The World Loses Ray Harryhausen, Part II

Behold the Ymir!

We continue looking at the work of the late Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013), the man who put the “special” in “special effects.”  Harryhausen used the technique called Stop Motion Animation, where he would articulate a puppet (usually about 12 to 18 inches tall) against a miniature backdrop, and move them incrementally while photographing them … one frame at a time.  It was an exacting, exhausting, isolating craft, but one that he mastered in the course of a distinguished career. 

I was lucky enough to be acquainted with Harryhausen, and had met him or wrote to him on-and-off for the last 25 years or so.  My fondest memory of him was when we were invited to join he and his wife, Diana, for a private tour of the Smithsonian’s dinosaur collection provided by paleontologist Michael Brett-Surman, an avowed Harryhausen fan.  Harryhausen was delighted to be accorded such an honor, and the thing I most remember is that he was as excited as a young boy about it all, though he was then a man in his 70s.  (When done, we all went out for hamburgers, which, after dinosaurs, monsters and his wife Diana, seemed to be the great love of his life.)

I think it was this sense of wonder that is the signature note of Harryhausen’s work.  Unlike most grim and gritty fantasy fare today, Harryhausen showed audiences the fantastic, and made it fun.  He was also keenly aware that stop motion animation did not have the “realism” of later techniques, such as Computer Generated Images (CGI) used today.  But Harryhausen always maintained that special effects were a tool, and not an end to themselves.

He also thought that special effects had no obligation to look “real.”  Movies – particularly movies about dinosaurs and aliens, Moon people and mythical gods – are fantasies.  And if a special effect seems in some way other worldly, then all the better.  He was creating visions and illusions, not recreating life.  In that, Harryhausen worked with an artist’s touch, pursuing a personal vision until he realized it fully.  One has the sense that Harryhausen would’ve made films in his basement if he had not achieved success in Hollywood.

A genial, even-tempered and sweet man, Harryhuasen was also something of a loner.  Though he sometimes used assistants, he most frequently worked alone.  He was just so deeply involved in his vision that I think he had difficultly articulating what he wanted, and how he wanted it done, to fellow stop motion animation artists.  He was also very protective of America’s cinematic history, and had little taste for ironists or revisionists.  I well recall someone calling the original King Kong “campy,” and Harryhausen explaining with strained patience that acting, screenwriting and special effects techniques do change, but that in no way negates the quality of the work.  (I often have the feeling that, to many people, anything made without irony is “camp” – a particularly virulent intellectual conceit that diminishes what’s left of our critical faculty.)

Harryhausen was no mean draughtsman, and drew the storyboards for all of his films, as well as making various drawings of fantastic and science fiction images for his own amusement.

Harryhausen Concept Art

For those who wish to sample the best of Harryhausen, below are your correspondent’s five favorite Harryhausen films, along with one bonus picture.  All of them are available on DVD, at your local library, or on Netflix.  See one or all of them – you will not be disappointed.

Mighty Joe Young (1949) was made in collaboration with Harryhausen’s mentor, the great stop motion animator Willis O’Brien (1886-1962), the brilliant special effects pioneer who created King Kong.  Mighty Joe Young was produced by the same team that had created Kong 16 years earlier, and there is a similar vibe to the film, though Mighty Joe Young is a much gentler story with a happy ending.  In short, a producer (played by King Kong alum Robert Armstrong) comes to Africa looking for attractions, only to find an enormous ape that has been raised by a young girl (Terry Moore).  He takes girl and ape back to New York, where poor Joe performs in various seedy nightclubs.  Of course, Joe goes on a rampage, and, after the city issues an order of extermination, the producer, girl, and their cowboy friend (Ben Johnson in his first film role -- I kid you not), plot to get him back to Africa.  The dazzling finale has Joe rescuing children from a burning orphanage.  I know how this all sounds, but … trust me.  It is a spectacular and remarkable moving movie. 

