Sunday, June 9, 2013

1981 - CLASH OF THE TITANS, Ray Harryhausen's last film.


Ray Harryhausen's last film and in a lot of ways this is one of the last films to be made with "old fashioned"  Hollywood style special effects.  Star Wars essentially killed this type of film.

A very good print of this film shows the separation of Harryhausen's special effects and the live action footage shot usually on location.  Frankly at times the blending of the two films looks mighty bad.  Harryhausen's black and white films always seemed to match the two separate pieces of film together a lot smoother. 


For a fantasy film, the producer Charles H. Schneer was able to rope quite a few "distinguished" British actors like, Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Claire Bloom and Susan Fleetwood.  The film also contains some odd shots of female nudity which was extremely atypical for these films.

Harryhausen retired after this film mostly due to "repetitive strain injury" and Hollywood's lack of interest in 3-D animation.  Clash of the Titans is fun to watch and it does have a couple of outstanding sequences.  Could have really done without the mechanical owl Bubo.

118 minutes.

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