Ray Harryhausen
Encyclopedia
Ray Harryhausen is an American
film producer
and special effect
s creator. He created a brand of stop-motion model animation
known as "Dynamation."
Among his most notable works are his animation on Mighty Joe Young (with pioneer Willis O'Brien
, which won the Academy Award for special effects) (1949), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (his first colour film) and Jason and the Argonauts, featuring a famous sword fight against seven skeleton warriors.
), used for the first time in a feature film in The Lost World
(1925), and most famously in King Kong
(1933).
The work of pioneer model animator Willis O'Brien
in King Kong inspired Harryhausen to work in this unique field, almost single-handedly keeping the technique alive for three decades. O'Brien's career floundered for most of his life—most of his cherished projects were never realized but—Harryhausen was the right person at the right time, and achieved considerable success.
Harryhausen draws a distinction between films that combine special effects animation with live action and films that are completely animated such as the films of Tim Burton
, Nick Park
, Henry Selick
, Ivo Caprino
, Ladislav Starevich and many others (including his own fairy tale shorts) which he sees as pure "puppet films", and which are more accurately (and traditionally) called "puppet animation".
In Harryhausen's films, model animated characters interact with, and are a part of, the live action world, with the idea that they will cease to call attention to themselves as "animation", which is different from the more obviously "cartoony" and stylized approach in movies like Chicken Run
and The Nightmare Before Christmas
, etc.
Springing from O'Brien's groundbreaking work, Harryhausen continued bringing stop-motion into the realm of live action movies, keeping alive and refining the techniques created by O'Brien that he had first developed as early as 1917. Harryhausen's last film was Clash of the Titans
, produced in the early 1980s. Recently, he was involved in producing colorized DVD versions of three of his classic black and white films (20 Million Miles to Earth
, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
, and It Came from Beneath the Sea
) and a film from the producer of the original King Kong (She
).
literary genre of the period. A friend arranged a meeting with Harryhausen's idol, Willis O'Brien, animator of King Kong. O'Brien critiqued Harryhausen's early models and inspired him to take classes in graphic arts and sculpture to hone his skills. Harryhausen became friends with an aspiring writer, Ray Bradbury
, with similar enthusiasms. Bradbury and Harryhausen joined a Los Angeles-area science fiction club formed by Forrest J. Ackerman in 1939, and the three became lifelong friends.
Paramount executives gave Harryhausen his first job, on George Pal's
Puppetoons
shorts, based on viewing his first formal demo reel of fighting dinosaurs from an abortive project called Evolution (an homage to a similar Willis O'Brien project called Creation
which was never finished).
During World War II, Harryhausen was also employed by the Army Motion Picture Unit, animating sequences educating soldiers about the use and deployment of military equipment when that equipment was unavailable for shooting in live action. From this work, he salvaged several rolls of discarded surplus film from which he made a series of fairy tale
-based shorts. His commander was Colonel Frank Capra
, and he also worked with Ted Geisel ("Dr. Seuss
").
One of Harryhausen's most long-cherished dreams was to make H. G. Wells
' The War of the Worlds
. After World War II, he shot a scene of an alien emerging from a Martian cylinder; it is from the story's ironic climax, showing the fearsome being from Mars
fatally succumbing to an earthly illness, contracted from the air the natives breathe harmlessly. It was part of an unrealized project to adapt the story using Wells' original "octopus
" concept for the Martians.
Harryhausen also produced a variety of other short animation demos during the post-World War II 1940s. He put together a demo reel of his various projects and showed them to Willis O'Brien, who eventually hired him as an assistant animator on what turned out to be Harryhausen's first major film, Mighty Joe Young
(1949). O'Brien ended up concentrating on solving the various technical problems of the film, leaving most of the animation up to Harryhausen. Their work won O'Brien the Academy Award for Best Special Effects that year.
was re-released in 1952, and contributed to a creation and revival of a giant monster cinema craze, especially at drive-in theaters. Harryhausen was hired to do the special effects for The Monster from Beneath the Sea. While in production, the filmmakers learned that a long-time friend of Harryhausen, writer Ray Bradbury, had sold a short story called "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (retitled "The Fog Horn
") to The Saturday Evening Post
, about a dinosaur drawn to a lone lighthouse by its foghorn. Because the story for Harryhausen's film featured a similar scene, the film studio bought the rights to Bradbury's story to avoid any potential legal problems. Also, the title was changed to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
(1953). Under that title, it became Harryhausen's first solo feature film effort, and a major international box-office hit for Warner Brothers Pictures.
It was on The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms that Harryhausen first used a technique that split the background and foreground of pre-shot live action footage into two separate pieces of film. The background would be used as a miniature rear-screen with his models animated in front of it, rephotographed with an animation-capable camera to combine those two elements together, the foreground element matted out to leave a black space. Then the film was rewound, and everything except the foreground element matted out so that the foreground element would now photograph in the previously blacked out area. This created the effect that the animated model was "sandwiched" in between the two live action elements, right into the final live action scene. Many shots were embellished with additional elements painted on glass, also sandwiched in between the rear screen and camera, as O'Brien had done on his films.
Most of the effects shots in his earliest films were usually done without resorting to expensive and time-consuming optical printer work. Harryhausen's careful frame-by-frame control of the lighting of both the set and the projector dramatically reduced much of second generation degradation common in most usage of back-projection. His use of diffused glass to soften the sharpness of light on the animated elements allowed them to match the soft background plates far more than Willis O'Brien had achieved in his early films, allowing Harryhausen to match live and miniature elements seamlessly in most of his shots. By developing and executing most of this miniature set wizardry himself, Harryhausen saved money, while maintaining full technical control to achieve a variety of superior and convincing special effects techniques.
A few years later, when Harryhausen began working with color film to make The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, color-balance-shift problems required more use of opticals than rear projections. Ray's producer/partner Charles H. Schneer
coined the word Dynamation as a "merchandising term" (modifying it to "SuperDynaMation" and then "DynaRama" for some subsequent films).
While Schneer and the film's line-producers organized the film's live action production and hired various directors to develop the film's live action characters, Harryhausen concentrated mainly on the shots that involved model animation, visiting the sets only to supervise the filming of the live action background elements (called "plates" in the film effects industry) into which he would later add animated creatures.
However, Harryhausen was heavily involved in the pre-production conceptualizing of each film's story, script development, art-direction, design, storyboards, and general tone of the his films, as much as any auteur director would have on any other film, which any "director" of Harryhausen's films had to understand and agree to work under. Only the complexities of Director's Guild rules in Hollywood prevented Harryhausen from being credited as the director of his films, resulting in the more modest credits he had in most of his films.
Throughout most of his career, Harryhausen's work was a sort of family affair. His father did the machining of the metal armatures that were the skeletons for the models while his mother assisted with some skin textures. After Harryhausen's father died in 1973, Harryhausen contracted his armature work out to another machinist. An occasional assistant, George Lofgren, a taxidermist, assisted Harryhausen with the creation of furred creatures. Another associate, Willis Cook, built some of Harryhausen's miniature sets. Other than that, Harryhausen worked generally alone to produce almost all of the animation for all his films, until he hired protege model animators Steve Archer and two-time Oscar-nominated Jim Danforth
to assist with major animation sequences for his last feature film Clash of the Titans
(1981).
The same year that Beast was released, 1953, fledgling film producer Irwin Allen
released a live action documentary about life in the oceans titled The Sea Around Us
, which won an Oscar for best documentary feature film of that year. Allen's and Harryhausen's paths would cross three years later, on Allen's sequel to this film.
Harryhausen soon met and began a fruitful partnership with producer Charles H. Schneer
, who was working with the Sam Katzman
B-picture unit of Columbia Pictures
. Their first tandem project was It Came from Beneath the Sea
(1955) about a giant octopus attacking San Francisco. It was a box-office success, quickly followed by Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
(1956), set in Washington D.C.--one of the best of the alien invasion films of the 50s, and also a box office hit.
In 1954, Irwin Allen started work on a second feature-length documentary film, this one about animal life on land called The Animal World
(completed in 1956). Needing an opening sequence about dinosaurs, Allen hired premier model animator Willis O'Brien to animate the dinosaurs, but then gave him an impossibly short production schedule. O'Brien again hired Harryhausen to help with animation to complete the 8-minute sequence. It was Harryhausen's and O'Brien's first professional color work. Most viewers agree that the dinosaur sequence of Animal World was the best part of the entire movie. (Animal World is available on the DVD release of O'Brien's 1957 film The Black Scorpion
. The Black Scorpion used some previously shot special effects footage and much new footage by Willis H. O'Brien to create a story similar to another sf film of the era, Them! from 1954.)
Harryhausen then returned to Columbia and Charles Schneer to make 20 Million Miles to Earth
(1957), about an American spaceship returning from Venus that crashes into the ocean near Italy, releasing an on-board alien egg specimen which washes up on shore and soon hatches a creature that, in Earth's atmosphere, rapidly grows to gigantic size and terrifies Rome. Harryhausen refined and improved his already-considerable ability at establishing emotional characterizations in the face of his Venusian Ymir model, creating yet another international box-office hit film.
