CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981): End of the Line for Ray Harryhausen

Clash of the Titans (1981) – Directed by Desmond Davis – Starring Harry Hamlin, Burgess Meredith, Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Judi Bowker, Ursula Andress, and Bubo.

I have a fondness for CLASH OF THE TITANS that far exceeds its actual merits as a film.

CLASH is an okay movie, but as a kid I loved the Ray Harryhausen stop-motion films and CLASH was every bit as great as the Sinbad movies. When I watch CLASH now I can admire it as a kids’ film, but it moves far too slowly for me to keep me engrossed and my hand kept wanting to reach for the remote control to fast forward through the 18 minutes Harry Hamlin spends flying on Pegasus for the first time.

CLASH is a spectacle movie, of course, and it’s perfectly understandable that it wants to show off the spectacle, but I found myself extremely impatient waiting to get from one Harryhausen sequence to the next, with only Burgess Meredith really able to hold my interest in between. The bits with the Olympians are semi-interesting, but really only because you go, “Oh, look, Professor McGonagall and Ursula Andress and is that really Laurence Olivier?”

As a kid, it was incredibly cool to see that Zeus (Olivier) treated mortals the way I treated my Star Wars figures. There’s still something powerful about that imagery, of our life being nothing more than pawns of the gods, and appealing about the control the gods have over us. They can move us around wherever they like, as when they move Perseus (Hamlin) from Seriphos to Joppa. They can bestow gifts upon us, such as when Zeus orders the other gods to show Perseus with gifts that will help him in his mortal pursuits. But at the end, it’s still more about what we do with the opportunities they present to us; it’s a bit of a cheat, of course, when your daddy is the King of the Gods because you can lose your super fancy, makes-you-invisible helmet and then get a mechanical owl as a make-up.

Of course, the creation of Bubo speaks wonderfully to Zeus’ absentee-parenting style. He says to one of the goddesses, “Give Perseus your owl.” And she’s like, “No.” And he’s like, “Yes. I am Zeus and my word is law.” So she storms off and has Hephaestus make Perseus a mechanical owl and Zeus never says anything. Know why? Because the dude has too many kids. We’re lucky he even remembers Perseus’ name.

I can’t be bothered to remember the names of the gods that aren’t Zeus, Thetis, or Poseidon, because they’re all interchangeable late middle-aged white people in robes. Ursula Andress doesn’t do a lot on screen as Aphrodite, but apparently her and Hamlin were involved off-screen during the filming of this movie. Method acting?

CLASH is really a film about nepotism – Zeus protects Perseus because he’s his kid and Thetis (Maggie Smith) protects Calibos because he’s hers. The plot truly exists to get us to the Harryhausen bits but it’s serviceable enough. Perseus wants to marry Andromeda because she’s hot. Andromeda used to be engaged to Calibos, who was handsome but is now a satyr because he made Zeus angry by killing all his flying horses but one, Pegasus. Now Andromeda wants to marry Perseus because he’s hot. (She says she never loved Calibos because he was mean, and Judi Bowker is just the right kind of cute that Perseus completely buys it.) Thetis gets all this going by magically transports Perseus to Joppa, where he meets Burgess Meredith. To save Andromeda from both Calibos’ curse and then the Kraken, Perseus kills a bunch of stop motion creatures.

The human parts of this movie are rather dull. Harry Hamlin has absolutely no personality at this stage in his career (unless we count his hair), and Burgess Meredith can only do so much as his adviser. Judi Bowker is rather good as Andromeda, but for all of the power the film gives to women, it still keeps Andromeda very much in cages throughout the picture.

There’s far too much stillness in this movie. Perseus and Andromeda do a lot of looking at each other, gently caressing the other’s face like this is The Age of Innocence or some crap. There’s endless flying scenes and horse riding scenes and maybe audiences in 1981 were like, “Oh my god! Shots of clouds! This is AMAZING!” but I’m a little jaded watching it 30 years in the future.

The Harryhausen work is, once again, top notch, including:

1. The Giant Vulture that transports Andromeda to and from Calibos’ swamp lair. It’s slow but visually cool. Calibos is treated as both a guy in make-up and then there are scenes where he’s rendered in stop-motion so we can see his tail. The swamp scenes are effective as much for the cool sets as anything Harryhausen is responsible for.

2. Bubo, the mechanical owl. Slow and silly but pretty awesome, too.

3. Dioskilos, the two-headed dog. There’s a really nice fight scene between Perseus and his allies and the dog before they enter Medusa’s temple.

4. Medusa. Slow and slithering, Medusa is the highlight of the film with her glowing eyes and wavering snakes. Harryhausen and director Desmond Davis work well together here, but it’s a long, long sequence with a lot of sneaking around and looking. Davis keeps his camera far too still for my liking, but perhaps that’s a requirement of doing stop-motion work in 1981.

