Dispatch #8 Why Ray HarryhausenMatters to Me

by Lupe Fernandez

"From the Land Beyond, Beyond/From the World pass Hope and Fear..." thus are the secret words to summon the genie of the lamp in the 1958 film 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

When I was in the fifth grade, my brothers introduced me to a book called Film Fantasy Scrapbook by Ray Harryhausen, courtesy of the Hayward Public Library.

Mr. Harryhausen was "stop-motion animator." He brought to life a giant gorilla (no not King Kong, that was Harryhausen's mentor Willis O'Brien), a Rhedosaurus, a giant octopus, flying saucers, the Ymir from Venus, a one-eyed cyclops, a sword-wielding skeleton, a giant crab, a bronze giant, a pteranodon, a tyrannosaurus rex, a statue of Kali, a saber-tooth tiger and the Kraken.

Earth vs. The Flying Saucers 1956

I couldn't stop looking at the photos of movies I'd never seen, but dreamed out. In the good old days, there was no internet, no video stores. I had to wait until his films appearing on UHF Channels 44 or 36, until Saturday's Creature Features with host Bob Wilkins.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad 1958

But it was the orange, one-eyed cyclops from 7th Voyage of Sinbad that sealed the deal for me. This table-top model creature of foam latex and metal armature burst out of a cave with an angry growl and hooves stomping and claws clutching at hapless sailors, accompanied to the thunderous strains of film composer Bernard Hermann's music.

I bought magazines and books celebrating Mr. Harryhausen's work.

But don't take my word for it.

Mysterious Island 1961

“Without Ray Harryhausen’s influence, Lord of the Rings would never have been made, not by me at least.” – Peter Jackson

“Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no STAR WARS” - George Lucas.

"If not for Ray’s contribution to the collective dreamscape, we wouldn’t be who we are." - James Cameron

Patrick Wayne (Sinbad & Eye of the Tiger 1977)
is about as Arabic as I am.

If I sing his praises to highly, I am aware that some of his films often lacked brilliant acting, that his plots were derivative, that his mattes lines bled, that his last animated film suffered from poor background plates, that no Mexicans appeared in any of his films.

And yet without Harryhausen's films, I wouldn't have the imagination to write Children's Literature.

King Kong 1933
Harryhausen's Inspiration

RH 

RIP

1920-2013