Schneer was eager to graduate to color films. Reluctant at first, Harryhausen managed to develop the systems necessary to maintain proper color balances for his DynaMation process, resulting in his greatest masterpiece (and biggest hit) of the 50s, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), a major inspiration for Dennis Muren
, decades later a long-time multi-Oscar-winning head of George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic
special effects company. The top grossing film of that summer, and one of the top grossing films of that year, Schneer and Harryhausen signed another deal with Columbia for four more color films.
(1960) and Mysterious Island
(1961), both great artistic and technical successes, his next film is considered by film historians and fans as Harryhausen's masterwork, Jason and the Argonauts (1963). Among the film's several celebrated animation sequences is an extended fight between three actors and seven living skeletons, a considerable advance on the single-skeleton fight scene in Sinbad. This amazing stop-motion sequence, never since equaled by a single individual, took over four months to complete, and helped to inspire an entire generation of subsequent filmmakers like Steven Spielberg
, George Lucas
, Tim Burton
, Sam Raimi
and James Cameron
, among many others. (After presenting Harryhausen with a special Academy Award, actor Tom Hanks
told the audience, "Some people say Casablanca
or Citizen Kane
...I say Jason and the Argonauts is the greatest film ever made!")
Harryhausen next made First Men in the Moon (1964), his only film made in the anamorphic widescreen
process CinemaScope
, based on the novel by H. G. Wells
.
Amazingly, Gulliver, Mysterious Island, Jason, and First Men in the Moon were all box office disappointments at the time of their original theatrical release. That, plus changes of management at Columbia Pictures, resulted in his contract with Columbia Picture not being renewed. Also, as the 60s counter-culture came to influence more and more and younger filmmakers, and failing studios struggled to find a new audience, Harryhausen's love of the past, setting his stories in ancient fantasy worlds or previous centuries, kept him from keeping pace with changing tastes in the Sixties
. Only a handful of Harryhausen's features have been set in then-present time, and none in the future. As this revolution in the traditional Hollywood movie studio system, and the influx of a new generation of film makers sorted itself out, Harryhausen became a free agent.
Harryhausen was then hired by Hammer Film Productions
to animate the dinosaurs for One Million Years B.C.
, released by 20th Century Fox
in 1967. It was a box office smash, helped in part by the presence of shapely Raquel Welch
in a cavewoman bikini, in her second film.
Harryhausen next went on to make another dinosaur film, The Valley of Gwangi
. The project had been developed for Columbia, which declined. Independent producer Schneer then made a deal with Warner Brothers instead. It was a personal project of Harryhausen, which he had wanted to do for many years, as it was story-boarded by his original mentor, Willis O'Brien for a 1939 film, Gwangi, that was never completed.
Scripted by William Bast
, The Valley of Gwangi is set in 1912 Mexico, in a parallel Kong story—cowboys capture a living Allosaurus
and bring him to the nearest city for exhibition. Sabotage by a rival releases the creature on opening day and the creature wreaks havoc on the town until it is cornered and destroyed inside a burning cathedral. The film features a roping scene reminiscent of 1949's Mighty Joe Young (which was itself recycled from the old Gwangi storyboards) and is the technical highlight of the film, which many Harryhausen fans are now rediscovering as one of his best films. The film was released in 1969 but was not a financial success, supposedly since it did not appeal with the counter-culture audiences of that era. But another more likely explanation is that Warner Brothers released the film as a double-bill with a biker film, trying to quickly cash in on the surprise success of the film Easy Rider
, and thus Gwangi missed an advertising opportunity to find its rightful audience. Reportedly this decision was made after Kenneth Hyman of Seven Arts Productions
— which had merged with Warners at the time and was involved with One Million Years B.C. — was released from his contract with the studio. Warners then threw the film away to second run neighborhood theaters, where kids in these small theaters discovered it, slowly growing up to become fans of the film as adults when the film was finally released to video in the 1980s and DVD in '90s.
, often remembered for the sword fight involving a statue of the six-armed goddess Kali. It was first released in Los Angeles in the Christmas season of 1973, but garnered its main audience in the spring and summer of 1974. It was followed by Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
(1977), which disappointed some fans because of its tongue-in-cheek approach. Both films were, however, box office successes.
Schneer and Harryhausen finally were allowed by MGM to produce a big budget film with name actors and an expanded effects budget. The film started out smaller but then MGM increased the budget to hire stars such as Lord Olivier
. It became the last feature film to showcase his effects work, Clash of the Titans
(1981), for which he was nominated for a Saturn Award
for Best Special Effects. Harryhausen fans will readily discern that the armed-and-finned kraken (a name borrowed from medieval Scandinavian folklore) he invented for Clash of the Titans has similar facial qualities to the Venusian Ymir he created twenty-five years earlier for 20 Million Miles to Earth
.
Perhaps due to his hermetic production style and the fact that he produced half of his films outside of Hollywood (living in London since 1960), reducing his day-to-day kinship with other more traditional, but still influential Hollywood effects artists, none of Harryhausen's films were ever nominated for a special effects Oscar.
In spite of the relatively successful box office returns of "Clash of the Titans", more sophisticated technology developed by ILM and others began to eclipse Harryhausen's production techniques. and so MGM and other studios passed on funding the making of his follow-up story, Force of the Trojans, causing Harryhausen and Schneer to retire from active filmmaking.
In the early 1970s, Harryhausen had also concentrated his efforts on authoring a book, Film Fantasy Scrapbook (produced in three editions as his last three films were released) and supervising the restoration and release of (eventually all) his films to video, laserdisc, DVD, and currently Blu-ray. A second book followed, An Animated Life, detailing his techniques and history, and then The Art of Ray Harryhausen, featuring sketches and drawings for his many projects, some of them unrealized. More books, interspersed with many world-wide tours, appearances, dedications, and career salutes are anticipated.
Harryhausen continues his life-long friendship with Ray Bradbury
. Another long-time close friend was "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine editor, book writer, and sci-fi collector Forrest J. Ackerman, who loaned Harryhausen his photos of King Kong in 1933, right after Harryhausen had seen the film for the first time. Harryhausen also maintained his friendships with his long-time producer, Charles H. Schneer
, who lived next door to him in a suburb of London until Schneer moved full-time to the USA (a few years later, in early 2009, Schneer died at 88 in Boca Raton, FL); and with model animation protege, Jim Danforth
, still living in the Los Angeles
area.
Harryhausen and Terry Moore
appeared in small comedic cameo roles in the 1998 remake of Mighty Joe Young
, and he has also provided the voice of a polar bear cub in the Will Ferrell
film Elf
. He also appears as a bar patron in Beverly Hills Cop III
, and as a doctor in the John Landis film Spies Like Us
. In 2010, Harryhausen had a brief cameo in Burke and Hare
, a British
film also directed by Landis.
to acknowledge Harryhausen's contribution to the film industry and he was finally awarded a Gordon E. Sawyer Award
for "technological contributions [which] have brought credit to the industry" in 1992, with Tom Hanks
as the Master of Ceremonies and Bradbury, a friend from when they were both just out of high school, presenting the award. This recognition made Harryhausen an international celebrity. A long series of appearances at film festivals, colleges, and film seminars around the world soon followed as Harryhausen met many of the millions of people who had grown up enjoying his work.
The work of Ray Harryhausen was celebrated in an exhibition at London's Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) in 1990.
Near the turn of the 21st century, Harryhausen was also honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
.
Inducted to the Monster Kid Hall Of Fame at The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards.
which is based in Los Angeles, CA.
In 2005, Harryhausen released a 2-DVD set of a complete collection of all his non-feature film work, including all his tests, demos, military work, a re-edit of all the biographical material that had been released in the mid-90s to VHS video under the title Aliens, Dragons, Monsters, and Me, and his entire set of fairy tales, including "The Story of the Tortoise & the Hare". The second disc profiles a making of documentary, behind the scenes and interviews with Harryhausen, Walsh, Caballero and narrator, Gary Owens. During this time he also provided commentary for the DVD releases of King Kong and Mighty Joe Young, and was extensively interviewed for documentaries included in the DVD release. He was at the New York Premiere of the 2005 remake of King Kong
and was disappointed that some scenes from the original did not make it into the final film. He was happy again when the Deluxe Extended Edition was revealed.
Harryhausen and a producing partner, Arnold R. Kunert worked on a series of animated shorts based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe
, the first of which was "The Pit and the Pendulum
" in 2006.
Harryhausen also worked with Legend Films
to reissue some of his early feature films on Blu-ray in a series of colorized
versions using an improved colorization process. According to Legend Films president Barry Sandrew, the filmmaker told him that his original vision was to do them in color, but both limited budgets and limitations of color film stocks back then made it hard for him to do backgrounds and keep them color-balanced the way that was needed to maintain the films' realism. The finished Blu-ray 4-disk boxed set was released in 2009, and includes Harryhausen's first four films for Columbia Pictures, including "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad". There's also all new commentaries with Harryhausen and a variety of guest special-effects producers who were influenced by Harryhausen's work, an on-camera interview by Tim Burton, plus much in the way of other new bonus features. Other digital clean-up and restoration techniques were performed on this Blu-ray edition, including a feature that allow you to see the first three films colorized, or in the original black and white form. Other Columbia Harryhausen films will be released in Blu-ray, starting with "Jason and the Argonauts" released in 2010.
