When I was a kid I loved fairy-tales, fantasy, myths and legends. Movies that told fantastical adventures were watched and re-watched, and I was especially enthralled with the monsters and other fantastical creatures that appeared. I loved any stories which included magic and fantasy. A lot of these old movies would be shown on tv on Saturday afternoons, and they became a tradition for me and my brothers and sisters to watch. There were many of these movies, with varying quality, but the best creature-features were the movies of Ray Harryhausen.

Ray Harryhausen is famous for his special effects work in numerous films, from the nineteen forties through to the twenty-first century. He was the inventor of a process called Dynamation, a method where the background and foreground live action footage would be split, and the stop-motion creature inserted in. This was an effective step in making these models look like they were right in the scene with the actors, interacting with them in a far more convincing way than had previously been achieved. As a long-time fan of Harryhausen’s work, I wanted to talk about some of my favourite Harryhausen ‘creatures’, why I love them, and why I think they are so impactful in their respective movies.

“Jason and the Argonauts” (1963)

Talos – I still find Talos very spooky, and on a recent re-watch of this movie I finally worked out why. It’s the eye sockets. Talos is a bronze statue come to life, and he doesn’t have eyes, just empty eye sockets. And yet, it still seems that the creature is looking right at his victims. What seems to be an intent predatory gaze, from empty eye sockets, seems extremely unnerving. (Just as an aside, I noticed on my last viewing that Talos is ambidextrous – you see the creature changing his sword from one hand to the other, an aspect that is likely to make him even more dangerous.)

For a better idea of why Talos is scary:

Skeletons – probably one of the most famous scenes when discussing Harryhausen’s work would be where the sorcerer sows the teeth of the dead Hydra (another creature Jason killed) and skeleton soldiers spring up from the ground. Each is armed with a shield and sword. Interestingly, this is not the first time Harryhausen used a skeleton in a fight (that would be in “Seventh Voyage of Sinbad”) but the use in this film is remarkable because there are several and they are interacting in different ways with the different live actors. The logistics and work involved in making this fight scene work must have been horrendous, but it does work. Aspects of these creatures that make them effective and scary are the shriek they make, and also that in spite of them being skeletons, Harryhausen has managed to give them feral, vicious expressions without losing the skull appearance. You really believe they are desperate to get the characters and kill them.

This link talks about behind the scenes and how Harryhausen’s team achieved these effects:

“The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” (1973)

Figurehead – There is a moment while Sinbad’s ship is at sea where the evil magician ( a great performance by Tom Baker) animates the ship’s figurehead in order to find and steal a map. The wooden carved figure stalks through the ship, killing anyone who tries to stop it, to find the map. The reason I like this creature is that the animation retains its lifelessness. You don’t get the impression that this is anything more than a carved lump of wood. It’s been given movement, but no real life. This creates tension because you can’t communicate with it, reason with it, or even rile it up. It has no emotions, no body language to read. You can’t stab it, that won’t work. Fire might be the only way, though they don’t really get the chance to do that.

Kali – a statue of the goddess Kali is brought to life by the sorcerer, initially to dance for the people who worship her in order to impress them. But when Sinbad and his party turn up, the sorcerer arms the statue in order to fight them. Remember, Kali has six arms, now each with a sword. It’s an extraordinary sequence that is compelling to watch – one of my favourites just by the way the animation coordinates the movements of all the arms to fight in a convincing way ie they don’t all make the same movements at the same time.

You can watch the fight at the link below: It’s really something.

“Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” (1977)

Trog – Trog is a ‘troglodyte’, described as a human ancestor by one of the characters. Unlike many of Harryhausen’s creatures, Trog is friendly, though taken aback by the humans he meets. As one of the characters says. “he’s just as scared of you as you are of him.” It was mainly the facial expressions of Trog that I liked. When he first meets the heroes, he genuinely looks quite bemused and confused for an animated model. You could really believe this creature was thinking ‘what are you?’

Kassim – while Kassim starts the story as a human, he is cursed by the evil witch and turned into a ‘prehistoric baboon’. (I’m going to guess they decided to call him a prehistoric baboon to cover that you can’t mistake this for a real baboon.) Nevertheless, Kassim is another creature that achieves nuanced emotion – when shown his face in a mirror he touches his face, cries and looks sad. He becomes angry, petulant, fed up with his situation. Given that the creature is supposed to be an enchanted human, the audience cannot really blame him for his feelings, thus indicating the creature’s success that we can enter into his feelings as if he were an enchanted person.

“Clash of the Titans” (1981).

While this movie was remade in 2010, I prefer the original. The centrepiece and most brilliant moment of this movie was the Medusa sequence. She was depicted as being half-snake (not entirely accurate to the mythology but frankly, who cares?) Her tail had a rattle, her head writhed with serpents, her face was scaly, her archery skills were superb and teenage me (seeing this on the big screen for the first time) thought her showdown with Perseus was VERY cool! (I still do!) She is a truly scary creature.

If you’ve never watched the movie, the below link will take you to this amazing and suspenseful sequence:

Scorpions – Perseus fights giant scorpions at one point of the movie. They don’t come from the mythology at all but they are still really great. They are brought into being by blood from the gorgon’s head, growing from normal to enormous size in a matter of moments. Imagine being speared by a giant scorpion stinger! They are here because they are awesome.

I have left out so many of Harryhausen’s creations, otherwise this would end up being an extremely long list. I hope you can see why I am so fond of Harryhausen’s work – it’s not the movies themselves. Many of them are, frankly, not great. But Harryhausen’s amazing, beautiful, scary, breathtaking creations are always worth watching, and his pioneering work in the special effects field has inspired many who have gone on to do equally well.