Clash of the Titans (1981)

This is the last movie that special effects guru Ray Harryhausen worked on. Inspired as a boy by the stop motion animation in King Kong Harryhausen became the greatest exponent of stop-motion photography, making many memorable creature sequences for films such as Mighty Joe Young, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts. he also made beasts for clunkers like One Million Years BC. Be that as it may, many movie directors and special effects technicians credit Ray Harryhausen’s work as that which got them interested in a career in making movies.

Now that I’ve given Mr. Harryhausen some respect, I have to say that Clash of the Titans, the story of Perseus of Greek mythological fame, is a fairly tepid movie by any standards except those of the most ravenous fan. Sure, the stop motion animation is as enchanting as ever, even when you can tell it is as fake as a three-dollar-bill. The imagery still has loads of charm; but - as nice as these interludes are, there has to be a story and acting to connect them together, and that is where the movie lacks.

The story takes portions of the canon of Greek mythology and runs them together into a tale that you’ll find in no mythology book. Written by Beverley Cross, the screenplay opens with a king sending his daughter and her infant son off to sea in a casket.

We then are treated to an insider’s view of Mt. Olympus where the Gods are in session. Laurence Olivier hams it up as Zeus, while a bevy of British thespians play the minor gods and goddesses, standing dutifully by as Zeus pontificates. Claire Bloom, Maggie Smith, Ursula Andress, et al. Zeus orders Poseidon to destroy the king’s city and unleash the Kraken - the last of the Titans of the title. An extremely fake destruction of the city scene complete with Kraken follows…

The little boy and his mom land safely on a distant shore and cavort in the nude… The kid grows up to be Perseus, hero of song and story. The reason Zeus is so interested in the boy? - he is his dad.

The movie goes on to show how Perseus gets his weaponry, tames Pegasus, and beats the heck out of a whole bevy of monsters.

The writing is the weakest part of the package with very little meaningful dialog in the many exchanges. This also reflects badly on the big name actors, who come off less than stellar due to the bad lines. Top billed Harry Hamlin, to be sure, is no Shakespearean actor and cannot carry the film except by his pouting good looks. The beautiful princess he does all these feats for is the undoubtedly lovely Andromeda (Judi Bowker). Bowker is also unable to bring much life to her role, alas. The scoring is a strength, with a lot of variety and vitality by Laurence Rosenthal.

Between the scoring and the stop motion monster sequences, you have the heart of the movie and it’s sad to me that Ray Harryhausen went out on the downswing of his pendulum.

The Warner Bros DVD is presented in 1.85:1 theatrical format, in color. The film is inexplicably in quite poor condition for a recent movie with numerous faded passages and softness of the images. It would behoove Warner’s to offer a restored version to placate Ray Harryhausen’s many fans. The DVD does contain a couple of pretty nice extras - a 12 minute monologue by Ray Harryhausen where he expounds on the various aspects of the movie and his career and a mythological map that allows Harryhausen to give a bit more background on the various monsters he created for Clash of the Titans.

Kids will love this but adults, unless they are in touch with their inner child are going to see the warts. Three stars.

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