Loosely (very loosely!) adapted from a short story by Harryhausen’s friend, Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) was the  first live-action film to feature a giant monster awakened or brought about by an atomic bomb detonation to attack a major city.  The Beast was a tremendous commercial success, spawning an entire genre of giant monster films, including Gorgo (1961), Godzilla (1954), and Them! (1954). In brief: atomic testing awakens a long-dormant prehistoric beast frozen in the Artic Circle.  The monster makes its way to New York, and is finally killed within the framework of the rollercoaster at Coney Island.  For this film, Harryhausen created his own dinosaur, the Rhedosaurus, and it is an incredible conception.  At one moment, the beast knocks down a Manhattan building and the dust rises around him.  It’s a throw-away moment, but it’s a moment filled with magic.

With 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), Harryhausen once again creates his own creature, the Ymir, a denizen of Venus.  When a US spaceship on a secret mission from Venus crash lands off the coast of Italy, an egg with an embryonic alien washes ashore.  Growing at an alarming rate, the Ymir escapes and wreaks havoc amongst the ruins of Rome.  Tremendous visuals and great fun.

Many consider Jason and the Argonauts (1963), where Harryhausen was associate producer as well as the master of visual effects, to be his masterpiece.  Retelling the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, Harryhausen pulls out all of the stops, animating giant statues, many-headed snakes and his great achievement, a sword fight among Jason and his comrades with an army of skeletons.  I was fortunate enough to see this in the ruins of the great picture palace, Loew’s Jersey City, with Harryhausen in attendance.  The film is a great crowd-pleaser, and I strongly recommend you watch it with a young person to appreciate the full effect.

Jason Concept Art

My personal favorite Harryhausen film is First Men in the Moon (1964), where he again served as associate producer and special effects artist.  This film is an adaptation of the 1901 novel by H. G. Wells, with a screenplay by science fiction veteran Nigel Kneale.  The film opens with a breath-taking conceit: contemporary (1960s) astronauts land on the moon, only to find evidence of a prior visitation … made during the Victorian era!  Representatives from NASA and the media descend upon an aging, frail rascal currently residing in a nursing home, who details in flashback how he got there first, more than 60 years earlier.  For this film, Harryhausen animated the insect like Moon men, giant caterpillar-like Moon calves, and the Great Luna – the controlling intelligence of the planet.  The film is whimsical, thrilling, spectacular and sweetly nostalgic.  It is, in short, a masterpiece.  If you only see one Harryhausen film, make it First Men in the Moon.

One to grow on – though not a “good” film in the traditional sense, I have a remarkable affection for The Valley of Gwangi (1969), another film he produced as well as led the special effects effort.  Gwangi was originally planned as a vehicle for his mentor, Willis O’Brien.  How to describe Gwangi?  Well … cowboys in the Old West find a lost valley, complete with the last surviving dinosaurs.  They capture an Allosaurus and bring it back to tour in a Wild West Show … in short, we have King Kong in the Old West.  I find the mix of cowboys, show business and dinosaurs to be too delicious to miss, and Gwangi ends up in my viewing queue every couple of years.  The film climaxes with a breath-taking tussle between Gwangi and a circus elephant – and includes some of Harryhausen’s finest work.

We are all diminished by the loss of Ray Harryhausen, but his works remains to lighten up the dark corners of our imagination.

The King of Skull Island

The famed explorer and filmmaker stood before a theater of First Nighters and New York sophisticates and said, Ladies and gentlemen, I'm here tonight to tell you a very strange story — a story so strange that no one will believe it — but, ladies and gentlemen, seeing is believing. And we — my partners and I — have brought back the living proof of our adventure, an adventure in which twelve of our party met horrible death. And now, ladies and gentlemen, before I tell you any more, I'm going to show you the greatest thing your eyes have ever beheld. He was a king and a god in the world he knew, but now he comes to civilization merely a captive — a show to gratify your curiosity. Ladies and gentlemen, look at Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World.

March marks the 80^th Anniversary of one of the greatest American films ever made, King Kong.  Though that comment might drive more elitist cineastes up the wall (where they belong), it is an incontrovertible fact.  Indeed, Kong is not only a great American film, but perhaps one of the most iconic, with a closing sequence that has entered into myth and has become part of our folklore.

