If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then special effects master Ray Harryhausen should have felt very flattered when producer Edward Small released his fantasy film Jack the Giant Killer back in 1962 – a film that not only borrowed elements from Harryhausen’s 1958 film The 7th Voyage of Sinbad but also its director…
Tag: Ray Harryhausen
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) – Review
There is something about seeing a giant monster rampaging through city streets that stirs the imagination, from as far back as 1925’s The Lost World, where dinosaurs were let loose in the streets of London, to Warner Brother’s latest take on Japan’s biggest export Godzilla in 2014, that shows that we as a culture have…
Clash of the Titans (1981) From Myth to Movie
If you have spent any amount of time reading about the Greek gods the one big takeaway will be that the gods were a bunch of colossal dicks. Take every human foible, explode them way out of proportion, give them all various superpowers and that is basically the Greek gods, but this also made for…
King Kong and Friends: A History of Giant Apes in Film
It was in 1925 when the first giant monster rampaged across the silver screen, stunning audiences at the time with amazing prehistoric creations, that film was Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World, and it heralded a new age in cinema. Close on its heels was the 1933 classic King Kong, a film that still stands today…
Mighty Joe Young (1949) – Review
When one thinks of stop-motion animation a single name leaps to mind, and that name would be Ray Harryhausen. From him we saw dinosaurs rampaging through cities, flying saucers terrorizing the world, and Sinbad battling numerous mythological beasts, but it was in 1949 with Mighty Joe Young that it all really started.