Ray Harryhausen - An Appreciation and Criticism

Ray Harryhausen is different from most great animators. Unlike most of the animation directors of Hollywood's Golden Years, Harryhausen's creations were born not of pen-and-ink but of metal armatures and synthetic flesh. Harryhausen worked virtually alone to create his anatomically accurate, surrealistically vivid dinosaurs, cyclopes and assorted mythological oddities. It is likely that many who have entered the fields of animation, special effects, or fantasy illustration have done so partly because of him. He is the master of stop-motion animation, a special subdivision of cinematic animation that he perfected and now exists as a dead art form, replaced by advanced puppetry and computer graphics.

Rent One Million Years BC and fast forward to the dinosaur sequences. Watch the fight between the allosaur and the triceratops. You will be amazed at the fluidity of the movement. Remind yourself that you are not watching a computer generated allosaur but one sculpted and moved centimeter by centimeter by hand. Observe the subtleties in the dinosaur's movements. Try and remember if you've ever seen a sequence so gripping in any other fantasy film besides those on which Harryhausen worked. Fantasia and Jurassic Park were both examples of large scale teamwork, so ask the question again and don't be surprised when you can't answer it. Rewind the sequence and appreciate again.

The Artistry of Harryhausen

Each film that Ray Harryhausen worked on has moments of such mastery. He is a true artist, infusing each of his creations with an incredible amount of care and love. This is what set him apart from many contemporary special effects wizards, whose creations are often clever but cold. It also sets him apart from many cel animators. As the writer and producer of his own concepts, Harryhausen (unlike most in the animation industry) found himself in the happy predicament of doing things his way. He built his monsters and designed their battles not as a craftsperson for hire but as a relatively self-contained unit. He wasn't fleshing out other people's ideas but was developing his own. Save for his B-movie work early in his career, he was never a gunslinger for hire. This is a rarity in the Hollywood system, and thus Harryhausen has more in common at times with the student creator of an experimental cartoon perhaps with Winsor McCay than with a classic Disney animator like Grim Natwick. His films (and his creations) bear his own stamp strongly -they are personal statements.

Not only is Harryhausen a supremely gifted animator, but he is also an amazingly gifted traditional artist. His conceptual charcoals and drawings for his films continue to amaze me years after I've seen them for the first time. They are richly expressive in the way that many Disney conceptual pieces were; yet again, they are all the work not of a team but of one man! Like the Disney conceptual pieces, Harryhausen's are more than just highly finished sketches. They are inspirational, self-contained pieces that are easily on the level of most commercial illustration. Had Harryhausen chosen the field of fantasy artist instead of animator, he would be spoken of in the same breath as Frank Frazetta or Boris Vallejo. To me, his graphic work already ranks with theirs. His powerful drawings of dragons being lanced and one-eyed centaurs on the prowl compare favorably to classic nineteenth-century illustrators such as Gustave Dore, and if available as reproductions would probably grace the walls of many homes.

The seeds of Harryhausen's art were sown in King Kong. This was Harryhausen's favorite film as a child. Willis O'Brien's craftsmanship had come a long way from the jerky movements of The Lost World and while Kong's movements had little in common with an authentic African gorilla, Kong was a fine example of personality animation. King Kong was released in 1933, roughly contemporaneous to The Three Little Pigs, and like that Disney short, King Kong showed how audiences would respond to well-crafted characters in an animated setting. Kong, unlike the various Hollywood gorillas that turned up in various films of the day, was a true individual; his mannerisms were unique, just as the mannerisms of people you know are unique. Harryhausen ended up assisting Willis O'Brien on a rough remake of King Kong entitled Mighty Joe Young in which the animation of the jungle animals (including the gorilla) is far more realistic. Harryhausen observed animals at the zoo and studied anatomy, which later in his career gave even his most outrageous centaurs and sea monsters a hyperealistic look. Joe Young was a more sympathetic character than Kong, and while still giant sized, was on a more believable scale. It is unclear how much animation Harryhausen did on the film (some say he did the bulk of the work), but Mighty Joe Young foreshadows most of Harryhausen's best work. There is a strong sentimental streak to the film, superb character animation, flawless integration of effects, and an amazing degree of realism.

