Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
Magical movies
Tales of vintage cinema
“For me the cinema i s e s s e n t i a l l y for entertainment, not for sending depressing messages; I cant understand why people want to pay good money to look into a garbage can.”
Those were the wise words of the undisputed magician of the movies, Ray Harryhausen.
What Walt Disney was to the animated cartoon, Harryhausen was to stop motion animation.
A master of special effects long before computer-generated graphics, his fantastic creature creations were handcrafted, sculpted and painted, and when integrated into real locations with live actors, the results were sheer spellbinding movie magic.
Ray was 13 when he saw the original version of King Kong in 1933; in his own words he was “never the same”.
The classic flick, with special effects by Willis H O’Brien, inspired the youngster to become a pioneer in stop motion animation using threedimensional models and launched him on a lifetime career that saw him inspire Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and many more artists in the genre of cinema fantastic.
I was immediately captivated by the world of Harryhausen. The year was 1959 when two of my childhood pals, Maureen and Rae Sutherland from Gartlea, had just returned from a brief summer holiday in Perth.
The two sisters were brimming with excitement, unable to sustain their elation about a new Technicolor movie they had seen called The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
I listened, wide- eyed with wonder, as they described the amazing creatures: a 50-foot oneeyed Cyclops; a fire- breathing Dragon; the Snake Lady; and two-headed giant Roc Bird.
The movie saw a 1958 release in America, but it would be seven months before it opened at the New Cinema in Airdrie’s Broomknoll Street for six days, with a western called The Hard
Man as the supporting feature.
What a thrilling and exciting cinematic experience it was. Unforgettably promoted as “The Eighth Wonder Of The Screen”, audiences had never seen anything quite like it before.
The marvellous special effects and giant creatures were visualised through a new and innovative optical process known as “Dynamation”, created by Harryhausen to avoid confusion with animated cartoons.
The movie was a huge critical and box office hit, the sleeper of the year, and what we would call a blockbuster today.
When presenting Harryhausen with an Academy Award finally honouring his contribution to the industry, Tom Hanks said: “Some say Casablanca or Citizen Kane. I say Jason and the Argonauts is the greatest film ever made!”
Jason and the Argonauts is considered to be the quintessential Harryhausen movie, showcasing the 300-foot bronze statue Talos, the greedy Harpies, the seven-headed Hydra and eight skeletons armed with swords and shields.
Taking nearly two years to complete, the classic Greek mythology movie was released in the summer of 1963.
It was a sensation and the most talked about picture when it opened at Airdrie’s Pavilion cinema in August of that year.
On the same programme was the supporting feature Siege of the Saxons, billed as a “giant family, all-colour programme”.
For admission costing a few shillings, audiences were treated to another Harryhausen cinema masterpiece created by the ultimate showman.
As a movie-stricken youngster, I had no idea that one day I would form an easy-going relationship with the great man himself.
In 1978 I was contracted by the West Australian Education Department to give a series of lectures on film studies; my first choice of subject was the films of Ray Harryhausen.
I wrote to him outlining my keen interest and high enthusiasm for his work, detailing my lecture proposals, explaining that I lacked visual material to illustrate the lessons.
What a thrill it was a few weeks later to receive an air mail parcel containing brilliant posters, stills and production data from many of his films that he had authorised Columbia Pictures to release to me; to this day I treasure and preserve this memorabilia.
In January 1980, I was a guest of the Rank Organisation on a visit to Pinewood Studios in England and my jaw dropped when I discovered that Harryhausen was resident at the studio, completing special effects on Clash of the Titans, which regretfully would be his swan song in movies.
Following an introduction to him in the studio dining room, Harryhausen invited me to visit his house in London in what was one of the most memorable evenings of my life.
I met his lovely wife Diane and got to hold the stop motion model of Medusa from Clash of the Titans.
Harryhausen was 92 when he died on May 7, 2013, but the legacy of his work will live forever thanks to the preservation and restoration potential of modern digital technology.