Ray Harryhausen: Remembering the Wizard of Stop-Motion

Before there was CGI there was Ray Harryhausen. Before there was even George Lucas there was Ray Harryhausen.

Before there was Ray Harryhausen there was Willis O’Brien, the man who created King Kong. O’Brien almost single-handledly invented the art of stop-motion animation. And he handed the baton to Harryhausen who began his illustrious career by creating his own (somewhat less memorable) giant ape, Mighty Joe Young.

Harryhausen would progress far beyond apes. He would take the art of stop-motion to its zenith, through his work on a succession of undeniably schlocky but mostly charming and sometimes quite memorable sci-fi and fantasy films. Were these movies works of art? With titles like Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger? No. But was Harryhausen an artist? He was without question a superior craftsman. And that was all he needed to be, servant of the story that he was.

A sampling of Harryhausen’s creations:

The radioactive octopus terrorizing California in It Came From Beneath the Sea.

A monster from Venus in 20 Million Miles to Earth.

The myriad creatures of Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, including the Cyclops, the four-armed snake woman, the Roc.

Harryhausen would become best-known for his work in these fantasy flicks based on old-time myths and legends. Jason and the Argonauts, featuring his famous skeleton fight.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. And most famously, Clash of the Titans.

He did dinosaurs too. In One Million Years B.C., his dinos took a backseat to Raquel Welch and her, um, assets (and shaved legs; who knew cavewomen had razors?).

In Valley of the Gwangi, dinosaurs took on cowboys. Long before they took on aliens.

Clearly we are not talking about earth-shattering cinematic landmarks here. We’re talking about bad actors fighting stop-motion puppets in cheesy-looking process shots (that were inevitably darker and grainier than the rest of the movie, for technical reasons that I never understood or really cared about). This was back in the old days before anyone had the notion that fantasy movies should cost $200 million and be designed to pummel people’s brains into mash rather than simply delight and amuse. Back when fantasy movies were allowed to be quaint and innocent and kind of silly. When people still believed the effects should serve the story. When there still WAS a story, however ridiculous and goofy. Remember that?

Ray Harryhausen didn’t need $200 million. He didn’t need processing power or polygons or Andy Serkis. All he needed were some little articulated models. And the time and patience to take thousands and thousands of pictures of those models, physically manipulating each of their myriad moving parts a tiny fraction between each frame so that when the frames were run in sequence it created the illusion that the models were moving. Fluidly and in life-like fashion. And trying to kill dudes in togas. Or eat Raquel Welch.

What would the jaded CGI-engorged kids of today think of Harryhausen’s stop-motion fantasy epics? That they are boring and they suck, probably. But back in the day there was nothing cooler. There was nothing better than the stop-motion Kraken in Clash of the Titans. And Pegasus. And Medusa. And even that stupid little clockwork owl (about which, more later). I’m going to sound like an old crank now but I don’t care. Those beautifully crafted but nonetheless utterly model-like models had more life in them than the “realistically rendered” CGI monstrosities in the Clash remake. And they had a quality that you simply cannot recreate using computers. They had something today’s movie monsters will never have. They connected to us pre-CGI kids on a very special level. Why?

THEY LOOKED LIKE FRIGGING LIVING TOYS.

That was the special magic of Harryhausen. It was as though someone had raided the world’s greatest toy box and sprinkled magic dust around and made all the stuff come to life. And the stuff was now attempting to destroy ancient Greece. This is why those movies so engaged the pre-teen imagination. The key word there being “engaged.” Not “replaced.” The visuals in today’s movies do all the work, crowding out any images or thoughts or feelings the viewer’s brain may happen to generate on its own. Today’s movies pound the viewer’s optical cortex like a meat tenderizer going after a slab of beef. They grab the viewer by the neck and insist YOU WILL BE ENTERTAINED BY THIS CRAP WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT.

Harryhausen never assaulted us. He welcomed us into his world of walking toys trying to stomp Harry Hamlin. He tickled us. He delighted us. He fired our imaginations. He took up a very special place in cinematic history. He was a craftsman who got so good at his craft that his name became synonymous with that craft. He was to stop-motion what Saul Bass was to title sequences. What Stan Winston was to monster make-up.

Who is the Ray Harryhausen of today? Who brings that special personal touch to every tiny detail, investing his creations with a human life you can’t achieve any other way than by caring really deeply about what you are doing and wanting to do it as perfectly as possible and – most important of all – actually being able to physically touch the things you are making? I don’t know. Probably there are some people behind those computers who do care as much as Harryhausen and are as talented in their own way as Harryhausen. But we will never know their names and they will never be allowed to put their special personal human stamp on their work because that is not the way $200 million tent pole movies are made. Personality and charm and wit have no place in those movies. And you can’t touch a computer-generated monster. You can’t have that tactile interaction with the thing you are bringing to life. Harryhausen could. And that was probably the key to his Harryhausen-ness. Besides that infinite patience.

There is not one jot of Harryhausen-ness to be found in the Clash of the Titans remake. In fact, in that movie Harryhausen-ness is symbolically and cynically dismissed. Old people like me who saw the original Clash a hundred times on cable? We got the “joke” right away. When that beefy actor found the mechanical owl and tossed it. That was someone’s idea of an “homage” to the original Clash, where the hero’s sidekick was a clockwork owl. A snarky homage to be sure. Actually it was more a slap in the face. A middle finger to the simple delights of Harryhausen-ness. A punk-ass dissing of the quaint – and yes sometimes corny – charms of yesterday’s popcorn time-wasters. Because the movie can’t be good if it isn’t pummeling the audience’s brain into submission with unrelenting computer generated eye-candy PRESENTED IN CRAPPY-LOOKING 3D JUST SO THEY CAN JUSTIFY CHARGING A LITTLE MORE! No room for tiny annoying clockwork owls in these worlds. NOT COOL ENOUGH.

Sorry but your over-priced (on both ends) CGI frightmares are not better than my half-remembered stop-motion kiddie daydreams. Ray Harryhausen was responsible for creating some of those daydreams. Some of the best ones. The coolest ones. Harryhausen died this week at the age of 92. If you have kids, do them a favor and introduce them to the original ALL-NON-CGI Clash of the Titans. Show it to them before they become too jaded to love it. And sneak in the Raquel Welch cavewoman movie after everyone goes to bed.