+Angus Lamont (AnimateAngus) That's one of the reasons why I like the new Star Wars...The only time thy use CGI is for the space scenes, the rest is practical!
+Will Cooke (BaronFilms) That's not actually true. However, the fact that so many people didn't realise (and I include myself in this) shows both the quality of much of the CGI and the skill with which it was used.
I'm not ashamed to admit that when my media teacher blurted out that Ray Harryhausen had just died back in 2013, I was the only one in the class to shed a few tears for his passing, he brought a wonderful spectrum of monster beauty to my childhood and gave me a respect for stop-motion that I still hold dear to this day. Clash of the titans was my first and will always be my favourite. However I love all the other films on this list as well.
I had the opportunity to meet Ray twice at the Monsters In Motion store in LA. He was very approachable and would explain how he did his effects. I own all his movies and I have a large collection of his monsters in statue and figure foam. Thanks for posting this tribute.
@@joaomotta9652 Sorry it took so long to answer. I am cleaning out my mail and I just saw your question. No I meant Statues, resin model kits and figures. Like from X-Plus, FYI if you live in Northern California near San Francisco at he Balboa Theater. It is called the Dynamation Celebration on March 1-3 2019. There will be vendors selling collectible items.
When I was a child I was terrified of skeletons, and one day the movie came on TV. Dad had me watch it, and when the skeletons came up, he said, "Look, they can be defeated!" He then gave me a pink plastic She-Ra sword I kept on the dresser near my bed in case we were attacked at night. I haven't thought of that in years!
+Papallion Sunspell Your comment is too good to get answers on youtube. I, myself, remember when me and my little five years old sister saw the same movie on TV. I was already a horror fan, and because of this movie my sister at last began to love skeletons and monsters. After that we had the interest for the horror genre together!
Over the years, as we get old, we get more cynical, start gravitating towards certain groups and sympathies. I've looked down on people for certain habits, despised others over politics, etc. But, an appreciation of Ray Harryhausen films takes us back to a more innocent time in our development. A Harryhausen fan is a brother/sister no matter what.
I saw Mr Harryhausen at a convention in Dallas several years ago. He was very approachable and would talk to his fans in the lobby of the hotel hosting the convention for hours and then go to the convention and talk to thousands more. He was a very sweet man and a genius as well.
Absolutely bang on the nail with "Jason and the Argonauts". The film must've looked amazing when it first came out in cinemas, and even today the skeletons look good. Harryhausen understood that it's not simply about creating an effect, but how it's used within the film.
These movies made me want to grow up to be the evil sorcerer. Abducting hot princesses, raising armies of skeletons, taming giant monsters and kicking it in a fortress of darkness, generally living the dream.
Hmmm, I always wanted to be Ernst Stavro Blofeld, not James Bond. I thought, having lethal femme fatales at my side, hijacking nuclear rockets, plotting to conquer the world, kicking it in a secret island lair, generally living the dream.
Brandon, you done a fine tribute to one of the greatest film makers in film history. I can't argue with any of the pics on the list since I would have made the same choices. R.I.P. RH. 😞
Brandon, Ray thought the iguana was a good idea. He believed that if you showed an audience something familiar, something real, they would believe the rest of the film.
Thanks for rationalizing my acceptance of Bubo in Clash Of The Titans. I had thought it was just that I was the perfect age to be blown away by that movie and accept it at face value. Still one of my faves. :)
Yes, there was Talos, and Hephaestus' robot servants. So yeah, robots totally belong in Greek mythology. Before they were science, before they were science fiction, mechanical humans and beasts were mythology!
@@LB030377 The Antikithera Mechanism certainly makes it plausible that the ancient Greeks were familiar with the concept of complex mechanics; things like our idea of androids such as Talos were probably not a huge leap away.
I never once thought of R2D2 when I saw Bubo. Thats some critics ways of writing him off, but I loved the little guy and he fit in the film cause it was a fricken fantasy film for God's sake!
True story: Harryhausen's skeletons are the reason why I automatically favor any undead faction in any fantasy video game I come across. (Unless it's an undead faction which - for some reason - does not have enough skeletons.)
@@toyohimeyeswatatsuki6917 He probably thought "Yeah elephant are the biggest land-dwelling animals nowadays ; but that b*tch ain't no match for my *inserts Ray Harryhaussen's monster of your choice*
To me Ray is a legend in the world of monster effects. The work he did on many of the films shown here is top of the line even today when compared to some of the crap that's cgi. A great loss when he passed. If I remember correctly he did a movie that had a giant octopus in it. That has to be my favorite simply because it held one small mistake that no one caught ( or at least i didn't ) and that it only had 7 arms from the start but was filmed and portrayed in a way that you never new. Thanks for the tribute to a well deserved legend!
