AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Stop motion movies9/5/2023 This justly famous Harryhausen sequence (‘Snakes On A Brain’?) is a perfect union of mood and monster. Sure enough, this ancient Harryhausen beast throws itself at New York with the kind of ill-tempered aplomb that comes from being woken from a 20,000 year nap. “An armoured giant wreaking its prehistoric fury on modern man and his puny machines!” intones ‘50s Voiceover Man in the voice of someone about to run screaming down the street. Movie: The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) Give her the old “You have 20 seconds to comply” line Jon see if that rings any bells. “Even my own mother didn’t recognise me,” Davison remembers, “and my voice isn’t altered that much”. ‘New' Painless here is the work of Phil Tippett and Randal Dutra, while its voice was provided by exec producer Jon Davison. It’s basically a robot with two Jesse Venturas strapped on. The Dutchman constructed a fascistic corporate state whose bouncer – Enforcement Droid Series 209 - came with miniguns fitted as standard. José Padilha’s RoboCop will have to do well to match the mech magic of Paul Verhoeven’s version. Talos is also the tallest, which means he can turn whole ships into kindling, and runs the kind of zero-tolerance-to-theft policy that nowadays would score him a guest speaker slot at the Tory party conference. Jason and his Argonauts face many perils during their journeys – the Hydra, swordwielding skeletons, harpies, dicky tummies – but the Bronze Man of Crete is comfortably the most formidable, as Jason discovers when he steals a priceless pin from his vault. This, by any standards, is poor parenting. On the one hand, she’s attentive, caring and delivers food to your plate BY TOY TRAIN on the other hand, she’ll want to replace your eyeballs with buttons and will transform herself into a needle spider that’s part Shelob, part sewing kit. Henry Selick’s terrifying Other Mother taps a darker, more domestic vein of stop-mo horror. Harryhausen, once again, is the handmaiden of this timeless monster - with a little help from the great Jim Danforth. The mighty Kraken (first and middle names: ‘Release The’) is an idea presumably cooked up by the King of the Gods on one of his bad-tempered days, what with the princess-munching and a face that even Grannie Kraken wouldn’t kiss. The four-minute tussle took Harryhausen, working on his own, 18 weeks to animate.īloody Zeus, eh? We’re laying this subsea psychopath firmly at his door. The single skeleton from 1958’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad – OK, not the exact same one – is joined by six pals to do battle with Jason and two crew mates. Mention Ray Harryhausen and the chances are this is the sequence that people remember, mostly because it remains utterly amazing. Here there are two of the one-eyed beasties, who take the opportunity to pounce on Sinbad while he and his crew figure out what the plural of ‘cyclops’ is. When's she going to get together with Talos?įar more scary than the giant squirrel in The 3 Worlds Of Gulliver, although arguably just as furry, Ray Harryhausen’s cyclops was modelled on the Greek god Pan - of Pan’s People fame - and Ray's own monster, lizardy-fish-beast Ymir in 1957’s 20 Million Miles To Earth. (And the “sin”, come to think of it.) In Harryhausen’s second Sinbad adventure she does battle with the seafarer after a little magical jiggery-pokery, but never mind that. Movie: The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad (1973)Īble to have several swordfights at the same time, all while yawning, flicking over to the Antiques Roadshow and rustling up a little something for dinner, the multi-armed Kali puts the “bad” in Sinbad. Have a read, see what you think, and share your suggestions in the usual place. So Tim Burton’s return to the medium with monochrome monster-athon Frankenweenie and the upcoming Harryhausen doc are all the excuse we need to pick a few of our favourite stop-mo beasties from movie history. We'd happily commute to work on Ray Harryhausen’s Pegasus, given a bucket of apples and a parachute. Stop motion is seriously beloved in these parts.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |