Ray Harryhausen, 1920-2013

From Harryhausen's unfinished Evolution of the World, late '30s to 1940. Featured on the indispensible DVD set Ray Harryhausen: The Early Years Collection.

I cannot speak for everyone who fell in love with the movies at an early age. Still, it stands to reason that what enchanted us about movies in our tender years had little to do with the way that cinema could convey psychological nuance, or even necessarily how distinctively it could convey a story. No, what got us hooked, I think, was the movies' ability to show us things we'd never seen before, things we might have dimly imagined, or hoped, or dreaded seeing, but never actually laid eyes upon. The land of Oz. The sun going down on Tara. A twenty or, back in the day, forty-foot high snow globe. The Frankenstein Monster. An—impossible!—invisible man. 

Ray Harryhausen himself would have been happy to tell you that it was the sight of a giant ape traversing and wreaking havoc on the streets of contemporary Manhattan that not only made him love movies but set him on his life's path. King Kong was the movie. Harryhausen was in his early teens when he first saw it. About fifteen years later, Harryhausen would work on the effects for Mighty Joe Young.

Harryhausen, Forrest J. Ackerman, and Ray Bradbury reconvene at L.A.'s Clifton's Cafeteria for a featurette for the Early Years DVD.

It is fascinating that Harryhausen's two closest childhood friends, Forrest J. Ackerman and Ray Bradbury, would themselves become ambassadors of the fantastic in the realms of magazines and literature respectively. The triumverate had an incalcuable impact on the pop imagination. What Harryhausen did with clay and plastic and a stop motion camera still constitutes the most dazzling and awe-inspiring body of visual effects a single filmmaker can lay claim to. Even once you knew the rudiments of how stop motion animation was done, what Harryhausen accomplished was unfathomable. The combination of his deep understanding of the frightening and the grotesque (as intuited via the Greek myths from which he drew so much inspiration), and his painstaking draftsmanship, and his literally saintly patience yielded cinematic miracles. The lack of a certain kind of seamlessness in the films that bear his work is in itself seductive, exhilarating. Watching Jason and the Argonauts, the introduction in a scene of a particular kind of visual degradation, the then-unavoidable result of matte work, is exciting, because it's a signal, a cue: an indication that some kind of mind-blowing effects sequence is about to begin. And then the skeletons start swordfighting with Jason and his men, and the consciousness of the matte work goes away; the action is brilliantly choreographed and completely mind-blowing, because you are convinced. Even if you intellectually know that these images are the result of one man making near microscopic movements on a miniature model and taking a still shot of each one, and keep reminding yourself of that, you can't not believe that you are watching living skeletons swordfighting. They're the stuff of nightmares, as are the harpies who torture Phineas in that picture; and yet there'a also a guiltily giggly kick to watching these demonic manifestations. Just as the alien craft demolishing the Jefferson Memorial and more in Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers nails the ecstasy of destruction in a precise, painstaking way that subsequent hypertrophied derivations such as Independence Day never, ever could, not just because of the differences in technology but because of a lack of genuine personal investment. Harryhausen understood the things that we secretly wanted to see and made them happen with his hands and his fingers and his lights and his camera. He was the not-so-secret sharer of every kid who ever skipped his or her homework  over the course of a week and instead spent the time getting that Aurora model of the Forgotten Prisoner of Castlemare assembled just right. And we knew his name because Forrest J. Ackerman told us about him in Famous Monsters magazine, and because Ray Bradbury wrote "The Fog Horn," and because Bradbury's  friend the other Ray took the minimally (albeit beautifully) described monster of Bradbury's story and made him into The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. 

It's so easy to bring to mind the formidability of his creations that one may momentarily forget their wit. Recall the giant not-quite-chicken of Mysterious Island. (And delight in the fairy tales collected on the self-published Early Years DVD collection.) And let's not forget the humanity of Mr. Joseph Young himself, Harryhausen's tribute to the pathos that his master Willis O'Brien brought to both Kong and the son of Kong. Harryhausen lived a rich, long life, and he left a magnificent record of it for his fans, including a remarkable book (An Animated Life), in which the detailings of how he made his incredible visions only enhances their impact when the movies themselves are re-viewed. 

