Ray Harryhausen: Respect for the actor.

Monsters have always been at the corner of our imaginations, cuddled up in a gnarled personification of not only our fears but of our nature, our identity, our suffering, and our preoccupation with suffering. Good monsters the ones that truly terrify us as well as capture our imaginations- deal with this preoccupation with the shadows of the world and ourselves in the form of Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, and beyond. The job of the actors who played these cinematic monsters from stormed into our collective nightmares from the pages of literature, or the imaginations of filmmakers was not simply to imply or animate horror or terror, but to animate our human soul and the human soul from within these creatures as reflections of our own darkness. Physically and thematically they tell us as much about ourselves as they do themselves or our heroes. These motivations , perceptions, even the physical characteristics are what makes playing monsters such a powerful draw for actors as well as directors, writers, special effects, and other such artists and creators. Very rarely the two been married in one person, George Méliès, and Frank Oz, and one One of these practitioners as well as one of these greatest creative minds ever as it pertains to the creation of monsters was Ray Harryhausen. It was not just the imagination of the monsters themselves, but the detail not only in application, but function that made Harryhausen unique in his time. Alot of that thought process was no different than the one an actor goes through thinking about how to live in a character, how to embody their physicality, and to think about what motivations given them. Actors must live in their creations and make no mistake Harryhausen lives in his. Harryhausen never spoke to any desire to have been an actor, but the instincts are there just the same. He gave his alien saucers a flight pattern indicative of the life inside . He gives a bronze statue stiff movement and creaky sounds to give it the feel of life but trapped in a metal not made for human flexibility. Every Harryhausen creature had personality, every one had objectives, and every one had instincts, but here I just want to identify five of my faves and share not only why I loved them, but where the actor in this master craftsman shone through.

5. Prince Kassim (Sinbad and the eye of the Tiger)

“Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” is probably my least favorite of the Harryhausen projects directed or special effects managed, and Prince Kassim is not a monster, but rather a man put under a spell, but hell, I was under a spell too watching then and may very well still be under one now via some incredible work by Harryhausen . The arc of Kassims transformation ( he becomes more animal like as the movie goes on ) gives the movie a very unique version of the “ticking clock” and it really is something to watch stop motion from so many years ago (with nearly a one man crew of himself) do the work of creating a character whose movements and facial expressions begin to denote a growing vacancy, and loss of intelligence. Rage and beastial simplicity take the place of complex emotional cues, and acute personality traits. Its clear even before doing research on Harryhausen that he had done his research on how and these animals move, and interact. The complex gears in the face of Kassim's cursed new form allow the performance to be convincing, and the less he uses them the more it seems the human is taking on the form of his curse. It’s a recocurring theme in Harryhausen's work attention to detail and an actors sensibilities in concert to create uniquely empathetic characters that would provide the foundation for later creations like Jack Skellington and Coraline. In Eye of the Tiger it simply makes Kassim without a doubt the best part of the movie and far more interesting than anything the rest of the movie had to offer. By the time Kassim is transformed again to human form it makes little difference, we've already seen the best transformation and actor in the movie

4. “The Snake-Woman” (The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad)

