Review of Jason and the Argonauts (1963) by Rob F — 26 Aug 2008

Probably Harryhausen's best film, and his personal favorite. A pretty good story and the most stunning stop motion work ever done. Ray pulled out every skill he had to get this film finished. Just the sequence with Jason and his men fighting the seven skeletons took him over three months to finish, sometimes only shooting as little as twelve frames a day. Take into account manipulating seven separate skeletons per frame, plus aligning them with the rear projected live action figures. Mind boggling to say the least.

The hydra with its seven heads was also a long and arduous task to animate. Ray remarked on how the phone would sometimes ring when he was doing the hydra animation and he would forget which head was going up or down. But it all worked in the end.

Also, in the Talos sequence he had to purposely do what he had practiced his whole career not to do, make the animation jerky in order to simulate the movement of a bronze giant. When Jason opens the heel of Talos in order to drain his life giving ichor the â??liquidâ?? flowing from his heel is actually cellophane moved frame by frame from a roll, animated to look like liquid, another example of his practicality in solving animation problems simply.

The skeleton's armatures were machined by Ray's father, six of them actually, as Ray used his old skeleton from Sinbad as the seventh one. Ray covered them with a mixture of cotton and liquid latex to simulate the bone and they still look as good now as they did then. I had the opportunity to hold and move one of them in the 90's and it still worked perfectly.

Also, the voice of Todd Armstrong ( Jason ) was recorded over by another actor as his voice didn't fit the part.

In the 1980's Ray had wanted to do a film called Force of the Trojans after Clash of the Titans. It would have featured a whole new slew of mythical creatures and shared some similarities with Jason.

But it didn't work out and Ray decided it was time to retire at age 67. Now at age 88 he is back in the fray with more film projects in the works and is dabbling with making an unrealized movie his mentor, Willis O'Brien was going to do after 1933's King Kong, The War Eagles.