Harryhausen was also involved in the process of colorizing She
, produced by Merian C. Cooper
, who had originally intended to shoot the film in color, but at the last minute the budget was cut by RKO, forcing Cooper to shoot in black and white. As a tribute to Cooper, Harryhausen color designed the film in a manner in which he feels Cooper would have wanted it exhibited. The colorized DVD includes an audio commentary by Harryhausen and Merian C. Cooper expert Mark Vaz who discuss the film and color choices. The colorized trailer for She premiered at the 2006 Comic-Con
. Harryhausen also helped design the color on two further Legend Films releases, Things to Come
and The Most Dangerous Game
.
In July 2006, it was announced that Harryhausen has licenced Bluewater Productions
to create six comic book follow-ups to some of his most famous movies. The first three are "Sinbad: Rogue Of Mars", "20 Million Miles More" and "Wrath Of The Titans", which were realised in May 2007 followed by a further three: "Jason And The Argonauts: The Kingdom of Hades", "Back to Mysterious Island" and 10th Muse. Harryhausen will furnish new artwork, but not scripts. All will be five-issue miniseries. A one-shot, "10th Muse/ Shi crossover", is said to be released later this year. A full podcast interview with Ray Harryhausen can be heard here.
Ray is currently serving as a producer on the Movie War Eagles which is slated to be released in 2010 per IMDB and Jim Dee on Take Two-The Movie Program. In the late 1930s, while at MGM, Merian C. Cooper (creator of King Kong) promoted a color film epic that would utilize stop-motion and the creative talents of Willis O'Brien to animate giant prehistoric eagles. The project was sadly abandoned. Bob Burns and other "Kong" experts discussed the "lost" War Eagles pitch to fans, he found typewriter documents and even a rough screenplay of War Eagles, and years later an author named "Carl Macek" marshaled the evidence into a book called War Eagles. The first copies were given to Ray Harryhausen and Ray Bradbury
(Harryhausen's biggest friend). They thought the adaptation of it was splendid, and so began the working of Mr. Cooper's & Willis O'Brien's lost drafts into the upcoming project.
Fan and film maker tributes to Harryhausen abound in many forms, including a variety of model animation experiments posted on YouTube.
A clay animation short film by Sub-Genius Church founder Ivan Stang, "Martian Peen Worm" (the short title of that film) makes several whimsical Harryhausen references.
The ABC TV 90s children's puppet animation series "Bump In the Night" makes a variety of veiled tributes to Harryhausen, also.
The Mythos Games
/Virgin Interactive Entertainment computer game Magic and Mayhem
(1990) features over 25 stop-motion mythological creatures that were directly inspired by Harryhausen's work. Constructed by special effects expert and stop-motion animator Alan Friswell, the various characters include a dragon, a centaur, a griffin and a fighting skeleton. For the griffin's wing animation, Friswell studied the griffin from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
(1974).
The 2001 Pixar
film, Monsters, Inc.
pays homage to Harryhausen in a scene where characters Mike Wazowski and Celia Mae visit a sushi restaurant named "Harryhausen's".
The 2005 Warner Bros.
film, Corpse Bride
also pays homage to Harryhausen in a scene where character Victor Van Dort is playing the piano in the Everglott's home. The brand of the piano being played is a "Harryhausen".
Tim Burton considers his satiric science fiction
movie, Mars Attacks!
(1996), to be a tribute to Mr. Harryhausen, especially in a scene in which one of the hostile alien's flying saucer
s chops down the Washington Monument
by crashing into it, just as Harryhausen had done in his movie Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
in 1956. Burton's movie, and this scene, initially gathered mixed reactions from Mr. Harryhausen, who has a habitually more subdued sense of humor. These differences were congenially resolved in subsequent meetings between the two film-makers for the Blu-ray boxed set bonus features.
A new big-budget version of Clash of the Titans
, with all-CGI
special effect
s, appeared in movie theaters in early April 2010. With Harryhausen initially expressing surprise and wondering why it was even felt that there was any need for a remake of his movie, its fans currently await Harryhausen's reaction to the film itself.
Ray Harryhausen now lives in England. As a ninetieth birthday tribute, he was featured on the BBC
flagship current affairs programme Newsnight
on Thursday, June 24, 2010, talking about his life's work. In 2010, he had a cameo
as one of 'The Distinguished Gentlemen' in Burke and Hare
, the British
black comedy
directed by John Landis. The film
is about the notorious Ulster
murderers in Edinburgh
in the late 1820s.
In June 2010 it was announced that the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation had agreed to deposit the animator's complete collection of some 20,000 pieces with the National Media Museum in Bradford
, England.
Anglo
/Swedish pop
band, the Hoosiers
, dedicated their first single, Worried about Ray, to Ray Harryhausen. The music video features a character called "Ray" making films, and includes a Harryhausen style monster, which is killed after Irwin Sparkes uses his guitar
to fire a drum stick into the monster's single eye
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
film producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
and special effect
Special effect
The illusions used in the film, television, theatre, or entertainment industries to simulate the imagined events in a story are traditionally called special effects ....
s creator. He created a brand of stop-motion model animation
Model animation
Model animation is a form of stop motion animation designed to merge with live action footage to create the illusion of a real-world fantasy sequence.-Works:Model animation was pioneered by Willis O'Brien, and it was first used in The Lost World...
known as "Dynamation."
Among his most notable works are his animation on Mighty Joe Young (with pioneer Willis O'Brien
Willis O'Brien
Willis Harold O'Brien was an Irish American pioneering motion picture special effects artist who perfected and specialized in stop-motion animation. He was affectionately known to his family and close friends as "Obie"....
, which won the Academy Award for special effects) (1949), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (his first colour film) and Jason and the Argonauts, featuring a famous sword fight against seven skeleton warriors.
Stop-motion animation
Before the advent of computers for camera motion control and CGI, movies used a variety of approaches to achieve animated special effects. One approach was stop-motion animation which used realistic miniature models (more accurately called model animationModel animation
Model animation is a form of stop motion animation designed to merge with live action footage to create the illusion of a real-world fantasy sequence.-Works:Model animation was pioneered by Willis O'Brien, and it was first used in The Lost World...
), used for the first time in a feature film in The Lost World
The Lost World (1925 film)
The Lost World is a 1925 silent film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel of the same name. The movie was produced by First National Pictures, a large Hollywood studio at the time, and stars Wallace Beery as Professor Challenger. This version was directed by Harry O...
(1925), and most famously in King Kong
King Kong (1933 film)
King Kong is a Pre-Code 1933 fantasy monster adventure film co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and written by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman after a story by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. The film tells of a gigantic island-dwelling apeman creature called Kong who dies in...
(1933).
The work of pioneer model animator Willis O'Brien
Willis O'Brien
Willis Harold O'Brien was an Irish American pioneering motion picture special effects artist who perfected and specialized in stop-motion animation. He was affectionately known to his family and close friends as "Obie"....
in King Kong inspired Harryhausen to work in this unique field, almost single-handedly keeping the technique alive for three decades. O'Brien's career floundered for most of his life—most of his cherished projects were never realized but—Harryhausen was the right person at the right time, and achieved considerable success.
Harryhausen draws a distinction between films that combine special effects animation with live action and films that are completely animated such as the films of Tim Burton
Tim Burton
Timothy William "Tim" Burton is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist. He is famous for dark, quirky-themed movies such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet...
, Nick Park
Nick Park
Nicholas Wulstan "Nick" Park, CBE is an English filmmaker of stop motion animation best known as the creator of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep....
, Henry Selick
Henry Selick
Henry Selick is an American stop motion director, producer and writer who is best known for directing The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and Coraline...
, Ivo Caprino
Ivo Caprino
Ivo Caprino was a Norwegian film director and writer, best known for his puppet films. His most famous film is Flåklypa Grand Prix , made in 1975.- Early career :...
, Ladislav Starevich and many others (including his own fairy tale shorts) which he sees as pure "puppet films", and which are more accurately (and traditionally) called "puppet animation".
In Harryhausen's films, model animated characters interact with, and are a part of, the live action world, with the idea that they will cease to call attention to themselves as "animation", which is different from the more obviously "cartoony" and stylized approach in movies like Chicken Run
Chicken Run
Chicken Run is a 2000 British stop-motion animation film made by the Aardman Animations studios, the production studio of the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit films...
and The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas, often promoted as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, is a 1993 stop motion musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick and produced/co-written by Tim Burton. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, a being from "Halloween Town" who opens a portal to...
, etc.
Springing from O'Brien's groundbreaking work, Harryhausen continued bringing stop-motion into the realm of live action movies, keeping alive and refining the techniques created by O'Brien that he had first developed as early as 1917. Harryhausen's last film was Clash of the Titans
Clash of the Titans (1981 film)
Clash of the Titans is an American 1981 fantasy–adventure film involving the Greek hero Perseus. It was released on June 12, 1981 and earned a gross profit of $41 million domestically, on a $15 million budget , by which it was the 11th highest grossing film of the year. A novelization of the film...
