1957 - 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH on Blu Ray

Ray Harryhausen reworks King Kong again but this time the film is set in Rome and the monster climbs to the top of the Colosseum before it's shot down.

This is another film made early in the career of Harryhausen who demonstrated what a talented special effects artist and technician could do on a low budget. 

 

 B movie terrritory for the most part. The film is enjoyable and doesn't push it's luck by running too long. This film is a lot more fun than a lot of the more "A" production science fiction films.

82 minutes written by Bob Williams and Christopher Knopf.

1964 - FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, a Ray Harryhausen film with plot and characters for a change.

Ray Harryhausen's producer Charles H. Schneer purchased H. G. Welles novel of a trip to the moon and I will assume was probably responsible for hiring the excellent screenwriter Nigel Kneale to adapt the book.  Kneale added a very clever modern prologue and epilogue to the the film and even fleshed out the characters which included the completely unnecessary love interest.  The end result was a very good science fiction film with a lot of British humor and charm.

The cast was an unusually good one with Edward Judd and a very eccentric Lionel Jefferies as the lead characters along with American actor Martha Hyer who is not too bad in the typical heroine role.  Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves without letting the special effects get in the way

There actually aren't a lot of the famous Harryhausen animated special effects in this film.  There was no way he could have animated the dozens and dozens of Selenites that live inside the moon.  Still, the models and miniatures are extremely well done and the set design primarily done by Harryhausen is quite impressive.  The music by Laurie Johnson is effective and captures the proper Victorian mood of this film.

First Men IN the Moon is kind of a forgotten film classic in the science fiction/fantasy genre.

103 minutes.

1958 - THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, children's fantasy with some sick stuff thrown in for fun

An acknowledged classic from Ray Harryhausen, his first film in color which was not a film stock he was anxious to work in since he had perfected his technique of merging previously photographed live action with his stop motion animation monster in black and white.

Watching the film last week, a lot of the shots do look a little rough particularly during the famous skeleton fight sequence where Sindbad's action clearly looks like a rear projection screen fighting a more substantial monster. 

Still a good film overall, the monsters look pretty impressive and have lots of that famous personality in their animation that Ray Harryhausen was known for.  The acting is probably what it should be for a children's fantasy film.  Sinbad played by Kerwin Matthews is a classic true blue hero in the traditional sense, the evil magician played by Torin Thacher is just about perfect with just enough larger than life acting in his performance without going completely over the top.

The director was Nathan Juran, whose credits were pretty ordinary as he straddled between directing unimpressive films and TV shows throughout his career.  Somehow Juran always managed to crank it up a notch when he worked with Harryhausen, it was like he understood how to integrate the special effects in the Harryhausen films he worked on.

Ray Harryhausen and his producer Charles H. Schneer managed to get the composer Bernard Herrmann to score the film.  Apparently the always very crabby Herrmann watched a very beat up work print of the film on a movieola, not the best condition to see the film and signed on. The film's fantasy aspects must have appealed to him and gave him a chance to indulge himself with some of his unusual musical arrangements.

What jumped out at me on this viewing were the number of sick touches that Harryhausen stuck into the film.  The dance of the Cobra Woman ends up with her own snake tail trying to strangle her.  The Cyclops captures Sinbad's men and cooks them like they were on a rotisserie, a very funny joke since rotisserie grilling was all the rage in 50's suburban households. 

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is a very entertaining film in the fantasy genre even after 40 years.

88 minutes, written by Kenneth Kolb.