Clash of the Titans Film Review

Director: Jack Sher
Year: 1981
Rating: 7.0

Those damn Greek Gods interfered in everything and generally screwed it up. Acrisius the King of Argos suspects his wife Danae of cheating on him. Which seems a legitimate concern since he locked her up and she still got pregnant. How? From that damn Zeus who disguised himself as a stream of gold and had sex with her. Good grief, you are Zeus, the big enchilada sitting on Mount Olympus ordering your kvetching female Gods around like office ladies. You could have a string of groupies a mile along and you disguise yourself as gold and rape a woman. You are not Harvey Weinstein, you are Zeus. Acrisius doesn't really believe this story from his wife - so you are telling me you were raped by gold that got you pregnant. That excuse never works. He puts his wife and young baby boy into a box and throws it into the sea. The boy is Perseus. Of which there is much to relate.

This is an enjoyable mash of Greek legend; some based on real mythology, some entirely made up, some told out of order and some have the names changed to protect the innocent. But most of it can be found in mythology. Perseus is one of the biggies founding dynasties, an ancestor of Hercules, the beheader of Medusa, killer of Cetus (mistakenly called the Kraken in the film. The Kraken came from Norwegian mythology) and has a constellation named after him. As do many of the characters in the film. Perseus was a big deal and the ancient Greeks thought he was a real historical person. Here he is played by Harry Hamlin who doesn't make the grade to be Perseus. Sorry. I know you were bedding Ursula Andress at the time which makes you a god in my books but not Persius worthy. One of the studios involved wanted Arnold - now he would have made a great Perseus but others thought his language skills were not good enough. Damn language skills. It is Arnold. Who is to say that Perseus didn't have an accent.

Once Acrisius tosses the box into the sea, Zeus looks down in disfavor and has Poseidon wipe out Argos with a tsunami. There go the Gods again causing a genocide. It seems a little harsh since it was the decision of one man and it really was Zeus's fault. In the real Greek mythology, Acrisius was told that his son would grow up to kill him and that's why he threw them into the sea. There was no genocide and he lived a long time until Perseus showed up for a discus event and his discus went way off target and killed him. Or did it? As an adult Persius ends up in Joppa, ruled by Queen Cassiopeia (another star constellation) who has a beautiful daughter Andromeda (yes, another constellation) who is looking for a husband. Since Persius has been watching her sleeping with his nifty helmet that makes him invisible - a gift from Zeus along with a golden sword and a shield - he falls in love with her.

But first he has to defeat Calibos, once a handsome offspring from the Goddess Thetis. Calibos raised Zeus's ire by killing all his winged horses other than Pegasus (another constellation) and he is now deformed and has cursed Joppa. Persius does defeat him but loses his helmet (no more peeping tom) and goes back to marry the lovely Andromeda after answering a riddle that stumped me and the many other suitors now dead because they could not. Jeopardy this isn't. But before that happens Thetis shows up and says unless Andromeda is sacrificed to the Kraken in thirty days hell and damnation will fall upon the city. Kraken is a giant green sea monster kept in a cage by Poseidon - thus the saying "Release the Kraken". So, our boy goes on a journey to save her and comes across the three witches, Medusa, giant scorpions and Calibos. Calibos in case you are wondering was made up for the film. All great special effects from Ray Harryhausen in his last film. Stop-motion animation and miniatures were still being used and still are - but clearly more sophisticated special effects utilizing computers was on its way and Harryhausen was 60 years old.

This is an all-star cast though most of them have slightly bigger than a cameo role. Zeus is Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith is Thetis, Claire Bloom and Ursula Andress are two of the female goddesses though neither gets much to do, Siân Phillips who was so terrifying in I, Claudius is Queen Cassiopeia, Flora Robson was one of the witches and Burgess Meredith is the friend and advisor to Perseus. With an older cast like that I am surprised this isn't a Murder, She Wrote episode.

This ends at the happy moment when Perseus and Andromeda marry - but in the mythology Perseus had many more adventures and kept the head of Medusa with him (in the film he throws it into the sea) and uses it to assassinate people. There must be a film about that.