The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad is arguably Harryhausen's best , the crown jewel of his achievements not only in the special effects work, but the film overall itself. It is a dedication to wonder, adventure and fun, in the same spirit as classics like “The Thief of Baghdad,” or “The Adventures of Robin Hood”. Bernard Herrmann's score rumbles and dazzles throughout each and every scene, scheme, conflict, and resolution providing temperature and temperament. Its a beautiful whimsical work of music by another master in Herrmann which lends weight to Harryhausen's belief that “the music was very important” that it was “Fifty percent of the success of a fantasy film, that heightened the emotion and made the whole thing bigger than life”. The acting dome by breathing actors is mostly missable much of it alerting you to the irksome white washing of the era, (though Torin Thatcher's scheming sorcerer “Sokurah” is the best villain featured in any of these films largely due to Thatchers wild eyed dedication to the spirit of the character though a visually pleasing histrionic performance which fits the overall scale of the movie) but this is a film about Harryhausen's abilities. In fact most of Harryhausen's films were really this more than anything else. As the movie hums along ( credit must be given to Nathan Jurans pacing which is magnificently brisk ) there are many Harryhausen delights to choose from, two of which seem to be the trial runs or prototypes for two of his most well known creature effects. A skeleton that fights Sinbad to the death, and my favorite of the film- The Snake lady. In order to charm the king at a celebration in which the sorcerer Sokurah wishes to gain some favor for a mission of his own, he throws a snake in a pot with a woman and using magic, bakes them together to create a unique Harryhausen creation that stands up even to later movie incarnations like the snake woman featured in Eddie Murphy's semi surreal magical comedy “The Golden Child”. The effects may be slightly more crude but again what Harryhausen understood was the power of the effect as a performer. The snake lady is part snake, part handmaiden one (The Handmaiden ) seems more than happy to be a part of Sokurah's act than the other, the two function more like siamese twins than some form of a hostile bodily takeover…at first. In this early conception we can see the groundwork laid for Sam Raimi's treatment of Doctor Octavious, in Spiderman 2. Indeed Raimi as well as mnay of his horror fantasy peers share ancestry with Ray. Harryhausen allows this conceptual interpretation of what this magic might look and feel like to invoke and inform the effects. This is not the stiffness of Talos the statue, or the stale vanity of Kassim, this is pure joy and a bit of ecstasy. The woman ( now part creature ) moves with immense flexibility. She caresses and careens, her hands and arms flailing and wiggling with exuberance and confidence, as she feels on and engorges herself in delight, which prevents her from paying attention to the mutiny of the new landlord in her body until her tail (the whole time acting in defiance of the act) reaches up from behind her and begins to choke her. Save for a few close-ups all of this is embodied by Harryhausen's craftsmanship. He uses a combination of the actresses face and his animated representation of it to give the dance the approximation of humanity, it runs surprisingly close and with clever editing even the aging of the technology disappears into the limbo of fantasy where the magic the viewer wants to see allows the erasure of any distraction from the fantasy. It’s the most elegant of Harryhausen's monsters and the most fun, pronounced once again by a impossibly complimentary score by Herrmann. Harryhausen recognizes this as a performance within a performance, and that effect needed to pronounce as well as announce the love of the dance, and the evil within the magic. These are separate bodies, and eventually one attacks the other. Harryhausen just as an actor does, uses the tools available to help aid him into the shape and craft a performance that wos not only thw Sultan , but us the audience and thus showcases Harryhausen's abilities as an actor just as well as a director.

3. “The Skeletons" (Jason and The Argonauts)

Perhaps the most famous of Harryhausen's films and arguably his most famous creation, the bewitched skeletons in “Jason and the Argonauts” are amongst the greatest special effect in movie history and count as one of it’s most memorable moments. Even by today’s standards they are something to behold. More than just an effect they are a feat of timing, choreography, and detail and desire for not truth but honesty. The fight with Jason and his soldiers is furious, and the soldiers with no dialogue, no back story, and only movement seem to relay a similar tale as those long dead ghosts in “Peter Jackson's adaptation of J.R.R Tolkein's “Return of the King”. Here for one last mission, resolute, hungry, and focused from beyond the grave on the one task, annihilation. When risen they still move like soldiers, in formation, in precise marching order, and under strict orders. They stand at the ready until their new captain orders them to kill. They fight with a fury, not finesse, there is no sense of valor or glory just a deadly myopia on the targetin front of them. The lack of intent, the purity and simplicity of their objective, the way Harryhausen plays them, they are in effect zombies some five years before we were all introduced to Romero's terrifying undead in “Night of the Living Dead". Harryhausen's approach to these characters was not to simply animate bones, but give each a distinctive personality and trait. There is no story in animated bones they are simply moving skeletons that exist to be a wonder in and of themselves which never has any quality of memory or memorable-ness, which is why no one really cared that much about the attacking “wights” in the Game of Thrones episode “The Children”. There is no animus there ,no holding of past memory of the body or its past, just the threat of an undead horde. When acting, the past is of great consideration, what might your body be like, what might it act like if raised undead? Jow might one be pulled, or how might they be slowed if only bones, these are the considerations of a mind concerned with bringing forth not only magic but some reminder of the human condition and its employment here means that of the varying incarnations of zombiedom I argue the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts amongst the best ever, because much of the inherent fear lies in the fact that they have the same laser focus, but carry the haunted memory of their military past , the creeping dead now equipped with martial ability…..Yeesh.