My favourite Harryhausen flicks are The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and The Valley of Gwangi. I've seen quite a few of Ray's puppets in real life and they are starting to look a bit worse for wear with the latex deteriorating. The bronzes he made, before he passed away, of his famous monsters are absolutely superb though.
Of course is it arguably is his best work madussa was a masterpiece how this guy has it so far up the list baffels me. My personal favorite is 7th voyage
While I love the usual snark of your videos, its really nice to see one that is 100% genuine. I've been a huge Harryhausen fan since I saw Clash of the Titans as a kid.
Having recently re-watched Jason and the Argonauts I agree with the choice of 'Best Monster'. Talos is a bit like a terminator, metallic and remorseless.
This is a great tribute to one of the best special effects guys of his day. Thanks for providing information that answered a question I had pondered for over a decade. I saw the rampage and cathedral scene from the Valley of Gwangi while at a friend's house. I laughed so hard at the panicked townspeople who refused to go indoors that I forgot to ask the name of the movie. I have personally done two homages to Harryhausen's Medusa from Clash of the Titans, who is my favorite gorgon and Harryhausen character. Bravo, Brandon. Thanks again. I also REALLY love that artwork for this. Kudos to Enshohma.
I agree with just about everything on your list, but there's one big omission: First Men in the Moon (1964). The film has a good cast, with Edward Judd, Martha Hyer and a scene-stealing Lionel Jeffries as Dr. Cavor. Harryhausen creates a unique world on the moon, and his effects work is superb--the scene with the Grand Lunar is memorable indeed (though the Selenite workers are children in suits). The film has great pacing, good acting and an excellent score. I'm shocked it didn't make your list. You do great work, and I particularly enjoy your sarcastic commentary.
Awesome tribute, Brandon!! Golden Voyage contains my favourite line in all of cinema: (Spoken in a fake Arab accent): "Why do you pace the deck like a caged beast? For one who enjoys the hashish, you should be more at peace!" My friends at uni used to throw that one out regularly at appropriate moments of our formative years.
_The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms_ was definitely a major influence for _Godzilla_ , the main creative minds behind it were big fans of American monster films.
Brandon, excellent salute to Ray and his impressive body of work. I grew up watching his films and love to see scenes I have not viewed for years. My favorites, like yours, are Jason, Seventh Voyage, and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms which I have shown in my Survey of Cinema class I teach for ASU. It is remarkable to see such craftsmanship in The Beast when the budget was so limited: excellent work by Ray, a good solid score, good acting, and well directed. The beast wrecking New York and especially the death of the poor policeman is one of the great set pieces of monster films.
My first Ray Harryhaussen movie was The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad ; and boy did this movie blew my mind ! I discovered stop-motion animation years before with King Kong, so i was used to such kind of special-effects ; but i wasn't prepared for what i was about to see ! Long story short, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad still sits among my favorites movies, even though i only saw it once, more than a decade ago. He left a long-lasting impression on me ; and still to this day, i'm amazed by the quality of the special effects.
Awesome, man! Ray Harryhausen is one of my childhood heroes as well! It was sad that he passed away in 2013, but you did him justice with your tribute!
I have an odd array of favorite Harryhausen films: 1)First Men in the Moon 2)Mysterious Island 3)Valley of Gwangi 4)20 Million Miles to Earth 5)Mighty Joe Young 6)Jason and the Argonauts 7)7th Voyage of Sinbad 8)Earth vs. The Flying Saucers 9)Beast From 20,000 Fathoms 10)One Million Years BC I'm more of a sci-fi fan, which is why most of my favorites are his entries in that genre, plus Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are my favorite authors, so I had to put them in the top 2 slots :)
I LOVE his films soooo much! they where my faves when i was a kid, and i still love them. Honestly, his stop motion "monsters" like Talos, Medusa or the Cyclops are scary as s***. I don't know..that slow motion characteristic moovement makes them look so eery and otherwordly... My faves are jason and the argonauts and The golden Voyage of Simbad.
They deliberately make the bigger monsters move more slowly to account for size. Apparently these days in movies like Pacific Rim they have mathematical formula to do that accurately with the big GCI mechs and monsters but, I dunno, they look _too_ fast to me. Maybe it's because I grew up on Harryhausen monsters. Definitely agree that the somewhat odd stop-motion movements only make them stranger and that's part of the appeal. :)
I think it's because---consciously or unconsciously, his humanoid work skirts the Uncanny Valley. The deliberate movements and facial expressions set off some sort of "danger" signal.
Valley Of Gwangi was actually supposed to be a sequel to Kong! They originally made some test footage, but that wound up evolving into Mighty Joe Young...Small world, eh?
