Art and design This article is more than 3 years oldRay Harryhausen's art raid: where the effects genius found his terrifying monsters
This article is more than 3 years oldFrom his sword-swinging skeletons to a horn-headed cyclops, a new show reveals how the gruesome godfather of special effects plundered antiquity for ideas – and his own art collection
The skeletons rise up from the scorched earth, lithe yet lifeless arrangements of loose yellow bones that leap over ruins to advance into mortal combat with Jason and the Argonauts. Swords swinging and shields held high, they are the perfect warriors, dispensing death with no fear of it themselves. But are they scarier than Kali, the multi-limbed goddess who fights Sinbad the Sailor with weapons clutched in all six hands, her blue arms scything through the air as our mariner hero scurries for his life?
These are the images that terrorised me as a kid, quaking in front of the big screen at the Odeon in Rhyl, Wales. That first encounter with the monsters of Ray Harryhausen remains with you for ever. When I think of Kali, I can still taste the Kia-Ora and the terror.
Harryhausen brought these wonders to life using stop-motion animation techniques learned from his mentor Willis O’Brien, creator of King Kong. Harryhausen built rubber models on flexible metal frames that he could move bit by bit, shot by shot, to create a sense of the marvellous. Although his films had directors and screenwriters, they are Harryhausen’s visions. It is his name that has survived, as a byword for the sort of movie monsters that give you nightmares, the gruesome godfather of special effects.
Born in Los Angeles in 1920, he would insist on being on set or location. Part of his secret was to get actors to react convincingly to monsters they couldn’t see, long before this became the CGI norm. His influence is acknowledged by today’s epic action masters, from Peter Jackson to James Cameron.
Flying saucers, aliens and apes were what he cut his teeth on, but what he really grew to love was ancient Greek mythology. Medusa, cyclops, harpies, centaurs – name a classical monster and he almost certainly animated it. Harryhausen brought the stories of antiquity kicking and screaming into the film age – or rather roaring, like the cyclops in the 1958 film The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and hissing like Medusa in Clash of the Titans (1981).
There is no film, however, quite like his 1963 masterpiece Jason and the Argonauts, a detailed and hyperreal journey based on the epic poem by Apollonius of Rhodes in the third century BC. Much of it is faithful, starting with the Argonauts being sent on a wild Golden Fleece chase by King Pelias because Jason was fated to kill him. You can sense Harryhausen’s love of the classical world. When Jason meets Phineas, whose food keeps getting eaten by the harpies, Harryhausen gives these winged monsters the perfect location: the Greek temple at Paestum in southern Italy, one of the most atmospheric of all ancient ruins. This is not just great special effects. This is art.
Depicting ancient dream worlds put him in the company of titans such as Botticelli, Caravaggio and Picasso – and this was no coincidence. “All those beautiful artists had such an influence on his film work,” says Vanessa Harryhausen of her father. She is the author of a book that accompanies Ray Harryhausen: Titan of Cinema, a new exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.
When I ask which artists he admired, she’s very specific. “He was interested in Gustave Doré and John Martin,” she says, citing two great 19th-century artists of the fantastic. “He loved the detail in them and the light.” She also mentions a painting called Jupiter Pluvius (meaning Jupiter the Rainmaker) by Joseph Gandy. Painted in 1819, this work is a surreal fantasy showing an ancient Greek city dominated by a gigantic statue of the god Jupiter. Vanessa tells me that, as a child, she thought the painting depicted the actual god, rather than a colossal sculpture. I assume she’s talking about a reproduction she has seen. But when I check later online, I find the work on the Tate’s catalogue, which reveals that it’s on loan from the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation.
Jupiter Pluvius is based on a description of a real city by an ancient travel writer, but Gandy turns it into something completely unreal. Wild mountains and a savage torrent make it clear that this is an uneasy, Romantic vision of the classics. The city itself is plausible, except for the staggering scale of Jupiter looming over it. This monstrous statue stirs memories of the scariest, most unforgettable scene in Jason and the Argonauts. Talos is a giant bronze statue the Argonauts find on a deserted island. When they steal treasure from the massive plinth on which he kneels, there is a loud creaking sound like a huge unoiled machine. It is Talos coming to life, before he starts walking with thumping steps to kill these tiny humans.
Harryhausen captures the same wonder and awe that you find in Gandy’s painting. And, like Gandy, he knew his sources. As the Argo tries to sail away, the towering Talos stands straddling the harbour – an image inspired by legends of the Colossus of Rhodes, as the special effects wizard once pointed out in an interview.
There is also his debt to Homer’s Odyssey. The epic poem haunts Harryhausen’s work. His first mythic film was The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Although the tales of Sinbad, as told in One Thousand and One Nights, are set in the Indian Ocean, here they deliberately echo the landscapes and seascapes of The Odyssey, not to mention its monsters, with Harryhausen creating a furious one-eyed creature that’s very like Homer’s Cyclops.
But is all this not a childish simplification of Greek mythology? Surely the ancients had more on their minds than simply trying to dream up monsters to scare and enthral people? Yet that is precisely what a lot of great classical art is about.Some of the most astounding Parthenon sculptures, now in the British Museum, portray lifesize heroes in hand-to-hand combat with half-man, half-horse centaurs. Even in cold marble, these monsters come alive. Muscles ripple on their chests as they throttle, or rear over their opponents. Like Harryhausen, the Athenian artists of the fifth century BC were masters at creating the illusion of movement. And there’s another similarity. These sculptures were originally painted in bright, lifelike colours. In a reconstruction by the British Museum, the results were uncannily Harryhausen-like.
In 1960, the monster maestro moved to London, where he died in 2013 at the age of 92. It was a relocation that put him much nearer to the myths he loved and their fabulous landscapes – the wild seas and beautiful islands perfect for great adventures. As Vanessa puts it: “He said it was easier, and cheaper, to go to the wonderful locations.”
Ray Harryhausen: Titan of Cinema is at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, from 24 October to 5 September 2021.
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