2. Kali (The Golden Voyage of Sinbad)

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad maybe a little underwhelming in comparison to favorite The Seventh voyage, though I think it boasts maybe the best Sinbad in John Philip it lacks the personality I feel some of the other Harryhausen works did, (such as 20 million miles to earth) but Kali is a defining creature of the film is also at the top of the list of Harryhausen's best performances. Kali is a ancient relic of a time even before Sinbad and crew arrive. She is awakened from a slumber and given life reanimated by evil. Harryhausen gives her movements that imply both a sense of surprise and wonder. A bit of restraint, and a performers sensibilities. She appears twice in the movie.. once to perform a dance, once to fight, and there is a clear difference in energy between them. When to dance, there is more energy, less thought. The statue seems more comfortable here. Here she is a performer, a thespian eager to engage with an audience. Its one of a few roles the “Exotic woman” played in films of the day, and even as the statuesque incarnation of a goddess her status is reduced to exotic charm and charmer. When to fight? the statue seems to be surprised as the swords appear in her hand, and though she fights easily, there is not the same vigor and relish as when you watch say the skeletons fight. This is not what Kali was here for it seems. Intentional or not this this seems to be a perversion of Kali's purpose, and a cursory reading of Kali in south Asian mythology proves as much. Kali is a warrior, she is not surprised in valor or by weapons, she is one in a certain fashion, but she is meant to destroy evil not work for it. As presented Koura the sorcerer is a foreign interlocutor, and externally so too is Harryhausen, foreign bodies that have possessed the goddess tainting her. It is all most interesting to me because of all Harryhausen's statuesque creations (Talos, The Kracken, and the statue of thetis in Clash of the titans) she has the most interesting story and there is a cultural clash, an orientalism, that seems to live contextually in the scene, and since Kali is one of the least discussed of Harryhausen's works, there is an air of mystery there that leaves her open for interpretation. Which is all the more fun. She is a technical wonder every bit as precise as the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts, and all the more dangerous as a warrior due to the height, weight, and limb advantage. She is further proof of the horror of being disembodied by way of foreign interference and that the most terrifying adversary is the most mysterious, and I think the one of the most representative of Harryhausen's instincts being of the sort that he just has a natural inclination towards understanding acting and building characters, by way of preparation or thought process. Even when he’s wrong.