I notice similar themes pop up in Harryhausen's movies: the Golden Voyage homunculus is similar to the Jason harpies, the 7th Voyage cyclopes is kind of a cross between the Ymir and the Golden Voyage Centaur, the Kraken is like a cross between the Ymir and It Came From Beneath the Sea, sword-fighting skeletons appear in more than one of his movies, the Troglodyte from Eye of the Tiger is similar to the main villain in Clash as well as Golden Voyage Centaur, Ceratosaur vs Triceratops is like Gwangi vs Styracosaur, same pteranodon, etc.
the sindbad films draw me right back into my childhood.....good times....i remember how often i saw them, i loved the cylops the absolute most of them all.
When I was little I was such a fan of his work (still am today) that I sent him a letter telling him how much of an inspiration he was to me. I never had him write back which was very saddening to me since I assume that he never got to see my letter telling him how much his movies were meaningful to my childhood and so many other peoples childhood's. The impact he left on the movie industry was tremendous and nothing like it could be replicated ever again.
1: 50 i love that brandon can get real for a minute and talk about someone who he and many others including me had a ton of respect and admiration for, someone who is a film legend and inspired many modern day filmmakers and wannabe filmmakers like me, who still continue the craft of stop motion in its most basic form due mainly to budget, but also to keep it alive. I am glad brandon did something special to honor the entertainment legend that pretty much pioneered the first truly great special effects in movies.
THAT COULD BE!! Not many years before, Irwin Allen had done his remake of Willis O'Brien's "THE LOST WORLD", all with lizards. And "JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH" with James Mason also had lizards. It always cracked me up that my Mom took me to see "THE BIBLE: IN THE BEGINNING" and then about 6 months later, "ONE MILLION YEARS B.C.", 2 very-different views about ancient history.
This is a great tribute to a film legend, I haven't seen all these movies, but the ones I have have been immensely fun. And I completely agree with the top 3 choices, of the half dozen or so Harryhausen movies I've seen, those are easily my favorites, especially Jason and the Argonauts.
Ray was a friend of mine for exactely 25 years - and I KNOW that he would have loved your wonderful tribute very, very much. Thanks a lot and warmest regards from Germany!
I read that it was Harryhausen himself who decided on the Iguana as the first monster in "One Million Years B.C.". It was a tribute to the original Victor Mature/Carol Landis film that featured lizards dressed up as dinosaurs. Also, you notice the 2nd monster is a giant turtle, though stop-motion this time, and, finally, the 3rd monster seen is a dinosaur that only stop-motion could depict. Ray was trying to blur the line between real animal and stop-motion monster.
I have the honor of seeing All Ten Movies on your list,R.I.P to The Best There Is......The Best There Was.....And The BEST There Ever Will Be,Mr. Ray Harryhausen.You may be gone.............but your monsters will live on............. FOREVER.
I knew I liked the channel but when I stumbled across this I was sold. Ray was a fav of mine and saw a lot of he later movies in the cinema so he made me love monster movies. I had the honour to meet him once at an animators convention and I unfortunately went full on fan girl
Thank you for this respective retrospective. RH formed many of my childhood fantasy images and pulled me into his very idiosyncratic inventions. I doubt that anyone, before or since, marked special effects like he did.
Glad to see your love of Harryhausen. You asked for shares of memories of Ray and I have an amazing one. Ray came to Seattle in 1998 and gave some speeches and showed some of his movies. The first was a showing of Jason Of the Argonauts. He gave a few remarks and the lights dimmed to show the film and his wife sat next to me and he sat next to her. I got to overhear every time he made a comment to her about some part of the film.
I went to a sci-fi convention ages ago and Ray Harryhausen was a guest. His Q and A was great and I found myself walking down the stairs with him and we had a brief conversation. He was kind and generous with his knowledge. A great man who inspired great movies. Did I ever become the next stop-motion sensation? Nope. However as I age, I find myself recalling his words "Persevere and enjoy the journey. Do your best."
In a very short time (the last few hours) I have become a fan of your regular reviews of some of my favorite cult classics, and those I am now inspired to see. Those reviews feature your comedic snark and sarcasm, and added sound drops, cut scenes, and references are also well appreciated. I must say, however, that this is by far my favorite video. It's wonderful tribute to his work, and brought back a lot of happy memories. I may not agree with the order, but art, and what we consider favorites, are both subjective and instead of arguing, I appreciate the grounds you based your opinions on and your defense thereof. Thank you for making this.
The skeletons were so iconic, they were brought back in an episode of "Hercules - The Legendary Journeys" in the 90s! Herc and Jason and Iolus were forced to fight them once again. I thought it was a nice nod.