Almost twenty years after his last feature film, most of the beasts Harryhausen animated remain startlingly alive. His minotaurs, harpies, and homunculi easily surpass any of the computer generated demons on the Hercules and Xena TV shows. His Pegasus remains as beautiful as when first animated and his Medusa and Cyclops remain frightening, almost as though they are the embodiments of the Id itself. His Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is, oddly enough, more convincingly reptilian than the live action reptiles used in similar low budget dinosaur films of the era. His dinosaurs, while based upon the scientific theories of half a century ago, can still compete with their Jurassic Park counterparts. In fact, any of Harryhausen's creations would do a contemporary special effects wizard proud; in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, a special effects laden horror film, there is a mini-tribute to Harryhausen in which a skeleton springs to life, and the tauntaun in The Empire Strikes Back would be unthinkable without Harryhausen's influence. There is little doubt that Harryhausen cannot be questioned as a timeless animation artist.

General Criticism

I cannot make an equally strong argument about the timelessness of Harryhausen's films, however. I do not wish for the reader to misinterpret this essay as somehow anti-Harryhausen. Nothing could be further from the truth. I enjoyed all his films tremendously as a child, when I saw them for the first time. I still feel excitement each time I see many of the dazzling sequences he prepared, and I still marvel at his incredible creations. Although I have never met Mr.Harryhausen, he has always come across as a kindly craftsperson in all the interviews and articles about him I have read, and I certainly do not mean to appear mean-spirited. One cannot look at a publicity still of Harryhausen at work without being reminded of a gentle Victorian clockmaker adjusting miniature gears with precision and love.

Moreover, instead of shrouding his methods in mystery, Harryhausen gladly shared the details of his magic in magazines, generously allowing fans to attempt to emulate him. His marvelous monsters etched themselves in my imagination, and will likely be the ones I envision when telling my own children bedtime stories. I am an animation fan, and when I view his films I am willing to overlook their flaws as best I can. At the same time, I cannot deny that Harryhausen's films seldom lived up to the high quality of his animation, and I would be misleading the reader if I did not discuss this aspect.

For much of the first half of his career, Harryhausen worked within the framework of the low budget B-movie. While they certainly do not fall into the same category as Ed Wood movies, these early films share a disturbing number of qualities with Wood. They have stock music, poor acting, and simpleminded scripts. In fact, it could be argued that for the nonanimation fan, they are actually less enjoyable than Ed Wood's genre. Intentional or not, Ed Wood's films are full of campy comedy and a DIY ethos that is appealing in this age of overproduced Hollywood bombs. The early Harryhausen films play it too straight to be funny, and have been relegated to late night television.

Harryhausen's later "mythological" movies fare somewhat better. (These films actually include Arabian Nights stories, Jules Verne adventures, and dinosaurs, but are all mythological in the sense that they are larger-than-life and epic in scale). Perhaps because Harryhausen had more power behind the scenes and worked on rough drafts of the screenplays (or perhaps because Harryhausen felt more kinship towards mythology than to flying saucers and giant squids) these films are more enjoyable. They are still flawed, though. The mythology Harryhausen was drawn to were stories like Jason and the Argonauts and the Perseus myths, stories which Edith Hamilton once described as very close to the level of fairy tales. They are not stories as complicated as the full version of the nine labors of Hercules, nor do they possess the psychological depth of the tragedies of King Midas or Prometheus.

Whereas Walt Disney could recast fairy tales in a way that was palatable to a mass American audience, Harryhausen was not. His films are remembered chiefly for their amazing sequences (such as the skeletons and bronze giant in Jason and the Argonauts), and not for their plots or characters. Harryhausen's heroes were nonentities, his heroines were accessories, and his villains were simultaneously silly and satanic.

As a result, even his better films are shockingly uneven.

Seventh Voyage of Sinbad

A prime example is The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. The film contains several of Harryhausen's most memorable monsters, including the infamous Cyclops. As in many of Harryhausen's movies, the setting is vaguely Mediterranean or Arabian, a loose enough framework to lift the Polyphemus adventure from The Odyessy and transplant it into a Sinbad story.

Sinbad himself is a fairly bland hero in the film, lacking the dashing qualities of Zorro or Robin Hood. As played by Kerwin Matthews, Sinbad is a good-looking fellow with a pleasing personality and a gift for swordplay; he lacks the charisma to be believable as an adventuresome captain. The film's villain is an evil magician who wishes to repossess a magic lamp; he's a one dimensional bad guy who is interesting solely because the actor playing him almost exactly resembles real life occultist Aleister Crowley. The Genie of the lamp is a cute little guy who only wants to "be a real little boy" just like Pinocchio; unlike Pinocchio the Genie is rarely anything other than ingratiating and his magic seems incredibly limited. The evil magician displays far greater magical power than the Genie in several scenes, so it is unclear why he would want this lamp at all. After all, if you have the power to convert a belly dancer into a serpent-woman, enslave a horned dragon, shrink a princess to sub-Barbie proportions, animate a human skeleton and create a force field powerful enough to keep a Cyclops at bay, why on earth would you need a whiny Genie to add to your collection? Especially a Genie that mumbles about "The Land beyond Beyond" and whose goal in life is to become a cabin boy!