5. The Kraken. Impressive only because he looks cool, the Kraken doesn’t really do a whole lot.

It’s #s 4 and 5 that provide the biggest visual thrill, but the Medusa section takes way, way, way too long and the Kraken’s appearance at the end is undercut by his appearance at the beginning. As a kid this was all pretty eye-popping, but while I can still appreciate how cool the Medusa sequence is, the rest of the bits just feel old and tired. If I could be seven again, I’d watch this movie 100 times, but I can’t and I won’t.

And just as a heads-up, here’s my review of the remake.

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CLASH OF THE TITANS Review Index

CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981): End of the Line for Ray Harryhausen
CLASH OF THE TITANS (2010): No titans Were Harmed in the Making of This Film
WRATH OF THE TITANS (2012): Being Half Human Makes You Stronger Than a God

THE LEPRECHAUNS’ CHRISTMAS GOLD: When I Think Christmas, I Think Leprechauns and Rainbows

The Leprechauns’ Christmas Gold (1981) – a Rankin-Bass Production – Starring Art Carney, Ken Jennings, Christine Mitchell, Peggy Cass, and Glynnis Bieg.

Do people who grow up in warm climates look at Christmas specials without snow and think, “FINALLY! Someone made a special just for us?” Because I grew up in New England, so when I see a Christmas special without snow, I’m like, “STUPID! Where’s the f*cking snow and ice?”

THE LEPRECHAUNS’ CHRISTMAS GOLD takes place on an island. Not a South Pacific island, but in Irish island, and yet, the producers didn’t bother to grace us with snow. So, on that level, this special is for crap.

If you can get past your snow bias, however, LEPRECHAUNS’ is a quick, perfectly enjoyable special about, well, if you can’t read the title, then you can’t read this post, can you? A ship is parked off the coast of this island and the Captain tells his cabin boy he’s never not had a Christmas tree on board his ship, but this year, he forgot, so he sends the cabin boy to go cut down the one pine tree on the nearest island and bring it back to him.

Now, this is an Irish ship and this is an Irish island but instead of just, you know, getting home before Christmas, the Captain wants his damn tree right now, Cabin Boy, so go get it.

The Cabin Boy is named Dinty and he dutifully goes to cut the tree down, but when he uproots it, he actually lets an old hag named Mag out. Mag the Hag is the villain of the piece. She wants gold … Leprechaun gold. Mag needs to be given gold by Christmas or she turns into a puddle of salty tears, so she’s always trying to trick the Leps into giving it to her.

Sometimes she’s sorta successful, which is how Blarney Kilakilarney (Art Carney) comes into play. Blarney is the keeper of the gold, but he hasn’t seen any other Lep in a long time. Maybe, like, 100 years or so. Long. Anyway, he had a disagreement with his wife, who was totally fooled by Mag, and went to live with the gold while everyone else lives up top.

How did Blarney’s wife and the rest get fooled by Mag? Well, Mag can change her appearance, so it’s totally tricky. What also helps is that everyone in this special except for Mag and Blarney has Rudolph Disease, where they automatically believe everyone is on the level and worthy of helping.

Thanks to Dinty, Mag is loose and dropping magic spells into Blarney’s tea, causing Blarney to become so generous he’s going to want to give all his possessions away. Mag intends to be the recipient of some gold, but Blarney gives it all to Dinty, who’ll never be tricked into giving it to Mag.

At least until later that night when a strange woman washes up on the beach. Dumby Dinty gives her all the gold and then Mag reveals herself and tells Dinty to go to sleep for 100 years.

Dinty goes to sleep for about 3 hours because the Leprechaun God (whatever the hell he’s called) shows up and makes a rainbow that wakes Dinty up. The rainbow also opens the secret location to the Leps’ gold and Mag is all set to get herself some goodies, but then the sun comes up and she dies because she didn’t take possession of any gold until after Christmas started.

Victory.

Dinty agrees to take the leprechauns back to Ireland and since the gold is technically still his, he takes that back, too, to pass out or hide in big black pots or something.

The last shot is the Irish ship heading away from the island with the Captain standing at the wheel at the rear of the ship. He doesn’t say anything, but you can just tell he’s gonna whack all these crazy little people and take their gold to Hawaii or Barcelona or Iowa.

It’s a decent special, but totally unloved. The Christmas Specials Wiki gives the special a total blow-off – they don’t even have a synopsis posted. It is one of the few things that ever happened that doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. Maybe you should, I dunno, do something about it.