For readers who have never had the privilege of seeing Kong, the story is simply this: world explorer and filmmaker Carl Denham sails to an uncharted island in the Dutch East Indies to make a film about whatever he finds there. With him are Ann Darrow, a down-on-her-luck actress, and Jack Driscoll, the tough first mate of Capt. Englehorn.  What they find is a primitive tribe, separated from the rest of the island by a gigantic wall.  The natives kidnap Ann to sacrifice her to their god – Kong, a 50 foot ape.  Denham, Driscoll and others breach the wall to rescue her, finding a lost world of dinosaurs.  Capturing Kong, they bring him back to New York, where he escapes.  Recapturing Ann once again, the great ape climbs the newly finished Empire State Building, where it fights for life against a squadron of biplanes.  Once the great Kong lies dead in a Manhattan street, Denham stands over the body and says, “Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty that killed the beast!”

Though set in a then-contemporary 1933, Kong is a portal into a lost world in more ways than one.  Much of it takes place in a now vanished Manhattan peopled by wisecracking operators who speak in a particularly 30s American patios.  The dialog, by James Ashmore Creelman (1894-1941), who would commit suicide by jumping from a building, and Ruth Rose (1891-1978), crackled with an electrical energy often found in Depression-era films.  Its signature note is a combination of sentiment and cynicism and is a delight to hear.

The middle third of the film takes place on the remote Skull Island, home of the last of the dinosaurs.  The world of 1933 was a much larger place than it is today; there were many uncharted islands, and great portions of many continents were still unknown (or largely unknown) by the western world.  The notion in 1933 that one could head out into a wide-world full of the unknown and adventure was not beyond the realm of possibility.  (By the end of World War II, most of the world would not only be successfully mapped, but also closed off for various political reasons.)

To create King Kong, the filmmakers turned to Willis O’Brien (1886-1952), who created Kong and the dinosaurs through a process called stop motion animation.  Kong was, in reality, a puppet about 18 inches tall.  It was a metal, articulated skeleton that could be posed in different positions, covered in rubber, and the rubber covered in rabbit fur.  O’Brien would then position Kong, shoot one frame, re-position him, shoot one frame, and on and on and on.  The final result is that Kong would move with a lifelike grace.  The special effects for Kong are very special indeed, and 80 years later they have not lost their ability to enchant.  (In fact, I much prefer stop motion to the current CGI type of effect; stop motion always seemed to have a touch of the fantastic, and what would Kong be without that?)

For me, one of the most fascinating things about King Kong is how much of it is based on the experiences of the two men who co-directed the film: Merian C. Cooper (1893-1973) and Ernest B. Schoedsack (1893–1979).  Both were globetrotting adventurers with enough exotic experiences to put Indiana Jones to shame, tramping through Siam, Persia, Abyssinia, and the Malaysian Archipelago.  The film’s two protagonists – filmmaker Carl Denham and sailor Jack Driscoll – are actually stand-ins for the real-life filmmakers; Robert Armstrong (1890-1973), who played Denham, looked remarkably like Cooper, and Bruce Cabot (1904-1972), who played Driscoll, resembled Schoedsack.  Cooper stayed active in aviation (and was one of the founders of Pan Am) and motion pictures, working to develop the process known as Cinerama.  Sadly, he spent his declining years a rabid McCarthyite, looking for Reds in every corner of American life.  Oddly, Cooper and Armstrong would die within 16 hours of each other.  Schoedsack continued to direct, but recurring vision problems curtailed his career.  (Screenwriter Ruth Rose was also Mrs. Schoedsack.)

The genius of Kong is not just in its conception, but in its execution.  The first line in the film sets the action and starts racing to its conclusion.  It is exciting and spectacular without ever being flabby or self-indulgent; it is mythic and larger than life without ever losing the sentiment at its core.  In addition to Armstrong and Cabot, the film is wonderfully embellished by a touching and vulnerable performance by Fay Wray as Ann Darrow (1907-2004); when she died at age 96, the Empire State Building dimmed its lights for 15 minutes.

Kong would be remade twice: once disastrously in 1976 and again, with mixed results, in 2005 by director Peter Jackson.  Neither is a patch on the original.  (It had long been my dream that animator William Joyce would remake the film; perhaps some day...)

King Kong is everything to which today’s blockbusters aspire, but seldom achieve.  It’s spectacular, filled with stunning special effects, great performances, smart, funny, mythic, exciting and heartbreaking.  It is, in short, everything a movie should be.