The simplistic fairytale plot exists mainly to take us from one special effects sequence to another. There is nothing wrong with a fairytale plot. Virtually all Disney films have such plots as do many live action fantasy films like Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz. Such films, however, have a timeless quality about them. We can empathize with Dorothy or Luke Skywalker and perhaps join in the idealized romance of characters such as Briar Rose or Cinderella. The older audience is drawn into their disarmingly childlike storytelling and find themselves suspending disbelief.

This doesn't happen in Sinbad, partly because the overall acting level is hammy and partly because the live action is directed in a very stilted 1950s fashion. Even though this is a costume piece, the film is badly dated in spots. It harkens back to wholesome, white bread Saturday matinee style entertainment, a type of adventure that is obsolete in the age of hipper sword and sorcery like Xena or mainstream adventure like Raiders of the Lost Ark.

In the original Sinbad stories there are actually *two* Sinbads - Sinbad the Sailor and Sinbad the Porter. The Porter is a poor but hardworking man who is befriended by the fabulously wealthy Sailor, and the Sailor recounts his seven voyages to his more earthy friend. The Sailor regards the Porter as a surrogate brother, and the contrast between the lowly porter and the flamboyant adventurer suggests a duality that exists in all of us, a contrast between fantasy and reality. This duality has been expressed as a transformation in Disney movies such as Cinderella and perhaps also in the Sailor Moon series (actually this theme is stronger in the Sailor V manga). It forms the basis of the various Prince and the Pauper stories that are periodically turned into movies, as well as the common link joining together most superhero sagas. By omitting the Porter, Harryhausen simplified Sinbad and omitted the psychological depth we perceive when the Sailor is half of a whole. Harryhausen continued the same mistakes in his other Sinbad movies, each of which was progressively more obscure. It is a shame that Harryhausen, who certainly understood the true nature of escapism and fantasy, opted to follow Western tradition by omitting the Porter and robbing the Sinbad stories of their deeper meaning.

The animation effects, however, are stunning. In most sword and sorcery/fantasy films of the day, supernatural or exotic monsters were either eliminated from the plot entirely or present themselves as unconvincing men in rubber suits or puppets. In Sinbad the creatures are at center stage and are incredibly believable. The reanimated skeleton, for example, often evokes an insect - which makes sense when one considers that when we watch an insect we are really observing an exoskeleton. The Cyclops moves with a child's lack of inhibition and a savage's fury. Its design synthesizes the Venusian Ymir from Harryhausen's earlier work with conceptions of ogres and satyrs. The Rocs are reminiscent of real birds, save for their extra heads. Only the dragon is relatively disappointing, a long necked horned lizard. Yes, it is convincingly alien, but it isn't of the high quality of Harryhausen's other beasts and it can't compare to the dragon in Sleeping Beauty for serpentine grace. Still, it was far better than the rubber props that appeared in other fantasy films and a suitable descendant of Harryhausen's earlier Beast.

Part of the credit for the vividness of the creations goes to Kerwin Matthews. While his straight scenes generally fall flat, he is able to act well against the animated monsters. One gets the feeling that he is *really* dueling with the skeleton, and not simply banging away at empty air. In this sense, he accomplishes what Bob Hoskins did in Roger Rabbit - he performed against an unreal partner in such a way that we accept the reality of his imaginary partner without question. Essentially, he is performing a monologue while pretending to hold a conversation with an unseen companion. This is a difficult feat for any actor to pull off, and perhaps because its difficulty is so technical, it is barely appreciated by audiences. Sadly, Matthews never got his due for playing against Harryhausen's monsters in Sinbad and Gulliver.

When Titans Clash: More Thoughts

It's been argued elsewhere that the 1960s and 1970s weren't really Harryhausen's decades, that the era of the antihero was no climate for nonpretentious straightforward adventure-fantasy films. These were the days of Death Wish and Easy Rider, an age where Disney's output reduced to a trickle, sitcoms became sarcastic, and wide screen Westerns were phased out. Yet this was also an era in which fantasy was raised to new levels of sophistication. Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey were released within months of each other in the 1960s and Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kindwere released within months of each other in the 1970s. All four films had exceptional scripts, state-of-the-art special effects, high caliber acting and top notch direction - a sharp contrast to the gimmicky B-movies that were nonpretentious in the 1940s and 1950s. Fantasy *did* exist during those decades, but in the realm of big budget Hollywood productions. Audiences were willing to pay to see fantasy films *if* they were high quality and carefully marketed.