RUDOLPH AND FROSTY’S CHRISTMAS IN JULY: The Thin Line Between Tedious and Awesome

Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July (1979) – a Rankin-Bass Production – Starring Billie Mae Richards, Jackie Vernon, Red Buttons, Mickey Rooney, Ethel Merman, Paul Frees, Alan Sues, Shelly Winters, and Don Messick.

Containing some of the finest stop-motion Rankin-Bass produced, RUDOLPH AND FROSTY’S CHRISTMAS IN JULY gives off contradictory vibes. When the film takes place at the North Pole, it’s a really good Christmas special that sees Rudolph and Frosty hanging out with Frosty’s kids, but when the action switches to the warm-weathered circus, it really kinda blows.

It’s not the whole July angle or the warm weathered locale that causes the suckage, either, but rather the whole inane “save a circus” plot and the host of new characters that are either boring or annoying. Frosty and Rudolph are hanging out and Rudy’s having trouble getting his nose to glow when Milton the Ice Cream Man shows up in his hot air balloon to pick up ice cream he stores at the North Pole to keep it cold. (It’s typing sentences like that last one that makes me love writing these reactions.) Rudolph tells everyone to come meet Milton because he’s a ball of laughs, but when they get there the dude is balling his eyes out because the love of his life won’t marry him. Turns out her mom’s circus is about to be taken over by an evil businessman named Sam Spangles and she’s not in the mood for marrying.

This catches the attention of Winterbolt and introduces a fantastic villainous plot involving his desire to turn off Rudolph’s nose light, which will ensure that Santa can’t fly away from the North Pole in a storm, which will mean he can’t deliver presents, which means the kids of the world won’t love him, which means his powers will weaken, which means Winterbolt can kick the fat man’s ass and reclaim his position as Evil Overlord of the North.

Winterbolt, who’s part Charlton Heston and part Saruman is an awesome villain. He used to rule the North until the Aurora Borealis turned itself human and stopped him, and in the process gave Rudolph his shiny red nose and put the big slumber on Winterbolt.

The backstory Rankin-Bass creates for Rudolph and Winterbolt is pretty complex, and much more reminiscent of something Tolkien or Lewis would attempt than the simpler, succincter backstories of the Rankin-Bass TV specials. When the special focuses on Winterbolt, it works really well. There’s a real sense of Rudolph and Frosty being important characters in this larger story, so it’s a double-shame when the producers take all of this history and use it to fuel our heroes flying off to save a circus.

Imagine Bilbo readying himself to go on his big adventure and then ending up in a plot stolen from the Brady Bunch and you get an idea of how this story gets completely run off the rails.

The circus folk are just that – circus folk. There’s no one as visually appealing or personally engaging as the Miser Brothers from The Year Without a Santa Claus or all the Clock People from Rudolph’s Shiny New Year. There’s a god-awful annoying gun-toting circus owner voiced by Ethel Merman who calls Rudolph “Blinky.” She’s completely brutal as a character, which is a shame because Merman’s big voice is perfect for voice work in a special like this – it’s just a shame it’s wasted in this yee-haw, bang bang character.

Perhaps guarding against the idea that these circus characters blow, or perhaps trying to get butts in the seats and pay to see characters they’re used to seeing for free, the producers bring in Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, Big Ben, and Jack Frost for support. Of course, Jack Frost doesn’t really look or sound like the Jack Frost from R-B’s Jack Frost special, but I’m not entirely certain which version was created in reaction to the other.

There’s a “bad Rudolph” named Scratcher who is just pitiful. He’s got the tired “let’s let everyone know he’s the villain by making him ugly” vibe about him and he’s so painfully shifty that it will confound your mind that Rudolph could ever fall for this loser’s scheme. It hurts the special, too, that there’s all this thought and complexity in the backstory but then the plot to get Rudolph to act selfishly so he loses his nose-glowing powers is so thin and transparent that it hurts the story.

The catch about Rudolph’s powers is that his nose will glow as long as he acts selflessly, but when he acts for evil purposes, they’ll go away. They trick him into using his nose to light up a dark wagon and “steal” the circus money and give it to Spangles, who’s pretending to be a cop. Rudolph can’t exonerate himself because if he does, Winterbolt will remove his spell of protection from Frosty and Family, causing them to melt in the heat.

It’s a good subplot – do you do the right thing at the cost of yourself, or do you save yourself and doom your friends? The answer is the first option, of course, but it’s nice to see it laid out in a kid’s special in such a sharply defined manner.

Everything works out, of course, and Winterbolt ends up getting turned into a horrific looking tree, but by that time I just wanted this special to be over. Coming in at over 90 minutes, it makes for an interminable watch during the circus sequences. There’s too many songs that aren’t any good and too many sequences at the circus that go on too long.

It’s a shame because the backstory and set-up deserves better than the story that follows. It’s well worth a watch, but by the mid-point you’ll be looking for something to read to help you make it through.