adventure stories ever filmed. Not much point writing more is there? But I guess I will.

The plot hews fairly closely (give and take) to the mythology. Pelias (Douglas Wilmer) seizes the Kingdom of Thessaly. Terrified of a prophecy that says a child of King Aristo of Thessaly will take the throne from him, he kills Aristo’s daughter at the temple of Hera (Honor Blackman). Outraged, Hera becomes the protector of Aristo’s surviving son Jason (Todd Armstrong), and 20 years later he returns. Jason needs to prove himself if he is to re-take the throne, and decides to find the legendary Golden Fleece in the distant land of Colchius. He builds the greatest ship ever – the Argus – and holds games to find the finest crew in Greece. But danger awaits!

If any film is associated the most with Ray Harryhausen, it’s this one. So it’s almost a shock to realise he didn’t direct it, and that the monster moments are carefully placed only at key moments – and that a lot of the rest of the film relies on human action. Jason and the Argonauts is so good because all these elements are brilliantly put together and superbly staged, with an old-school, boys-own adventurousness. How can you not enjoy this film?

The Harryhausen effects are astonishingly good, and their stop-motion brilliance have a grounded reality to them. The staggering copper monster Talos is fabulous – grinding joints, groaning weight and size. The shrieking harpies that plague Patrick Troughton’s put-upon Phineas have an unpleasant, grasping dirtiness to them. The Hydra guarding the fleece is a rattlesnake-like vicious beast. All brilliant. I love them all – just sequences to dream of.

But the highlight is of course the skeletons’ battle. Oh wow. This sequence still holds up so well. It took Harryhausen years in the making and planning, but really paid off. The skeletons are terrifying in their cold-eyed ferocity. For skulls, Harryhausen gives their faces a lot of expressiveness. I just love this sequence – it speaks to the child in all of us. And there is something extra magical from knowing that the sequence was put together frame-by-frame and the live action shots carefully choreographed to match-up with it. Not for nothing did Tom Hanks namecheck this film when presenting Harryhausen with an honorary Oscar.

These sequences really work though because the film has a wonderful Sunday-morning-serial briskness to it. Pacily directed by Don Chaffrey, the film motors so swiftly through its plot that you are surprised to find it’s only about an hour and a half. Its story structure is not always perfect: apart from Jason and Arcastus most of the rest of the Argonauts are so briefly introduced (despite the recruitment Olympics montage at the start) you’ll find them hard to tell apart. The arc of the story is often a little messy, and iIn fact it’s easy to forget the film ends on a cliffhanger (the sequel was never made) and that Douglas Wilmer’s sinister Pelias is totally forgotten after the first half an hour. But it’s so well done it doesn’t matter.

But Chaffey keeps the events moving forward so well, the tone so perfectly balanced between heroics, gods debating and thigh slapping jokiness that the film’s tone and momentum never slackens, with the Harryhausen monster sequences as exciting tent-poles in the film’s action. A lot of this feeling is carried across from Bernard Herrmann’s excellent score, a hummable mixture of bombast and slightly eerie mysticism that reflects and compliments the action throughout.

The film is extremely well-made and put together. The Gods as these gigantic figures living in Olympus (Jason is not a lot bigger than the chess pieces they use to guide the wars of the humanity) are great fun: Niall MacGinnis is a very 1960s idea of Zeus (the gods would be hot younger guys today, not tubby Brits), but gives it a headmasterly briskness. Honor Blackman is very good as a proud but caring Hera – the use of the Argus’ headpiece as her voicepiece works really well. It’s quite something that all this interference from the Gods never feels silly at all.

Todd Armstrong and Nancy Kovacks are, to be honest, pretty wooden as the leads but that seems to be what the film needs. Armstrong does a very neat line in middle-distance staring. Gary Raymond has a lot more fun as a scheming Arcastus. The film also manages to shuffle some perceptions: Nigel Green’s Hercules is more of a roisterer than the great warrior (and, with his meat-headed over-confidence, causes more problem for the Argonauts than most). Other performances are perfect adventure-story ham: Jack Gwillim chews the scenery outrageously as King Aeëtes, which kind of matches up with the overblown hyper-reality of the skeleton fight.

Talking about this film, it’s hard not to treat it as a sequence of scenes that I really love. But every scene in it has something. I love the moment where Hylas proves his worth via clever stone-skimming. The approach to the clashing rocks – and the intervention of Poseidon to hold the rocks apart – is brilliant. Hermes’ disguise being unveiled. Hercules doing something decent by staying behind on an island to look for a missing Hylas. All those brilliant Harryhausen sequences.

There is something about this film that is just endlessly and constantly entertaining. No matter your age, it’s a film for every single generation of children (young and old!) to enjoy. It’s simply marvellous, and Chaffey and Harryhausen deliver it wonderfully. Every scene is exciting, the pace never slackens, the special effects are brilliant. But on top of that, it’s a brilliantly put together, well directed, beautifully scored film. It’s exciting, it’s gripping, it’s wonderfully entertaining. I’m gutted they never made that sequel (although since Jason and Medea’s story is literally all down-hill from here, it’s probably just as well).