, produced in the early 1980s. Recently, he was involved in producing colorized DVD versions of three of his classic black and white films (20 Million Miles to Earth
20 Million Miles to Earth
20 Million Miles to Earth is a 1957 American science fiction film written by Bob Williams and Christopher Knopf from an original treatment by Charlott Knight. The film was produced by Charles H. Schneer's Morningside Productions for Columbia Pictures and directed by Nathan H. Juran...
, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is an American black and white science fiction film, directed by Fred F. Sears and released by Columbia Pictures. The film is also known as Invasion of the Flying Saucers. It was ostensibly suggested by the non-fiction work Flying Saucers from Outer Space by Donald...
, and It Came from Beneath the Sea
It Came from Beneath the Sea
It Came from Beneath the Sea is an American science fiction film produced by Sam Katzman and Charles Schneer for Columbia Pictures, from a script by George Worthing Yates designed to showcase the special model-animated effects of Ray Harryhausen. It was directed by Robert Gordon and stars Kenneth...
) and a film from the producer of the original King Kong (She
She (1935 film)
She is a 1935 film produced by Merian C. Cooper. The film is based on H. Rider Haggard's novel of the same name. It stars Helen Gahagan, Randolph Scott and Nigel Bruce, with music by Max Steiner...
).
1930s and 1940s
After having seen King Kong for the first of many times in 1933, Harryhausen spent his early years experimenting in the production of animated shorts, inspired by the burgeoning science fictionScience fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
literary genre of the period. A friend arranged a meeting with Harryhausen's idol, Willis O'Brien, animator of King Kong. O'Brien critiqued Harryhausen's early models and inspired him to take classes in graphic arts and sculpture to hone his skills. Harryhausen became friends with an aspiring writer, Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
, with similar enthusiasms. Bradbury and Harryhausen joined a Los Angeles-area science fiction club formed by Forrest J. Ackerman in 1939, and the three became lifelong friends.
Paramount executives gave Harryhausen his first job, on George Pal's
George Pál
George Pal , born György Pál Marczincsak, was a Hungarian-born American animator and film producer, principally associated with the science fiction genre...
Puppetoons
Puppetoons
George Pal's Puppetoons were a series of animated puppet films made in Europe in the 1930s and in the U.S. in the 1940s. They are memorable for their use of "replacement" animation: using a series of different hand-carved wooden puppets for each frame in which the puppet moves or changes...
shorts, based on viewing his first formal demo reel of fighting dinosaurs from an abortive project called Evolution (an homage to a similar Willis O'Brien project called Creation
Creation (1931 film)
Creation is an unfinished 1931 feature film, and a project of stop motion animator Willis O'Brien. It was about modern men encountering dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals on an island. The picture was scrapped by RKO studio head David O. Selznick on the grounds of expense, and Merian C...
which was never finished).
During World War II, Harryhausen was also employed by the Army Motion Picture Unit, animating sequences educating soldiers about the use and deployment of military equipment when that equipment was unavailable for shooting in live action. From this work, he salvaged several rolls of discarded surplus film from which he made a series of fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
-based shorts. His commander was Colonel Frank Capra
Frank Capra
Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...
, and he also worked with Ted Geisel ("Dr. Seuss
Dr. Seuss
Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American writer, poet, and cartoonist most widely known for his children's books written under the pen names Dr. Seuss, Theo LeSieg and, in one case, Rosetta Stone....
").
One of Harryhausen's most long-cherished dreams was to make H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
' The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds is an 1898 science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells.The War of the Worlds may also refer to:- Radio broadcasts :* The War of the Worlds , the 1938 radio broadcast by Orson Welles...
. After World War II, he shot a scene of an alien emerging from a Martian cylinder; it is from the story's ironic climax, showing the fearsome being from Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
fatally succumbing to an earthly illness, contracted from the air the natives breathe harmlessly. It was part of an unrealized project to adapt the story using Wells' original "octopus
Octopus
The octopus is a cephalopod mollusc of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms, and like other cephalopods they are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms...
" concept for the Martians.
Harryhausen also produced a variety of other short animation demos during the post-World War II 1940s. He put together a demo reel of his various projects and showed them to Willis O'Brien, who eventually hired him as an assistant animator on what turned out to be Harryhausen's first major film, Mighty Joe Young
Mighty Joe Young
Mighty Joe Young is a 1949 RKO Radio Pictures film made by the same creative team responsible for King Kong .Written and produced by Merian C. Cooper andRuth Rose , and directed by Ernest B...
(1949). O'Brien ended up concentrating on solving the various technical problems of the film, leaving most of the animation up to Harryhausen. Their work won O'Brien the Academy Award for Best Special Effects that year.
1950s
King KongKing Kong (1933 film)
King Kong is a Pre-Code 1933 fantasy monster adventure film co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and written by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman after a story by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. The film tells of a gigantic island-dwelling apeman creature called Kong who dies in...
was re-released in 1952, and contributed to a creation and revival of a giant monster cinema craze, especially at drive-in theaters. Harryhausen was hired to do the special effects for The Monster from Beneath the Sea. While in production, the filmmakers learned that a long-time friend of Harryhausen, writer Ray Bradbury, had sold a short story called "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (retitled "The Fog Horn
The Fog Horn
"The Fog Horn" is a 1951 science fiction short story by Ray Bradbury, and the first in his collection The Golden Apples of the Sun. The story was the basis for the 1953 film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.-Plot summary:...
") to The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
, about a dinosaur drawn to a lone lighthouse by its foghorn. Because the story for Harryhausen's film featured a similar scene, the film studio bought the rights to Bradbury's story to avoid any potential legal problems. Also, the title was changed to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a 1953 science fiction film directed by Eugène Lourié and stars Paul Christian, Paula Raymond and Cecil Kellaway with visual effects by Ray Harryhausen. The film is about an atomic bomb test in the Arctic Circle that unfreezes a hibernating fictional dinosaur, a...
(1953). Under that title, it became Harryhausen's first solo feature film effort, and a major international box-office hit for Warner Brothers Pictures.
It was on The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms that Harryhausen first used a technique that split the background and foreground of pre-shot live action footage into two separate pieces of film. The background would be used as a miniature rear-screen with his models animated in front of it, rephotographed with an animation-capable camera to combine those two elements together, the foreground element matted out to leave a black space. Then the film was rewound, and everything except the foreground element matted out so that the foreground element would now photograph in the previously blacked out area. This created the effect that the animated model was "sandwiched" in between the two live action elements, right into the final live action scene. Many shots were embellished with additional elements painted on glass, also sandwiched in between the rear screen and camera, as O'Brien had done on his films.
Most of the effects shots in his earliest films were usually done without resorting to expensive and time-consuming optical printer work. Harryhausen's careful frame-by-frame control of the lighting of both the set and the projector dramatically reduced much of second generation degradation common in most usage of back-projection. His use of diffused glass to soften the sharpness of light on the animated elements allowed them to match the soft background plates far more than Willis O'Brien had achieved in his early films, allowing Harryhausen to match live and miniature elements seamlessly in most of his shots. By developing and executing most of this miniature set wizardry himself, Harryhausen saved money, while maintaining full technical control to achieve a variety of superior and convincing special effects techniques.
A few years later, when Harryhausen began working with color film to make The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, color-balance-shift problems required more use of opticals than rear projections. Ray's producer/partner Charles H. Schneer
Charles H. Schneer
Charles H. Schneer was a film producer most widely known for working with special effects pioneer, Ray Harryhausen. He was born in Norfolk, Virginia and died in Boca Raton, Florida, aged 88....
coined the word Dynamation as a "merchandising term" (modifying it to "SuperDynaMation" and then "DynaRama" for some subsequent films).
While Schneer and the film's line-producers organized the film's live action production and hired various directors to develop the film's live action characters, Harryhausen concentrated mainly on the shots that involved model animation, visiting the sets only to supervise the filming of the live action background elements (called "plates" in the film effects industry) into which he would later add animated creatures.
However, Harryhausen was heavily involved in the pre-production conceptualizing of each film's story, script development, art-direction, design, storyboards, and general tone of the his films, as much as any auteur director would have on any other film, which any "director" of Harryhausen's films had to understand and agree to work under. Only the complexities of Director's Guild rules in Hollywood prevented Harryhausen from being credited as the director of his films, resulting in the more modest credits he had in most of his films.
Throughout most of his career, Harryhausen's work was a sort of family affair. His father did the machining of the metal armatures that were the skeletons for the models while his mother assisted with some skin textures. After Harryhausen's father died in 1973, Harryhausen contracted his armature work out to another machinist. An occasional assistant, George Lofgren, a taxidermist, assisted Harryhausen with the creation of furred creatures. Another associate, Willis Cook, built some of Harryhausen's miniature sets. Other than that, Harryhausen worked generally alone to produce almost all of the animation for all his films, until he hired protege model animators Steve Archer and two-time Oscar-nominated Jim Danforth
Jim Danforth
Jim Danforth is a stop-motion animator, known for model-animation and matte painting. Danforth is known for his work on When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth , a sequel of sorts to Ray Harryhausen's One Million Years B.C....
to assist with major animation sequences for his last feature film Clash of the Titans
Clash of the Titans (1981 film)
Clash of the Titans is an American 1981 fantasy–adventure film involving the Greek hero Perseus. It was released on June 12, 1981 and earned a gross profit of $41 million domestically, on a $15 million budget , by which it was the 11th highest grossing film of the year. A novelization of the film...
