ever heard of a fella by the name of Ray Harryhausen? i’m guessing not. and yet if you are a kid who grew up in the 60’s, 70’s, or 80’s i bet you know his work very well. i for one was pretty into it, though i’d never heard of ray or even thought to wonder who was responsible for so much cool stuff. his work indirectly lead me to steal a book from the library called of gods, men, and monsters which i cherished, (mostly for giovanni caselli’s rocking 70’s illustrations of herculese, the minotaur, icarus, etc) and still own. this book in turn lead me to the book which i truly believe everyone i’ve ever met still has on their bookshelf, namely edith hamilton’s mythology. ray’s work it turns out effected a great many film folk as well, influencing most of the “awesome!” movies of our childhoods. guess who he is yet?

calibos! the kraken! medusa! awwww yeah! some hot clash of the titans action fo yo ass. anyhow, ray was the stop motion animator who worked on clash as well as many older, more influential flicks like mighty joe young, jason and the argonauts, and the seventh voyage of sinbad. i came across a site dedicated to him called the seventh voyage which is just chock full of goodies. there is a section devoted to his creatures, and a section with quicktime trailers for most of the movies he worked on among other things. i found a nice story about him at sci-fi station. turns out he invented dynamation which solved many of stop motions early problems. in 91 he won an academy award.

are his films cheesy to our modern eye? oh yeah. are they great anyway? absolutely. in a way i respect what he did more than the what the whole staff at industrial light and magic does. did anyone, even an 8 year old, say “awesome!” when they first saw the vast, boring, homogenous, robot armies in star wars episode 1?  maybe, but ray’s stuff is still cool. i tend to feel like that’s what’s so underwhelming about a lot of our modern special effects extravaganzas. they are lifeless. i much preferred the foam and plastic of the original star wars, or the fur and fake blood of the thing to most of what we pay 10 bucks for today. digital sets and environments? i’m all for it. digital creatures meant to fascinate or scare? eh. don’t think we’re quite there yet. golem is the best so far. and hey, let’s not forget, aside from paving the way for the golems and aliens of today ray’s low brow also paved the way for the high brow artiness of this guy and these two.

anyhow, just thought some light ray Harryhausen goodness might lighten this dark rainy sunday. enjoy.