You totally rock. THANK YOU SO MUCH! I was honored to be able to hang with him and the rest of the Horrowood Brat Pack since the King Kong 50th anniversary celebration at Grauman's Chinese Theater. I have to stop myself here or this could go on for a very long stretch. FYI... Gwangi was an unrealized project from his mentor Willis O'Brian who helped Harryhausen snag a special effects Oscar for Mighty Joe Young. I won't get started on composer Bernard Herrmann... who I also love.
Well done Brandon Tenold. I agree with your list I just have Gwangi up higher in the list otherwise good job. I like you more this one time as being complementary. Just for this one time good job as a fair critic to Rays work
My oh my the man that possess them all made history in the making I love Ray Harryhuasen movies of course I have them all,I grow up watching black scorpion, sinbad, mighty Joe young,etc when did he passed away...oh my God! My he rest in peace...his movies will always be an inspiration to me.thanks for sharing brandon.
Brilliant, this is one of my favourites of your review shows...odd really as what I usually enjoy is your piss taking style but you pitched this right by showcasing your own love and respect for Ray Harryhausen as I am sure most people who have seen his work feel the same way and for those who haven't it leads the way to getting to know his work. I may have changed the order of these movies in the ranking slightly but that is a seriously minor quibble and really just a matter of preference. You have bought back a lot of good memories with this and I shall be watching my Harryhausen DVD's again very soon, thank you
Well done, sir! As a teenager in the late fifties and early sixties I saw many of these great RH movies! You are correct about the skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts! My friends and I were treated way beyond the 25 cents to enter the cinema! So glad I got to see these films on the big screen!!!
hey, I don't know if you've ever seen Gremlins 2 or not, but there is a shirt scene where two Gremlins (George & Lenny) are watching The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms & they both start laughing at the scene where the cop gets eaten by the Rhedosaurus, thought I should mention that
Wonderful tribute, Brandon. The first Ray Harryhausen film I can remember seeing was Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, on my Grandma's old 16-inch B & W TV. As I recall it scared the willies out of my 8-yr-old self. I was hooked on Harryhausen from the moment the Rhedosaurus climbed out of the Hudson onto that pier. ) That scene where the Beast snaps up one of New York's finest (though probably not brightest) like a Doberman scarfing down a liver treat is truly one for the ages. I agree that Jason and the Argonauts is hands down his greatest film, though. I was lucky enough to catch it on the big screen, multiple times (long story) in the late Seventies, and believe me, it was impressive. Too bad he didn't get a chance to do the effects for War of the Worlds -- that would have been awesome!
The Golden Voyages of Sinbad was the first film to really leave an impression on me as young child. I saw it at the theater on my birthday and was blown away. Crazy stop motion effects with the sword fight with the multi armed statue that comes to life and throw in the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in Caroline Munroe.
I'm 59 and grew up on Harryhausen's films, not on cable like Brandon but on American local broadcast tv in the 60's and 70's. The one that sticks with me the most is "Jason and the Argonauts" (1963) which features the battle with the gang of skeletons.
Hey Brandon...best one-man tribute to Ray I've seen. I'm also a huge Harryhausen fan. "Jason & the Argonauts" being my first big screen Harryhausen experience. Consider me subscribed, dude.
My sister and I once caught the end of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. The Kali sword fight and the Griffin versus the Centaur was one of the coolest things I remember watching on TV.
When kids today watch Jason and the Argonauts they have modern CGI as a reference for special effects and that clouds their appreciation. When I saw it as a 13 year old kid in 1963, there was nothing like it, Jason and the Argonauts is a remarkable film and I'm glad I had the experience of seeing it before modern CGI came into use.
Caroline Munro always makes things better. Mysterious Island will always be my personal favourite. I just really enjoy the characters and their interactions. The monsters are always important too of course but they don't overshadow the human characters either.
as a fellow cable tv and VHS kid, Ray Harryhausen was huge. As an Adult, and an art teacher, its crazy to think just how hard he worked. he really loved what he did.He is the reason stop motion animation still exists.
Thank you for this episode, very informative and entertaining. I'm a old guy in my 50s and Jason and the Argonauts was my first favorite movie. It remained my favorite for many years, still ranking in my top 10. Love that movie.
I love your video.❤️ It caught my eye because of the way you included yourself with Ray's monsters. I still watch many of his movies till this day. P. S. I'm 69 years old.
FYI, that music Brandon keeps using is the Main Theme to the 7th Voyage of Sinbad. I had to look it up. The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is my favorite Harryhausen movie. The ship's figurehead coming to life was the first of his effects that I saw and both it and the Hindu idol left a huge impression.
I always got excited when I saw one of his movies as a kid. I had no idea who he was, but when I got older and found out that he was behind so many of the movies I loved, I was amazed. He's one person I wish I could have worked with.
Me and my wife were both born in the late 80s, both grew up on Harryhausen movies, and Earth vs The Flying Saucers was a movie that her and her mom and sisters would always watch together.