Ray Harryhausen's Best Special Effects

If you've ever thrilled to the cinematic sight of an alien invasion, a giant monster rampaging through a city, or some fantastic, impossible creature doing battle with an intrepid hero, you can thank Ray Harryhausen. One of Hollywood's greatest effects wizards, Harryhausen grew up experimenting with stop-motion in a makeshift studio in his parents garage. The future legend then had the good fortune of meeting his idol, Willis O'Brien of The Lost World and King Kong fame. The encounter inspired Harryhausen to enroll in the University of Southern California, where he honed his skills and began developing a technique that would come to fruition years later.

Harryhausen would call this technique "Dynamation," by which animated models would appear to interact with live-action characters and backgrounds. Harryhausen toiled away on several short films throughout the '40s, but by the end of that decade, O'Brien would call him up to the big leagues, launching a storied career. Harryhausen is responsible for some of sci-fi and horror's greatest claymation monsters, and many of his effects still hold up for modern audiences. So today, we're honoring this father of modern visual effects by taking a look at Ray Harryhausen's greatest cinematic achievements.

See if this sounds familiar. In a remote area of the sea, an underwater nuclear test awakens a giant, prehistoric monster. Even as it begins making its way along the coast, wreaking destruction in its wake, witnesses to this monstrosity are laughed at ... until the creature makes landfall, devastating a major city and beating back the military with its breath of nuclear fire. Things look grim until a novel solution is devised to stop the monster and save the populace.

If this sounds like the plot of the 1954 Japanese classic Godzilla, well, it is, but the makers of that film were inspired (heavily inspired, one might say) by 1953's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, a jaw-dropping showcase for Ray Harryhausen's detailed models and ingeniously staged monster attacks. While some critics of the time weren't blown away by the flick's story, none could deny its visual impact, as it was simply unlike anything that had been seen onscreen at the time. 

In a write-up for trade magazine Variety, legendary critic and Hollywood journalist Hy Hollinger wrote, "Producers have created a prehistoric monster that'll make Kong seem like a chimpanzee. ... The sight of a beast stalking through Gotham's downtown streets is awesome." Hollinger would then go on to say, "Special credit should go to Ray Harryhausen for the socko technical effects, including the beast itself and the destruction of buildings as the monster causes a serious panic in lower Manhattan."

If you were blown away by Independence Day in 1996, then you have some idea of how moviegoers responded four decades earlier to 1956's Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, which utilized Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion wizardry to portray scenes of destruction that were absolutely shocking to '50s audiences. While there was some traditional model work on display, Harryhausen mostly animated the saucers themselves, not to mention the tumbling bricks as the UFOs blasted and crashed into iconic Washington D.C. landmarks like the Capitol dome and the Washington Monument.

As you might assume, the animator's special effects were widely regarded to be the movie's main attraction. According to Variety's review, "[Earth vs. the Flying Saucers] does a satisfactory job of entertaining in the science fiction class. The technical effects created by Ray Harryhausen come off excellently ... adding the required out-of-this-world visual touch to the screenplay." While it might seem a little quaint to modern eyes, try watching the film through a 1950s lens, and we guarantee you'll be blown away by the sci-fi spectacle.

It all came together for Harryhausen on 1958's The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, his first color feature and the first to actually advertise his process as "Dynamation." Having grown a bit weary of creating giant monsters to destroy his favorite cities, the animator decided to take on the mythological figure of Sinbad the sailor, which allowed for him to bring all sorts of fantastic creations to life, according to Turner Classic Movies.

The plot involves a quest by the titular character to retrieve a special ingredient that will reverse a magic spell cast upon a princess, but it's pretty much just a loose framework upon which Harryhausen and screenwriter Kenneth Kolb hung one jaw-dropping action sequence after another. A giant Cyclops, a fearsome Roc, and a giant dragon are all part of the proceedings, but the pièce de résistance is an extended sword fight between Sinbad and a reanimated skeleton, a degree of close-quarters interaction between animated creation and actor that blew audiences away. 

Thanks to these incredible sequences, Variety wrote in a glowing review, "This isn't the sort of film in which performances matter much. It's primarily entertainment for the eye, and the action moves swiftly and almost without interruption. Ray Harryhausen, who was responsible for visual effects, emerges as the hero of this piece."

Ray Harryhausen's first dip into the waters of Greek mythology came with 1963's Jason and the Argonauts. Here, the animator was given his biggest budget yet. According to The Guardian, the flick cost $3 million to produce, which was virtually unheard of at the time. Of course, it all majorly paid off, as Harryhausen put every dollar up on the screen, reaching new levels of intricacy with his fantastic models, such as the multi-headed Hydra and Talos, a giant metal statue that comes to life and menaces Jason and his men.

The centerpiece of the film, though, is an all-out brawl between Jason and a whole phalanx of sword-wielding skeletons. According to the Los Angeles Times, Harryhausen revealed that the sequence was shot on location in Greece using stunt performers. He and his staff then spent nearly five months working on it in post, a significant portion of the movie's lengthy two-year post-production period. Sure, the Hydra is an impressively detailed model, and the sequence featuring the beast might've been the highlight of another film, but Jason and the Argonauts' skeleton fight has become the stuff of legend, as well as one of Harryhausen's most fondly remembered set pieces.

As the 1960s wore down, so did the career of Ray Harryhausen, who fielded only two features during the '70s. As it turns out, both were sequels to one of his greatest works, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. The second installment in the trilogy, 1973's The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, continued the story of the mythological sailor, and while it featured expertly animated renditions of plenty of fanciful creatures such as griffins and centaurs, it's best remembered for one of Harryhausen's most masterful set pieces. 

Incorporating different elements from his work on The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts, the great animator put together a lengthy sequence in which a towering stone statue of Kali — a six-armed Hindu goddess — comes to life, wielding six blades against a group of terrified opponents. The sequence featured some of Harryhausen's smoothest animation ever, not to mention near-seamless integration of the stomping, slashing behemoth with its live-action counterparts. In other words, it was the fullest realization yet of the promise of "Dynamation." But the '70s were ushering in a new generation of special effects artists with a whole new set of modern tools at their disposal, and within a decade, stop-motion would become all but obsolete. 

Ray Harryhausen's final film, 1981's Clash of the Titans is one of the most memorable fantasy films of all time. It tells the story of heroic Perseus (Harry Hamlin), the grandson of Zeus, and his quest to save the beautiful princess Andromeda (Judi Bowker) from the machinations of the evil Calibos (Neil McCarthy) and his eventual sacrifice to the fearsome sea monster known as the Kraken. Harryhausen pulled out all the stops for the film, bringing such mythological creatures as the winged Pegasus, the hideous Medusa (with a head full of writhing snakes for hair), and the Kraken itself to vivid life. 

Released the same weekend as runaway smash Raiders of the Lost Ark, Clash of the Titans still managed to clean up at the box office. Internationally, it was the 12th highest-grossing film of a year that also included such hits as Superman II, An American Werewolf in London, and the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only. In his glowing review of the film, legendary critic Roger Ebert praised the film as "a grand and glorious romantic adventure," and he made sure to give credit where it was due. 

"The real star of the movie ... is Ray Harryhausen, who has worked more than 40 years as a creator of special effects," Ebert wrote. "He uses combinations of animation, miniatures, optical tricks, and multiple images to put humans into the same movie frames as the most fantastical creatures of legend. ... Clash of the Titans is his masterwork."