1. Medusa (Clash of the Titans)

Medusa is one of the most appealing, controversial, and engrossing characters of any mythology, both as a monstrous figure and a representation of patriarchal disdain for womanhood as a consequence of our fear of their beguiling effect upon us. Harryhausen was nowhere near concerned with the latter, but within his own desire to make Medusa more dramatic and terrible, he unconsciously reinforces the latter. It makes his Medusa to this day the most aesthetically effective and the most philosophically interminable. Harryhausen properly noted that up until his Medusa in the 1981 film, she had been in movies depicted as a beautiful woman with snakes in her hair, this to Harryhausen's mind was not effective enough aesthetically, and from another perspective it could be argued previous representations were a half measure on what is unconsciously the root of male panic regarding feminine allure, anger, and power. What it produces in us, how we have reacted to it, and how we have depicted it historically. Harryhausen's Medusa is this terror personified, but she is not necessarily terrible. Even if he did not understand the realities that undercut the myth ( such as the fact that Medusa was raped by Poseidon) Medusa's rage is depicted in her face as not just the rage of a blind erratic Predator, and not just by the physicalscales, (which are a consequence of Athenas jealousy) but in her eyes. When she catches one of Perseus's guard with one of her arrows, and then sets upon him with her gaze Harryhausen gives her eyes an animated rage which if you understand her true story only but makes sense. In her opening reveal her silhouette rattles signaling her arrival as her shadow meanders, never making it above the halfway point of the wall upon which it is cast. Harryhausen gives her an actors life, a sense of the similar execution as one might have noted in the featurette on Benedict Cumberbatch's motion capture performance of Smaug the dragon in Peter Jackson's the Hobbit, ( itself no doubt influnced in many ways by the very same scene) except Medusa is not interested in conversation in the least. She is accursed, doomed, indicted by men to serve a petrified existence in the ruins of mens imaginations. She has to propel herself across the floor by dragging the rest of her body in a low crawl, slithering rather than walking upright. Once again we see snakes and women connected in mythology, in Christianity the story goes a snake convinced Eve, who convinced Adam to disobey God, the implication being she used her feminine wiles. In the Medusa mythos she is punished for much of the same, even the exorcism of rape leaves Medusa as a woman attacked and cursed for merely being the object of philandering gods affections. The mythology of Medusa is the type of demeaning punishment that could only cause rage, and produce terror, and her eyes reflect that terror back at us, Harryhausen ensures it. Harryhausen only did it simply because he wanted her to appear more snake-like, even as he admitted shes another one he felt for, but it is this intersection of empathy and detail that gives actors their power and like many long standing performances construced in the faithful attention to building characters, they take on a life of their own in discourse and criticism. The idea is to animate them to have an approach that seeks to give any person or living being a sense of life through objective and motivations the audience can read and react to. Harryhausen is meticulous about this. Each detail is meant to give the character more life, and to provide the audience with similar sense of foreboding terror as the protagonist., but most importantly to humanize them. A key to understanding Harryhausen's approach is understanding he abhorred the idea that any one would think he was making horror films, and that he empathized with monsters deeply, by way of the effect King Kong had on him. He said he felt sorry for Kong even after the knowledge that he had leveled New York City in the movie that inspired him to do his work. He spoke of something pitiable in the eyes and it had lasting effect on his interpretations. The snakes in Medusa's hair live in his depiction, and they seem to personify her detestablity to men, but they also have a life of their own so they are not only a living accessory but something she cohabitates with. She has a focus, an intention, unlike any of the other creatures in Harryhausen's career, because she is unlike them. She is not an animal, or a statue brought to life. She is probably most like Kassim from Eye of the Tiger, but even then while Kassim is fully the animal with a personality trapped inside, Medusa is more a combination, much like her pre-cursor the Snake -woman in “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad”. She is a human and she is something other. She is not just a passive actor in someone else’s scheme, she enjoys the kill, and even moreso the use of her power, she is an active hunter. She does not possess the flexibility of her antecedent the snake woman, she does not move easily or with a flow. Each contraction of her muscles feels compressed, her movements feel restricted. There's a sense of surprise and a certain glee when she believes she has noticed Perseus in the reflection of his shield. The thrill of Ray's most recognized scene is in the thrill of the hunt for both Perseus and Medusa and it is in Harryhausen’s creation that that we find just how attached to that thrill Medusa is, as well as how skilled she is at this. It's all there in the face and the composition, and the movement. She is revenge personified, she is mens power, reduction , and cruelty , as an avatar tuned back on them, and they and we cant stand it. Harryhausen's effects reinforce, and add to Medusa's legacy in our collective imagination because of his desire to truly give things life, and his ability to execute by way of living in and through his creations. In the same interview as he mentions his affinity for monsters Harryhausen is told by his interviewer - a gushing Tim Burton - that the flying saucers in Earth vs The Flying Saucers had more personality than the actors. In many cases his creatures and other creations made this true, after all no one went to Harryhausen movies to watch the actual living actors, They went to watch Harryhausen's acting creations live, or rather watch Harryhausen live through his actors. Harry Houston's legacy and effect extended well beyond special effects even as it obviously influenced folks like Rick Baker ( who also acted through his work) and Stan Winston. It extended beyond his effect on future animators like John Lassiter or Henry Selick to include even directors like Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and Guillermo Del Toro, and yes actors like Doug Jones and Andy Serkis. Such is the effect power and influence of Harryhausen's work, That throughout his career he laid foundational groundwork in the collective imaginations of a vast variety of Hollywood collaborators and role players. And while largely he will be remembered rightfully so as a special effects and animation hero, he should also be remembered as an actor's hero if not in one particular movie than in all. Because in all his films the animated actors existed and performed well enough that often times in his movies (which regardless of who was directing them they were almost undoubtedly his) His creations, his acting avatars, functioned as the stars of the movies while the living breathing actors merely provided supporting roles. In the Medusa scene, his craft had more personality and performed better than any breathing actor's incarnation or interpretation of the figure and better than any actor on the set, she is the movies star, the reason we all remember the film at all and in a nutshell that is a major part of Harryhausen's legacy as not only a creator, and an artist, but as an actor in every sense but being paid specifically to do it.