Ray Harryhausen:
Special Effects Titan
Director:
Gilles Penso
Year: 2011
Rating: 7.0
This is a very affectionate documentary/tribute
to one of the great founding special effects masters of film. Since it is
produced by his Foundation that is not too surprising but it is well justified.
His contributions to the fantasy film genre is extraordinary and the film
lines up directors like Spielberg, Cameron, Jackson, Gilliam, del Torro,
Landis, Burton and a number of modern day special effects folks to laud Harryhausen
and to say how influential seeing his films were to them as King Kong had
been to him. Most of the films that Ray worked on are no doubt looked on
by today's audience and the term B film immediately springs to mind - low
budget, actors you have never heard of and corny scripts - but his stop-motion
creativity and wild imagination made them worth watching. He was still alive
when this was made (he passed away in 2013) and goes through all of his top
films and talks about what he had to do. Really painstaking complicated things.
Seeing all the many clips reminded me that I have not seen most of these
since childhood and made me want to see them again.