My friend Joseph Failla will be contributing some reminiscences and thoughts later. 

UPDATE: From the February 2004 issue of Premiere, Joseph Failla's review of the DVDs of Beast, The Valley of Gwangi, and The Black Scorpion. Joe presented the issue to Harryhausen in person at a Lincoln Center event that year. 

The Movies: Watching the onscreen legacy of student and mentor can be a rewarding experience; when that student is genius animator Ray Harryhausen (Jason and the Argonauts) and his mentor the great Willis O'Brien (King Kong), the event becomes extraordinary. That's precisely what's offered with the releases of these three fine examples of the art of stop-motion animation in the giant-monster-and-mass-mayhem-movie-tradition. One comes away with the sensation of seeing life's creation on screen, rather than it's destruction - no matter how dark the fantasy turns. 

With Beast (1953), Harryhausen ushers in the first of the atomic monsters in what is his answer of sorts to Kong, the film that changed the course of his life. In this case it's the Rhedosaurus, a dinosaur more than a 100 million years old, released from it's Arctic hibernation by a military blast, that makes it's way through the ocean currents to it's natural stomping grounds- downtown Manhattan! Based in part on Ray Bradbury's short story "The Fog Horn", it's pretty much the blueprint for the monster cycle that would dominate the scene for the next decade or so.

The Black Scorpion (1957) has O'Brien calling the special-effects shots. While it tells the familiar story of giant arachnids running amuck through modern day Mexico, it unexpectedly unleashes the most nightmarish model work seen in the entire genre (one could believe these slimy spiders, worms, etc. had crawled out of the infamous pit on Kong's Skull Island). Topping Them! with its primal fear factor and looking forward to the battlegrounds of Starship Troopers, Scorpion is a rare example of the genre running headlong into the horrific imaginations of it's creators, with spectacular results. This trio comes full circle with The Valley of Gwangi (1969), Harryhausen's loving tribute to O'Brien- a production of one of the master's unrealized project's.  Again referring back to Kong (or Mighty Joe Young) with more than mere suggestion, Gwangi is another tale of adventurers bringing back their monstrous quarry to civilization for fun and profit. Only this time the worlds of cowboys and dinosaurs are melded into a kind of prehistoric rodeo show. The genres play together better than expected; after all, it's one big fantasy designed to cater to one's childlike instincts, although there's nothing juvenile about it. 

The dinosaur effects on display this time are some of the most exciting and complicated yet seen: These "big lizards" have personality and actually give performances, which separates this from much of the advanced techno work achieved today. It took the creation of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy—with the help of an actor and a team of computer artists—to equal the results that Harryhausen and O'Brien got on their own. 

The Discs: In an appropriate move on Warner's part, each film is accompanied with extras that enrich the viewer's perception of its art. Beast offers recollections of longtime pals Harryhausen and Bradbury (whom you never saw so disarmingly delightful) expressing their joy at still being kids at heart and at the thrill that only comes from a lifelong love affair with the fantastic. Gwangi brings us testimony and accolades from some of today's technical wizards, whose works would be unthinkable without these pioneering animators.

And here's Failla's review of The Early Years, from the May 2005 Premiere, headlined "Everybody Loves Raymond:"

The formative years in the career of an artist is laid out before us in RAY HARRYHAUSEN: THE EARLY YEARS COLLECTION (Sparkhill, $29.95), the missing piece of a creative picture that, besides providing delight in and of itself, helps illuminate the better-known work of the legendary stop-motion animator. While Harryhausen is best known for his stunning visions in the likes of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and Jason and the Argonauts, these animated shorts, educational films, and unfinished dream projects show us for the first time the progressive process by which Harryhausen was able to feed his imagination into our own. 

This two-disc set presents the archived work (all in excellent, restored condition) that started his long career. Beginning with the Mother Goose Stories series and several Fairy Tale shorts (originally produced for screenings in schools in the late '40s and early '50s), Harryhausen combines his unmistakably proficient animation skills with child-friendly storytelling. Uncannily, the viewer is drawn to the lifelike qualities Harryhausen imbues his characters with, as well as the ever expanding fantasy world they inhabit. Of these, it's The Tortoise & the Hare that most will regard as the crown jewel of these treasures. By far the most ambitious, this short was discarded, incomplete for many years. Fortunately, with the help of a new generation of stop-motion specialists, Harryhausen was recently able to "finish" the film. The results are a seamless flow of old and new footage with Harryhausen's spirit running through each frame. 

Digging deeper into the disc's many pleasures, we come across some of Harryhausen's most intriguing prospects in the form of experimental tests and fragments. His very early dinosaur footage is painstakingly detailed in the manner of his future mentor Willis O'Brien's work on King Kong. Harryhausen's Elementals (a giant batlike creature's attack on Paris!) sticks in the mind among the various scintillating remnants as an unfortunate missed opportunity. Still, all of it is great to see now.  

Peter Jackson and James Cameron are among those stepping up in the second disc to acknowledge their debts to Harryhausen. What makes all this so special is that he himself is still around, not only to appreciate the tributes, but to explain in his own words his long journey from inquisitive youth with a single-frame camera, to the most revered figure in special-effects history. His continuing enthusiasm is exquisitely conveyed in a reunion segment with Harryhausen and his longtime pals Ray Bradbury and Forrest J. Ackerman as the three relate tales of a lifelong friendship bonded in a mutual love of fantasy and fiction. To hear the famous trio speak as if they were kids once more is not only moving but what this disc is all about. 

Comments

[Pete Apruzzese]

A good long life, a remarkable career. RIP Ray, you've earned it.

Can't add to your thoughts, Glenn. Just "ditto".

I had the pleasure of meeting him when I worked at the Lake Placid Film Festival and he was a Guest of Honor (at the insistence of Guillermo del Toro) back in 2002. Treasured memory - sitting and chatting with him alone for about 15 minutes in the hotel lobby on the last day.

[Ian W. Hill]

Thanks, Glenn. I was one of those kids reading Famous Monsters and building those Aurora models and animating plasticine and play-do and 12" G.I. Joe figures on Super-8 my whole childhood (and up to making heavily-Godard-influenced arty student films at NYU that still had to always include a stop-motion sequence). I'm still dealing with my feelings on this, like a lot of people I see on Twitter, but you got the tone best thus far. Again, thanks, I needed that.

[Oliver_C]

I do remember, at the age of 11 or 12, my art teacher enthusing about the skeletal warriors of 'Jason and the Argonauts', rhetorically asking his class how 'death' could possibly be, be made to appear, so alive.

In a way, this perplexed Harryhausen himself -- as recounted in his indeed-excellent 'An Animated Life', he couldn't devise a way for Jason to kill that which was already dead, so had to settle for pushing them into the Mediterranean.

R.I.P.

[Max Alvarez]

Thank you, Mr. Kenny, for honoring the great Mr. Harryhausen. I was fortunate to have a brief transatlantic telephone conversation with him back in 2001 when I was film coordinator at National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. I had been given my strangest assignment of all: assemble a program of Rapunzel movies in conjunction with a museum exhibition on books based on that fairytale. While I had managed to locate a 1979 live-action short subject ("Rapunzel, Rapunzel") and even a 1978 feminist tract from Great Britain ("Rapunzel Let Down Your Hair"), there was still a component missing: an animated take on the story.
As it turned out, Harryhausen had produced and directed "The Story of Rapunzel," a 10½-minute dimensional animated version of the tale, back in 1951, but I had no idea where to locate a 16mm print. I threw caution to the wind and phoned Harryhausen at his London residence where I found him to be both kind and unassuming. He gladly referred me to a U.S. film distributor and was pleased to hear my praises of his work and how privileged I felt speaking with him.
It was a brief phone call that I shall always cherish.