(1981).
The same year that Beast was released, 1953, fledgling film producer Irwin Allen
Irwin Allen
Irwin Allen was a television and film director and producer nicknamed "The Master of Disaster" for his work in the disaster film genre. He was also notable for creating a number of television series.- Biography :...
released a live action documentary about life in the oceans titled The Sea Around Us
The Sea Around Us
The Sea Around Us is a prize-winning 1951 bestseller by Rachel Carson about oceanography, marine biology and the ecosystem within and around the world's oceans and seas. It is the second book Carson wrote, following the well-reviewed but poor-selling Under the Sea Wind , and is the book that...
, which won an Oscar for best documentary feature film of that year. Allen's and Harryhausen's paths would cross three years later, on Allen's sequel to this film.
Harryhausen soon met and began a fruitful partnership with producer Charles H. Schneer
Charles H. Schneer
Charles H. Schneer was a film producer most widely known for working with special effects pioneer, Ray Harryhausen. He was born in Norfolk, Virginia and died in Boca Raton, Florida, aged 88....
, who was working with the Sam Katzman
Sam Katzman
Sam Katzman was an American film producer and director. Born into a poor Jewish family, Katzman went to work as a stage laborer at the age of 13 in the fledgling East Coast film industry...
B-picture unit of Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
. Their first tandem project was It Came from Beneath the Sea
It Came from Beneath the Sea
It Came from Beneath the Sea is an American science fiction film produced by Sam Katzman and Charles Schneer for Columbia Pictures, from a script by George Worthing Yates designed to showcase the special model-animated effects of Ray Harryhausen. It was directed by Robert Gordon and stars Kenneth...
(1955) about a giant octopus attacking San Francisco. It was a box-office success, quickly followed by Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is an American black and white science fiction film, directed by Fred F. Sears and released by Columbia Pictures. The film is also known as Invasion of the Flying Saucers. It was ostensibly suggested by the non-fiction work Flying Saucers from Outer Space by Donald...
(1956), set in Washington D.C.--one of the best of the alien invasion films of the 50s, and also a box office hit.
In 1954, Irwin Allen started work on a second feature-length documentary film, this one about animal life on land called The Animal World
The Animal World (film)
The Animal World is a 1956 documentary film that was produced, written and directed by Irwin Allen. The film includes live-action footage of animals throughout the world, along with a ten-minute stop motion animated sequence about dinosaurs....
(completed in 1956). Needing an opening sequence about dinosaurs, Allen hired premier model animator Willis O'Brien to animate the dinosaurs, but then gave him an impossibly short production schedule. O'Brien again hired Harryhausen to help with animation to complete the 8-minute sequence. It was Harryhausen's and O'Brien's first professional color work. Most viewers agree that the dinosaur sequence of Animal World was the best part of the entire movie. (Animal World is available on the DVD release of O'Brien's 1957 film The Black Scorpion
The Black Scorpion (film)
The Black Scorpion is a 1957 American horror film released by Warner Brothers, with stop motion special effects done by Willis O'Brien.-Plot:...
. The Black Scorpion used some previously shot special effects footage and much new footage by Willis H. O'Brien to create a story similar to another sf film of the era, Them! from 1954.)
Harryhausen then returned to Columbia and Charles Schneer to make 20 Million Miles to Earth
20 Million Miles to Earth
20 Million Miles to Earth is a 1957 American science fiction film written by Bob Williams and Christopher Knopf from an original treatment by Charlott Knight. The film was produced by Charles H. Schneer's Morningside Productions for Columbia Pictures and directed by Nathan H. Juran...
(1957), about an American spaceship returning from Venus that crashes into the ocean near Italy, releasing an on-board alien egg specimen which washes up on shore and soon hatches a creature that, in Earth's atmosphere, rapidly grows to gigantic size and terrifies Rome. Harryhausen refined and improved his already-considerable ability at establishing emotional characterizations in the face of his Venusian Ymir model, creating yet another international box-office hit film.
Schneer was eager to graduate to color films. Reluctant at first, Harryhausen managed to develop the systems necessary to maintain proper color balances for his DynaMation process, resulting in his greatest masterpiece (and biggest hit) of the 50s, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), a major inspiration for Dennis Muren
Dennis Muren
Dennis Muren, A.S.C. is an American film special effects artist, most notable for his work on the films of Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and George Lucas. He has won eight Oscars for Best Visual Effects.-Early life:...
, decades later a long-time multi-Oscar-winning head of George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic
Industrial Light and Magic
Industrial Light & Magic is an Academy Award-winning motion picture visual effects company that was founded in May 1975 by George Lucas and is owned by Lucasfilm. Lucas created the company when he discovered that the special effects department at 20th Century Fox was shut down after he was given...
special effects company. The top grossing film of that summer, and one of the top grossing films of that year, Schneer and Harryhausen signed another deal with Columbia for four more color films.
1960s
After The Three Worlds of GulliverThe Three Worlds of Gulliver
The Three Worlds of Gulliver is a 1960 Columbia Pictures fantasy film loosely based upon the 18th-century English novel Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. The film stars Kerwin Mathews as the titular character, June Thorburn as his fiancée Elizabeth, and child actor Sherry Alberoni as...
(1960) and Mysterious Island
Mysterious Island (1961 film)
Mysterious Island is a 1961 film released by Morningside Productions. Based very loosely upon the novel The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, the film was produced by Charles H. Schneer and Ray Harryhausen. Directed by Cy Endfield, it was released through Columbia Pictures...
(1961), both great artistic and technical successes, his next film is considered by film historians and fans as Harryhausen's masterwork, Jason and the Argonauts (1963). Among the film's several celebrated animation sequences is an extended fight between three actors and seven living skeletons, a considerable advance on the single-skeleton fight scene in Sinbad. This amazing stop-motion sequence, never since equaled by a single individual, took over four months to complete, and helped to inspire an entire generation of subsequent filmmakers like Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
, George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
, Tim Burton
Tim Burton
Timothy William "Tim" Burton is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist. He is famous for dark, quirky-themed movies such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet...
, Sam Raimi
Sam Raimi
Samuel Marshall "Sam" Raimi is an American film director, producer, actor and writer. He is best known for directing cult horror films like the Evil Dead series, Darkman and Drag Me to Hell, as well as the blockbuster Spider-Man films and the producer of the successful TV series Hercules: The...
and James Cameron
James Cameron
James Francis Cameron is a Canadian-American film director, film producer, screenwriter, editor, environmentalist and inventor...
, among many others. (After presenting Harryhausen with a special Academy Award, actor Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks
Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies, gaining wide notice in 1988's Big, before achieving success as a dramatic actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, the title...
told the audience, "Some people say Casablanca
Casablanca (film)
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in...
or Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
...I say Jason and the Argonauts is the greatest film ever made!")
Harryhausen next made First Men in the Moon (1964), his only film made in the anamorphic widescreen
Widescreen
Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film....
process CinemaScope
CinemaScope
CinemaScope was an anamorphic lens series used for shooting wide screen movies from 1953 to 1967. Its creation in 1953, by the president of 20th Century-Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection.The anamorphic lenses theoretically...
, based on the novel by H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
.
Amazingly, Gulliver, Mysterious Island, Jason, and First Men in the Moon were all box office disappointments at the time of their original theatrical release. That, plus changes of management at Columbia Pictures, resulted in his contract with Columbia Picture not being renewed. Also, as the 60s counter-culture came to influence more and more and younger filmmakers, and failing studios struggled to find a new audience, Harryhausen's love of the past, setting his stories in ancient fantasy worlds or previous centuries, kept him from keeping pace with changing tastes in the Sixties
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
. Only a handful of Harryhausen's features have been set in then-present time, and none in the future. As this revolution in the traditional Hollywood movie studio system, and the influx of a new generation of film makers sorted itself out, Harryhausen became a free agent.
Harryhausen was then hired by Hammer Film Productions
Hammer Film Productions
Hammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies and in later...
to animate the dinosaurs for One Million Years B.C.
One Million Years B.C.
One Million Years B.C. is a 1966 British adventure/fantasy film starring Raquel Welch, set - loosely - in the time of cavemen. The film was made by Hammer Film Productions, and was a remake of the 1940 Hollywood film One Million B.C., and it recreates many of the scenes of that film...
, released by 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
in 1967. It was a box office smash, helped in part by the presence of shapely Raquel Welch
Raquel Welch
Jo Raquel Tejada , better known as Raquel Welch, is an American actress, author and sex symbol. Welch came to attention as a "new-star" on the 20th Century-Fox lot in the mid-1960s. She posed iconically in a animal skin bikini for the British-release One Million Years B.C. , for which she may be...
in a cavewoman bikini, in her second film.
Harryhausen next went on to make another dinosaur film, The Valley of Gwangi
The Valley of Gwangi
The Valley of Gwangi is a 1969 American western-fantasy film directed by Jim O'Connolly and written by William Bast. The film is also known as Gwangi, The Lost Valley, The Valley Time Forgot, and The Valley Where Time Stood Still...
. The project had been developed for Columbia, which declined. Independent producer Schneer then made a deal with Warner Brothers instead. It was a personal project of Harryhausen, which he had wanted to do for many years, as it was story-boarded by his original mentor, Willis O'Brien for a 1939 film, Gwangi, that was never completed.
