The master of visual effects Ray Harryhausen was 92. I recently was talking to a high school senior who surprised me because he was trying to remember films he loved as a kid to get on Blu-ray. Those films turned out to be Jason and the Argonauts and the Sinbad movies that were Harryhausen’s babies. I’d watched Clash of the Titans a few weeks back and thought to myself that it was the perfect swan song for his stop motion effects.
The movies he made were magic to me growing up and the creatures may have moved in jerky fashion, but they all had real personalities. In the end, that was the secret to Harryhausen’s success. Somehow he imbued his creations with a feeling that they had emotions in such a way that kids of all ages could instantly connect with them. It made the movies such a delight on a Saturday afternoon.
Ray may be gone, but his spirit remains. If you loved the cave troll in Fellowship of the Ring, that was a true homage in CGI of what he did. So many directors and special effects artists were inspired by him that he’ll never really be gone from cinema.
Now he’s off in the afterlife with his best friend Ray Bradbury probably coming up with some new wild idea to play with on a galactic scale.
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