Sadly, Harryhausen's G-rated films usually lacked the necessary influx of talent needed to grip an audience. Lucas used Sir Alec Guinness and Harrison Ford in Star Wars; Harryhausen used Tom Baker and John Philip Law in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, quite a disparity in talent.

Harryhausen added two more Sinbad movies to his resume (The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger), both of which repeated the Seventh Voyage formula to lesser acclaim, before making his final film. Clash of the Titans was a large budget production that featured A-list actors and actresses (including Laurence Olivier and Ursula Andress), gorgeous location shooting, and an incredible variety of animated creatures. Again, it was clearly geared towards the younger set, but the damsel in distress was sexier and the villainy more pronounced than in earlier efforts. Harry Hamlin, in one of his first roles, played a convincing Perseus and was Harryhausen's best male lead since Kerwin Matthews. The film allowed Harryhausen to return to some of the earlier themes hinted at in earlier movies (the notion that men are pawns in a game played by gods; the capricious nature of fate; the contrast between pure innocence and depraved evil) and he reworked these themes surprisingly well.

Again, Harryhausen approached the myth with an "anything-goes" attitude. While he appears to be a purist compared to the revisionist producers of Xena or the Disney versions of Aladdin and Hercules, Harryhausen still made significant changes to the Perseus legend. He imported the Kraken from Norse mythology to serve as the tale's sea monster and promoted the sea monster and Medusa to Titan status. Giant scorpions were added, along with a fierce two headed dog. Bubo the Owl became a robot. Pegasus, instead of being born of Medusa's blood, was instead one of Zeus' winged steeds. And while the serpentine nature of Medusa was indeed hideous, it certainly stands apart from the way the Gorgon was conceptualized in other myths and artwork; Medusa was thought of as a femme fatale, a gorgeous woman punished with the gaze of stone by the gods, and not an ugly half-snake crone. In Canova's famous statue of Perseus with the head of Medusa, her face is nearly identical to Perseus', returning us to a more complex version of the dualistic notion mentioned earlier. However, Harryhausen's revisions do not make the story seem sappy or contrived, and actually help to create a riveting (if somewhat simplistic) adventure. It isn't classic mythos, but it is good entertainment.

Sadly, Clash of the Titans marked Harryhausen's retirement from feature film making. Perhaps he had finally made his definitive statement. Perhaps he had taken stop-motion animation as far as it could go. Perhaps the big-budget special effects extravaganzas made in the wake of Star Wars made it difficult to conceive of a new film with only a few well-animated monsters. Perhaps Harryhausen was simply burnt out and wanted to explore the challenges of casting academic-quality sculptures, and the secure state-of-mind that comes from earning a position as a respected elder statesman.

From the vantage point of 1998, Clash of the Titans, like Harryhausen's other work, possesses an innocence that has since been lost in the Dungeons and Dragons-style films that have since followed. Most subsequent fantasy films and TV shows (such as Legend and Xena) frequently are either pastiches or essentially contemporary fantasies in ancient Greek garb. Xena, for example, is a very entertaining character-driven show which melds comedy, martial-arts adventure, quasi-Celtic mysticism and sexual subtext. But it doesn't possess the otherworldly naivete that made Harryhausen's better work appealing. Neither do the sub-Xena offerings that popped up throughout the 1980s and 1990s which either played mythology as a joke (as in the Hercules films with Lou Ferrigno) or were graphically violent, testosterone driven fantasies. Despite Raquel Welch's statuesque presence (and contrary to the multitudes of Caveman-style satires), One Million Years B.C. was not Barbarella in a fur bikini, and the film did not pander to an audience's lurid tastes; nor can it be argued that any of Harryhausen's more demonic monsters existed as an excuse to show onscreen gore. Harryhausen's escapist adventures were devoid of the beefcake and cheesecake that usually sells such movies, and he never glorified evil, which makes them candidates for family viewing.

Harryhausen's films seem even more unique than when they were initially released and I, for one, miss them. Unlike most contemporary masters of fantasy, the worlds that Harryhausen created were neither thinly veiled erotic fantasies nor elaborately constructed pseudohistorical epics. Even his most frightening monsters evoked an almost childlike wonder in his audience, as if they were memories from childhood stories brought to life. Unlike most animators who learned their craft after McCay, Harryhausen can genuinely claim credit for the conception and animation of his creations. Decades after Clash of the Titans, his work continues to inspire and amaze.

This essay was inspired by Marie, who reminded me how beautiful winged horses could be.

The movie stills used to illustrate this essay were used within the guidelines of the "Fair Use Doctrine."

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