Scripted by William Bast
William Bast
William Bast is an American screenwriter and author currently living in Los Angeles. In addition to writing scripts for motion pictures and television, he is the author of two biographies of the screen actor James Dean.-Early life:...
, The Valley of Gwangi is set in 1912 Mexico, in a parallel Kong story—cowboys capture a living Allosaurus
Allosaurus
Allosaurus is a genus of large theropod dinosaur that lived 155 to 150 million years ago during the late Jurassic period . The name Allosaurus means "different lizard". It is derived from the Greek /allos and /sauros...
and bring him to the nearest city for exhibition. Sabotage by a rival releases the creature on opening day and the creature wreaks havoc on the town until it is cornered and destroyed inside a burning cathedral. The film features a roping scene reminiscent of 1949's Mighty Joe Young (which was itself recycled from the old Gwangi storyboards) and is the technical highlight of the film, which many Harryhausen fans are now rediscovering as one of his best films. The film was released in 1969 but was not a financial success, supposedly since it did not appeal with the counter-culture audiences of that era. But another more likely explanation is that Warner Brothers released the film as a double-bill with a biker film, trying to quickly cash in on the surprise success of the film Easy Rider
Easy Rider
Easy Rider is a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and South with the aim of achieving freedom...
, and thus Gwangi missed an advertising opportunity to find its rightful audience. Reportedly this decision was made after Kenneth Hyman of Seven Arts Productions
Seven Arts Productions
Seven Arts Productions was founded in 1957 by Ray Stark and Eliot Hyman. The company was a frequent producer of movies for other studios, including The Misfits for United Artists, Gigot for Twentieth Century-Fox, Lolita for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Is Paris Burning? for Paramount Pictures.Over...
— which had merged with Warners at the time and was involved with One Million Years B.C. — was released from his contract with the studio. Warners then threw the film away to second run neighborhood theaters, where kids in these small theaters discovered it, slowly growing up to become fans of the film as adults when the film was finally released to video in the 1980s and DVD in '90s.
1970s–present
After a few lean years, Harryhausen re-teamed with Schneer, who talked Columbia Pictures into reviving the Sinbad character, resulting in The Golden Voyage of SinbadThe Golden Voyage of Sinbad
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is a fantasy film released in 1974 and starring John Phillip Law as Sinbad. It includes a score by composer Miklós Rózsa and is known mostly for the stop-motion effects by Ray Harryhausen...
, often remembered for the sword fight involving a statue of the six-armed goddess Kali. It was first released in Los Angeles in the Christmas season of 1973, but garnered its main audience in the spring and summer of 1974. It was followed by Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger is a 1977 fantasy film, the third and final Sinbad film that Ray Harryhausen made for Columbia, after The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. The film was directed by Sam Wanamaker...
(1977), which disappointed some fans because of its tongue-in-cheek approach. Both films were, however, box office successes.
Schneer and Harryhausen finally were allowed by MGM to produce a big budget film with name actors and an expanded effects budget. The film started out smaller but then MGM increased the budget to hire stars such as Lord Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
. It became the last feature film to showcase his effects work, Clash of the Titans
Clash of the Titans (1981 film)
Clash of the Titans is an American 1981 fantasy–adventure film involving the Greek hero Perseus. It was released on June 12, 1981 and earned a gross profit of $41 million domestically, on a $15 million budget , by which it was the 11th highest grossing film of the year. A novelization of the film...
(1981), for which he was nominated for a Saturn Award
Saturn Award
The Saturn Award is an award presented annually by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films to honor the top works in science fiction, fantasy, and horror in film, television, and home video. The Saturn Awards were devised by Dr. Donald A. Reed in 1972, who felt that films within...
for Best Special Effects. Harryhausen fans will readily discern that the armed-and-finned kraken (a name borrowed from medieval Scandinavian folklore) he invented for Clash of the Titans has similar facial qualities to the Venusian Ymir he created twenty-five years earlier for 20 Million Miles to Earth
20 Million Miles to Earth
20 Million Miles to Earth is a 1957 American science fiction film written by Bob Williams and Christopher Knopf from an original treatment by Charlott Knight. The film was produced by Charles H. Schneer's Morningside Productions for Columbia Pictures and directed by Nathan H. Juran...
.
Perhaps due to his hermetic production style and the fact that he produced half of his films outside of Hollywood (living in London since 1960), reducing his day-to-day kinship with other more traditional, but still influential Hollywood effects artists, none of Harryhausen's films were ever nominated for a special effects Oscar.
In spite of the relatively successful box office returns of "Clash of the Titans", more sophisticated technology developed by ILM and others began to eclipse Harryhausen's production techniques. and so MGM and other studios passed on funding the making of his follow-up story, Force of the Trojans, causing Harryhausen and Schneer to retire from active filmmaking.
In the early 1970s, Harryhausen had also concentrated his efforts on authoring a book, Film Fantasy Scrapbook (produced in three editions as his last three films were released) and supervising the restoration and release of (eventually all) his films to video, laserdisc, DVD, and currently Blu-ray. A second book followed, An Animated Life, detailing his techniques and history, and then The Art of Ray Harryhausen, featuring sketches and drawings for his many projects, some of them unrealized. More books, interspersed with many world-wide tours, appearances, dedications, and career salutes are anticipated.
Harryhausen continues his life-long friendship with Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
. Another long-time close friend was "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine editor, book writer, and sci-fi collector Forrest J. Ackerman, who loaned Harryhausen his photos of King Kong in 1933, right after Harryhausen had seen the film for the first time. Harryhausen also maintained his friendships with his long-time producer, Charles H. Schneer
Charles H. Schneer
Charles H. Schneer was a film producer most widely known for working with special effects pioneer, Ray Harryhausen. He was born in Norfolk, Virginia and died in Boca Raton, Florida, aged 88....
, who lived next door to him in a suburb of London until Schneer moved full-time to the USA (a few years later, in early 2009, Schneer died at 88 in Boca Raton, FL); and with model animation protege, Jim Danforth
Jim Danforth
Jim Danforth is a stop-motion animator, known for model-animation and matte painting. Danforth is known for his work on When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth , a sequel of sorts to Ray Harryhausen's One Million Years B.C....
, still living in the Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
area.
Harryhausen and Terry Moore
Terry Moore (actress)
Helen Luella Koford , better known as Terry Moore, is an American actress. Terry Moore made her film debut at age 11 and grew up with all the icons of the Hollywood era that made Hollywood what it is today, also known as "The Golden Age of Hollywood". Moore is an Academy Award nominated actress...
appeared in small comedic cameo roles in the 1998 remake of Mighty Joe Young
Mighty Joe Young (1998 film)
The Music was composed and conduced by James Horner. The Soundtrack was released on December of the year 1998.- Tracklist :...
, and he has also provided the voice of a polar bear cub in the Will Ferrell
Will Ferrell
John William "Will" Ferrell is an American comedian, impressionist, actor, and writer. Ferrell first established himself in the late 1990s as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, and has subsequently starred in the comedy films Old School, Elf, Anchorman, Talladega...
film Elf
Elf (film)
Elf is a 2003 comedy film directed by Jon Favreau, written by David Berenbaum and starring Will Ferrell, James Caan, and Zooey Deschanel. It was released in the United States on November 7, 2003 and grossed over $220,400,000 worldwide.-Plot:A baby crawls into Santa Claus' sack while he is...
. He also appears as a bar patron in Beverly Hills Cop III
Beverly Hills Cop III
Beverly Hills Cop III is a 1994 action-comedy film starring Eddie Murphy and directed by John Landis, who had previously worked with Murphy on Trading Places and Coming to America...
, and as a doctor in the John Landis film Spies Like Us
Spies Like Us
Spies Like Us is a 1985 American comedy film directed by John Landis and starring Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Forrest, and Donna Dixon...
. In 2010, Harryhausen had a brief cameo in Burke and Hare
Burke and Hare (film)
Burke and Hare is a British black comedy film, loosely based on the Burke and Hare murders. Directed by John Landis, the film stars Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis as William Burke and William Hare respectively. It was Landis's first feature film release in twelve years, the last being 1998's Susan's...
, a British
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
film also directed by Landis.
Awards
During the 1980s and early 90s, those of Harryhausen's growing legion of fans who had graduated into the professional film industry, started lobbying the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures...
to acknowledge Harryhausen's contribution to the film industry and he was finally awarded a Gordon E. Sawyer Award
Gordon E. Sawyer Award
The Gordon E. Sawyer Award is an accolade given each year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to "an individual in the motion picture industry whose technological contributions have brought credit to the industry." The award is named in honour of Gordon E...
for "technological contributions [which] have brought credit to the industry" in 1992, with Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks
Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies, gaining wide notice in 1988's Big, before achieving success as a dramatic actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, the title...
as the Master of Ceremonies and Bradbury, a friend from when they were both just out of high school, presenting the award. This recognition made Harryhausen an international celebrity. A long series of appearances at film festivals, colleges, and film seminars around the world soon followed as Harryhausen met many of the millions of people who had grown up enjoying his work.
The work of Ray Harryhausen was celebrated in an exhibition at London's Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) in 1990.
Near the turn of the 21st century, Harryhausen was also honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
.
Inducted to the Monster Kid Hall Of Fame at The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards.
Harryhausen today
In 2002, young animators Seamus Walsh and Mark Caballero helped Harryhausen complete "The Story of the Tortoise and the Hare". This was the sixth and final installment of the Harryhausen fairy tales. The film was started in 1952 and completed in 2002, 50 years later. Caballero and Walsh refurbished the original puppets and, under Harryhausen's guidance, completed the film. The film went on to win the 2003 Annie award for best short film and gained world wide attention. Walsh and Caballero have since moved on to form their own stop motion company, Screen NoveltiesScreen Novelties
Screen Novelties is a collective of film directors, specializing in stop motion animation. It was formed in 2003 by Mark Caballero, Seamus Walsh, and Chris Finnegan....
which is based in Los Angeles, CA.
In 2005, Harryhausen released a 2-DVD set of a complete collection of all his non-feature film work, including all his tests, demos, military work, a re-edit of all the biographical material that had been released in the mid-90s to VHS video under the title Aliens, Dragons, Monsters, and Me, and his entire set of fairy tales, including "The Story of the Tortoise & the Hare". The second disc profiles a making of documentary, behind the scenes and interviews with Harryhausen, Walsh, Caballero and narrator, Gary Owens. During this time he also provided commentary for the DVD releases of King Kong and Mighty Joe Young, and was extensively interviewed for documentaries included in the DVD release. He was at the New York Premiere of the 2005 remake of King Kong
King Kong (2005 film)
King Kong is a 2005 fantasy adventure film directed by Peter Jackson. It is a remake of the 1933 film of the same name and stars Naomi Watts, Jack Black and Adrien Brody. Andy Serkis, through performance capture, portrays Kong....
and was disappointed that some scenes from the original did not make it into the final film. He was happy again when the Deluxe Extended Edition was revealed.
Harryhausen and a producing partner, Arnold R. Kunert worked on a series of animated shorts based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
, the first of which was "The Pit and the Pendulum
The Pit and the Pendulum
"The Pit and the Pendulum" is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and first published in 1842 in the literary annual The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1843. The story is about the torments endured by a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, though Poe skews historical facts. The...
" in 2006.
Harryhausen also worked with Legend Films
Legend Films
Legend Films, a San Diego-based company, was founded in August 2001. The company specializes in the conversion of feature films, both new release and catalog titles, and commercials from their native 2D format into 3-D film format utilizing proprietary technology and software...
to reissue some of his early feature films on Blu-ray in a series of colorized
Film colorization
Film colorization is any process that adds color to black-and-white, sepia or monochrome moving-picture images. It may be done as a special effect, or to modernize black-and-white films, or to restore color films...
versions using an improved colorization process. According to Legend Films president Barry Sandrew, the filmmaker told him that his original vision was to do them in color, but both limited budgets and limitations of color film stocks back then made it hard for him to do backgrounds and keep them color-balanced the way that was needed to maintain the films' realism. The finished Blu-ray 4-disk boxed set was released in 2009, and includes Harryhausen's first four films for Columbia Pictures, including "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad". There's also all new commentaries with Harryhausen and a variety of guest special-effects producers who were influenced by Harryhausen's work, an on-camera interview by Tim Burton, plus much in the way of other new bonus features. Other digital clean-up and restoration techniques were performed on this Blu-ray edition, including a feature that allow you to see the first three films colorized, or in the original black and white form. Other Columbia Harryhausen films will be released in Blu-ray, starting with "Jason and the Argonauts" released in 2010.
Harryhausen was also involved in the process of colorizing She
She (1935 film)
She is a 1935 film produced by Merian C. Cooper. The film is based on H. Rider Haggard's novel of the same name. It stars Helen Gahagan, Randolph Scott and Nigel Bruce, with music by Max Steiner...
, produced by Merian C. Cooper
Merian C. Cooper
Merian Caldwell Cooper was an American aviator, United States Air Force and Polish Air Force officer, adventurer, screenwriter, and film director and producer. His most famous film was the 1933 movie King Kong.-Early life:...
, who had originally intended to shoot the film in color, but at the last minute the budget was cut by RKO, forcing Cooper to shoot in black and white. As a tribute to Cooper, Harryhausen color designed the film in a manner in which he feels Cooper would have wanted it exhibited. The colorized DVD includes an audio commentary by Harryhausen and Merian C. Cooper expert Mark Vaz who discuss the film and color choices. The colorized trailer for She premiered at the 2006 Comic-Con
Comic-Con International
San Diego Comic-Con International, also known as Comic-Con International: San Diego , and commonly known as Comic-Con or the San Diego Comic-Con, was founded as the Golden State Comic Book Convention and later the San Diego Comic Book Convention in 1970 by Shel Dorf and a group of San Diegans...
. Harryhausen also helped design the color on two further Legend Films releases, Things to Come
Things to Come
Things to Come is a British science fiction film produced by Alexander Korda and directed by William Cameron Menzies. The screenplay was written by H. G. Wells and is a loose adaptation of his own 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come and his 1931 non-fiction work, The Work, Wealth and Happiness...
and The Most Dangerous Game
The Most Dangerous Game (film)
The Most Dangerous Game is a 1932 Pre-Code adaptation of the 1924 short story of the same name by Richard Connell, the first film version of that story. The plot concerns a big game hunter on an island who chooses to hunt humans for sport. The film stars Joel McCrea, Leslie Banks, and King Kong...
.
In July 2006, it was announced that Harryhausen has licenced Bluewater Productions
Bluewater Productions
Bluewater Productions, Inc. is an independent production studio of comic books and graphic novels. Based in Vancouver, Washington, Bluewater publishes biographical comics, adaptations from films and original titles with self-created characters, most notably of publisher Darren G...
to create six comic book follow-ups to some of his most famous movies. The first three are "Sinbad: Rogue Of Mars", "20 Million Miles More" and "Wrath Of The Titans", which were realised in May 2007 followed by a further three: "Jason And The Argonauts: The Kingdom of Hades", "Back to Mysterious Island" and 10th Muse. Harryhausen will furnish new artwork, but not scripts. All will be five-issue miniseries. A one-shot, "10th Muse/ Shi crossover", is said to be released later this year. A full podcast interview with Ray Harryhausen can be heard here.
Ray is currently serving as a producer on the Movie War Eagles which is slated to be released in 2010 per IMDB and Jim Dee on Take Two-The Movie Program. In the late 1930s, while at MGM, Merian C. Cooper (creator of King Kong) promoted a color film epic that would utilize stop-motion and the creative talents of Willis O'Brien to animate giant prehistoric eagles. The project was sadly abandoned. Bob Burns and other "Kong" experts discussed the "lost" War Eagles pitch to fans, he found typewriter documents and even a rough screenplay of War Eagles, and years later an author named "Carl Macek" marshaled the evidence into a book called War Eagles. The first copies were given to Ray Harryhausen and Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
(Harryhausen's biggest friend). They thought the adaptation of it was splendid, and so began the working of Mr. Cooper's & Willis O'Brien's lost drafts into the upcoming project.
Fan and film maker tributes to Harryhausen abound in many forms, including a variety of model animation experiments posted on YouTube.
A clay animation short film by Sub-Genius Church founder Ivan Stang, "Martian Peen Worm" (the short title of that film) makes several whimsical Harryhausen references.
The ABC TV 90s children's puppet animation series "Bump In the Night" makes a variety of veiled tributes to Harryhausen, also.
The Mythos Games
Mythos Games
Mythos Games is a defunct British video game developer company founded by Julian Gollop.-Games developed by Mythos Games:* Rebelstar II * Laser Squad * Lords of Chaos * Magic & Mayhem -External links:*...
/Virgin Interactive Entertainment computer game Magic and Mayhem
Magic and Mayhem
Magic & Mayhem, also known as Duel: The Mage Wars , The Art of Magic , Mana: Der Weg der schwarzen Macht , Duelo de hechiceros , Art of Magic: La Guerra dei Maghi and Arcanes , is a fantasy/mythology-themed real-time strategy game designed by Julian Gollop and developed by Mythos Games...
(1990) features over 25 stop-motion mythological creatures that were directly inspired by Harryhausen's work. Constructed by special effects expert and stop-motion animator Alan Friswell, the various characters include a dragon, a centaur, a griffin and a fighting skeleton. For the griffin's wing animation, Friswell studied the griffin from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is a fantasy film released in 1974 and starring John Phillip Law as Sinbad. It includes a score by composer Miklós Rózsa and is known mostly for the stop-motion effects by Ray Harryhausen...
(1974).
The 2001 Pixar
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
film, Monsters, Inc.
Monsters, Inc.
Monsters, Inc. is a 2001 American computer-animated film and the fourth feature-length film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. It was directed by Pete Docter, co-directed by Lee Unkrich and David Silverman, and written by Jill Culton, Peter Docter, Ralph Eggleston, Dan Gerson, Jeff Pidgeon, Rhett...
pays homage to Harryhausen in a scene where characters Mike Wazowski and Celia Mae visit a sushi restaurant named "Harryhausen's".
The 2005 Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
film, Corpse Bride
Corpse Bride
Corpse Bride, often promoted as Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, is a 2005 stop-motion-animated fantasy musical film directed by Mike Johnson and Tim Burton. It is set in a fictional Victorian era village in Europe. Johnny Depp led an all-star cast as the voice of Victor, while Helena Bonham Carter ...
also pays homage to Harryhausen in a scene where character Victor Van Dort is playing the piano in the Everglott's home. The brand of the piano being played is a "Harryhausen".
Tim Burton considers his satiric science fiction
Science fiction film
Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...
movie, Mars Attacks!
Mars Attacks!
Mars Attacks! is a 1996 American science fiction film directed by Tim Burton and based on the cult trading card series of the same name. The film uses elements of black comedy, surreal humour, and political satire, and claims to be also a parody of multiple science fiction B movies...
(1996), to be a tribute to Mr. Harryhausen, especially in a scene in which one of the hostile alien's flying saucer
Flying saucer
A flying saucer is a type of unidentified flying object sometimes believed to be of alien origin with a disc or saucer-shaped body, usually described as silver or metallic, occasionally reported as covered with running lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly either...
s chops down the Washington Monument
Washington Monument
The Washington Monument is an obelisk near the west end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate the first U.S. president, General George Washington...
by crashing into it, just as Harryhausen had done in his movie Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is an American black and white science fiction film, directed by Fred F. Sears and released by Columbia Pictures. The film is also known as Invasion of the Flying Saucers. It was ostensibly suggested by the non-fiction work Flying Saucers from Outer Space by Donald...
in 1956. Burton's movie, and this scene, initially gathered mixed reactions from Mr. Harryhausen, who has a habitually more subdued sense of humor. These differences were congenially resolved in subsequent meetings between the two film-makers for the Blu-ray boxed set bonus features.
A new big-budget version of Clash of the Titans
Clash of the Titans (2010 film)
Clash of the Titans is a 2010 fantasy and action remake of the 1981 film of the same name . The story is very loosely based on the Greek myth of Perseus. Directed by Louis Leterrier and starring Sam Worthington, the film was originally set for standard release on March 26, 2010...
, with all-CGI
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
special effect
Special effect
The illusions used in the film, television, theatre, or entertainment industries to simulate the imagined events in a story are traditionally called special effects ....
s, appeared in movie theaters in early April 2010. With Harryhausen initially expressing surprise and wondering why it was even felt that there was any need for a remake of his movie, its fans currently await Harryhausen's reaction to the film itself.
Ray Harryhausen now lives in England. As a ninetieth birthday tribute, he was featured on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
flagship current affairs programme Newsnight
Newsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
on Thursday, June 24, 2010, talking about his life's work. In 2010, he had a cameo
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
as one of 'The Distinguished Gentlemen' in Burke and Hare
Burke and Hare (film)
Burke and Hare is a British black comedy film, loosely based on the Burke and Hare murders. Directed by John Landis, the film stars Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis as William Burke and William Hare respectively. It was Landis's first feature film release in twelve years, the last being 1998's Susan's...
, the British
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
black comedy
Black comedy
A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...
directed by John Landis. The film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
is about the notorious Ulster
Ulster
Ulster is one of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the north of the island. In ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial...
murderers in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
in the late 1820s.
In June 2010 it was announced that the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation had agreed to deposit the animator's complete collection of some 20,000 pieces with the National Media Museum in Bradford
Bradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...
, England.
Anglo
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
/Swedish pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
band, the Hoosiers
The Hoosiers
The Hoosiers are an English pop/rock band, consisting of members Irwin Sparkes , Martin Skarendahl and Alan Sharland ....
, dedicated their first single, Worried about Ray, to Ray Harryhausen. The music video features a character called "Ray" making films, and includes a Harryhausen style monster, which is killed after Irwin Sparkes uses his guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
to fire a drum stick into the monster's single eye
Eye
Eyes are organs that detect light and convert it into electro-chemical impulses in neurons. The simplest photoreceptors in conscious vision connect light to movement...
.
Filmography
- How to Bridge a Gorge (1942) (producer)
- Tulips Shall Grow (1942) (chief animator)
- Mother Goose Stories (1946) (producer)
- The Story of Little Red Riding Hood (1949) (producer, animator)
- Mighty Joe Young (1949) (first technician)
- Rapunzel (1951) (producer)
- Hansel and Gretel (1951) (producer)
- The Story of King Midas (1953) (producer)
- The Beast from 20,000 FathomsThe Beast from 20,000 FathomsThe Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a 1953 science fiction film directed by Eugène Lourié and stars Paul Christian, Paula Raymond and Cecil Kellaway with visual effects by Ray Harryhausen. The film is about an atomic bomb test in the Arctic Circle that unfreezes a hibernating fictional dinosaur, a...
(1953) (visual effects) - It Came from Beneath the SeaIt Came from Beneath the SeaIt Came from Beneath the Sea is an American science fiction film produced by Sam Katzman and Charles Schneer for Columbia Pictures, from a script by George Worthing Yates designed to showcase the special model-animated effects of Ray Harryhausen. It was directed by Robert Gordon and stars Kenneth...
(1955) (visual effects) - The Animal WorldThe Animal World (film)The Animal World is a 1956 documentary film that was produced, written and directed by Irwin Allen. The film includes live-action footage of animals throughout the world, along with a ten-minute stop motion animated sequence about dinosaurs....
(1956) (effects technician) - Earth vs. the Flying SaucersEarth vs. the Flying SaucersEarth vs. the Flying Saucers is an American black and white science fiction film, directed by Fred F. Sears and released by Columbia Pictures. The film is also known as Invasion of the Flying Saucers. It was ostensibly suggested by the non-fiction work Flying Saucers from Outer Space by Donald...
(1956) (special photographic, animation effects) - 20 Million Miles to Earth20 Million Miles to Earth20 Million Miles to Earth is a 1957 American science fiction film written by Bob Williams and Christopher Knopf from an original treatment by Charlott Knight. The film was produced by Charles H. Schneer's Morningside Productions for Columbia Pictures and directed by Nathan H. Juran...
(1957) (visual effects) - The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) (associate producer, visual effects)
- The Three Worlds of GulliverThe Three Worlds of GulliverThe Three Worlds of Gulliver is a 1960 Columbia Pictures fantasy film loosely based upon the 18th-century English novel Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. The film stars Kerwin Mathews as the titular character, June Thorburn as his fiancée Elizabeth, and child actor Sherry Alberoni as...
(1960) (visual effects) - Mysterious IslandMysterious Island (1961 film)Mysterious Island is a 1961 film released by Morningside Productions. Based very loosely upon the novel The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, the film was produced by Charles H. Schneer and Ray Harryhausen. Directed by Cy Endfield, it was released through Columbia Pictures...
(1961) (special visual effects) - Jason and the Argonauts (1963) (associate producer, visual effects)
- First Men in the Moon (1964) (associate producer, visual effects)
- One Million Years B.C.One Million Years B.C.One Million Years B.C. is a 1966 British adventure/fantasy film starring Raquel Welch, set - loosely - in the time of cavemen. The film was made by Hammer Film Productions, and was a remake of the 1940 Hollywood film One Million B.C., and it recreates many of the scenes of that film...
(1966) (special visual effects) - The Valley of GwangiThe Valley of GwangiThe Valley of Gwangi is a 1969 American western-fantasy film directed by Jim O'Connolly and written by William Bast. The film is also known as Gwangi, The Lost Valley, The Valley Time Forgot, and The Valley Where Time Stood Still...
(1969) (associate producer, visual effects) - The Golden Voyage of SinbadThe Golden Voyage of SinbadThe Golden Voyage of Sinbad is a fantasy film released in 1974 and starring John Phillip Law as Sinbad. It includes a score by composer Miklós Rózsa and is known mostly for the stop-motion effects by Ray Harryhausen...
(1974) (producer, visual effects) - Sinbad and the Eye of the TigerSinbad and the Eye of the TigerSinbad and the Eye of the Tiger is a 1977 fantasy film, the third and final Sinbad film that Ray Harryhausen made for Columbia, after The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. The film was directed by Sam Wanamaker...
(1977) (producer, visual effects) - Clash of the TitansClash of the Titans (1981 film)Clash of the Titans is an American 1981 fantasy–adventure film involving the Greek hero Perseus. It was released on June 12, 1981 and earned a gross profit of $41 million domestically, on a $15 million budget , by which it was the 11th highest grossing film of the year. A novelization of the film...
(1981) (producer, visual effects) - The Story of the Tortoise & the Hare (2003) (director, co-producer, animator)
- Ray Harryhausen Presents: The Pit and the Pendulum (2007) (executive producer)
External links
- Ray Harryhausen in Dangerous Ink Magazine - 2009 interview)
- The 7th Voyage.com
- YouTube-hosted video with chronological clips of Ray Harryhausen movie creations
- Mother Goose Stories - complete animation film from 1946 on Archive.org
- A 2003 interview at Netribution
- Ray Harryhausen: An Animation Legend (2004 interview) at Tail Slate
- Feature on Ray Harryhausen's War Of The Worlds project at War Of The Worlds Invasion
- EyeForFilm.co.uk Ray Harryhausen In Person at Edinburgh International Film Festival