The first Harryhausen film to be made in the 60s was The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, based on the novel, Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift. This 1960 fantasy film was an Eastmancolor Columbia Pictures production. Eastmancolor is a trade name for a processing technique used on similar films, at the time. It refers to founder of Kodak, George Eastman. Even though the film was produced by Jack Sher, fellow director, Charles Schneer said The 3 Worlds of Gulliver was “the most complicated picture ever attempted.” Shot in Spain, the film contained over 150 trick sequences. It was the second film to feature Dynamation process, the first being The Seven Voyages of Sinbad.
The biggest technical difficulty was the change in size for the different worlds the lead would travel to. This film would use travelling matte shops, which would do the matte painting work much faster. The production took advantage of the Rank Laboratory, now Deluxe, in England. Rank was a film processing company which used sodium lighting, producing and instantaneous traveling matte. To give an idea of the time this saved, most traveling mattes take three to four weeks to achieve the final result.
Another way around this difficulty of size difference was to utilize perspective photography. This means, Gulliver might be shot in the foreground while the scene elements were behind him. A difference of two hundred yards was sufficient to get the desired effect. Perspective photography saved time and money for the studio. It also helped to have Kerwin Matthews back because, as Harryhausen stated, “He was quite experienced, by this time, of looking off-scene and seeing nothing and still pretending to see something.”
Of course, Harryhausen fell back to tools which worked for him. Many miniatures were built by the film’s Spanish crew, homed in Madrid. Art Director, Gil Perrando, designed the sets and the different boats towed away by Gulliver.
Harryhausen said of The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, “We had to devise new ways of doing things because the old ways just weren’t working.” He also says, “It’s one of the films we most enjoyed doing.”
In 1874, Jules Verne wrote, Mysterious Island. This was to be the next film Harryhausen would make in 1961. The script was meant to be a simplistic story of survival on an island. Harryhausen made specific drawings about things he wanted to include. Dinosaurs and other prehistoric elements were forgotten in order to bring the film up to date. This birthed the idea of bringing Captain Nemo being somewhat of a visionary who created giant plants and animals.
Mysterious Island was filmed in Spain, like other Harryhausen/Schneer collaborations.
To accomplish the complicated balloon scene, miniatures and scale models needed to be built. The balloon, gliding over the water measured ten feet tall. Miniatures and actual photos had to be combined for many of the scenes. Traveling matte, an efficient process was used to superimpose the different elements of the men, the balloon, and the square they departed from.
The first entity the men encounter when they reach the Mysterious Island is a giant crab. To achieve this effect, Harryhausen purchased an actual crab from a department store. It was hollowed out and armatures were inserted into the shell. The animation sequence for this portion was done through stop-motion. According to Harryhausen, it was “…one of the most successful sections of the picture.”
A giant bird terrorizes the stranded characters later in the film. This scene was part of the original script, the one dealing with dinosaurs and prehistoric animals. Although the film was to be modernized, the bird was kept in so it could lend itself to a bit of comic relief. In spite of this, the miniature model and stop-motion sequence still proves threatening. The upbeat score, by Bernard Herman, lends itself to a more lighthearted moment.
The bird, in this scene, was repurposed for The Valley of Gwangi later in 1969.
Harryhausen designed the overall look for the Nautilus. Using the description from the Jules Verne novel, and the goal of staying away from designs by other films of the time, a new submarine was built. The cave was a larger set with the Nautilus being up to ten feet long. A technical point Harryhausen makes is in regards to the rocks falling around the ship as the cave containing it collapses. The rocks had to be scaled to the ship so the pieces falling into the water would work. If the miniature is not large enough, the splashes give away the use of a novel.
To make certain the film retained its fantasy element, the crew travels to the underwater city of Atlantis. The various temples and statues were all built in miniature. Shot and reverse shots achieved some of the effects in earlier Harryhausen films. Rear-projection, allowing a scene to be filmed one frame at a time, was used for the establishing piece. Underwater filming, miniatures, and glass panels to get the water effect were all used to achieve this scene.
Mysterious Island was a critical and financial success, making over $5 million in rentals.
Another film shot in Eastman Color, Jason and the Argonauts was made in 1963. Produced by Charles Schneer and directed by Don Chaffey, this film would boast Harryhausen as their primary visual effects producer. This is the film most fans remember, as it features some of the best visuals of any Harryhausen picture, to this date.
When designing for the film, Harryhausen wanted to get some scale to show the challenges facing Jason in his journey. The giant, Talos, was made to be much larger but in the myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece, he was just over eight feet tall. Harryhausen wanted audiences to make the visual comparison between Talos and the Colossus of Rhodes.
A challenge in bringing a metal statue to life is how to turn the static into a character which feels real. Having studied Drama at Los Angeles City College, Harryhausen was able to infuse the metallic Talos with physical movements which hinted at emotion. When the thieves first violate the treasure of the gods, the statue turns it head to look at them. Empty eyes and a static face seem to have a deliberate emotion. When Jason defeats the giant, Talos clutches at its throat. Although logic suggests a metal figure would not have to breathe, the gesture give the creature the necessary connection to the audience.
In April 2004, Empire magazine picked Talos as the second-best film monster after King Kong.
Another aspect of the giant figure was the deliberate jerkiness with which Talos moves. All of the work Harryhausen put into other figures to get them to move in a smooth way had to be forgotten. This metallic monster had to have a fluid, but rigid movement to be convincing. In spite of the complicated visual, this was one of the easier scenes to film.
The hydra proved to be one of the more difficult aspects of animation. Each of the seven heads of the monster had to be in perpetual movement to give the illusion of realism. “There were many times when I regretted even thinking of the hydra, for the film,” Harryhausen said. “He presented so many animation problems that I didn’t anticipate.” Any sort of distraction in the animation of any of the heads would result in having to reshoot certain scenes. Because Harryhausen worked alone, many hours of work went into the various animation scenes.
5,000 year old Italian temples were the backdrop for the scene in which the harpies appear to torment a blind oracle. Harryhausen had permission to climb onto the actual structures for the “net” scenes. The harpies were miniature models animated and put into the film via traveling matte.
The scene in which Triton helps Jason travel through the Clashing Rocks was shot with an actor in the role of Triton. Many critics of the scene thought it should have been yet another animated being. Water presents a unique problem, as Harryhausen addressed with Mysterious Island. The scale of the miniature must be such that the droplets of water match its mass. They can’t be too big or too small or they will give the illusion away.
Harryhausen said, in an interview with John Landis, “Stop-motion takes time and we shot this whole sequence in one week, where, if it were a stop-motion sequence, it’d probably take a month or two.”
One of the most famous scenes is the one where Jason and his crew must fight seven skeletons which rise from the ground. Each of the skeleton warriors is armed with a sword and a shield, making for even more moving parts. Harryhausen had to build the skeletons out of thin metal so they could be wrapped with cotton and other materials to give the illusion of bone. If the armature was too big, then the illusion would be lost.
Each of the skeletons would be their own challenge since many of their motions had to be synchronized. The models were comprised of five appendages, for a total of thirty-five moves for just one frame of film. For the scenes where Jason and his comrades fight the seven skeletons, Harryhausen said he was only able to average thirteen frames…per day. This translates into about one-half second of film. The entire sequence took four and a half months to complete.
The actors in the live-action parts of the sequence had the benefit of stuntmen who helped them rehearse the complicated fight scenes. When the actors had their movements down, the stuntmen exited the stage and the actors were filmed going through their choreography. The movements had to be precise so they could be synced up with the animation, later.
Many of Harryhausen’s previous films were part of double features, many shown in B theaters. When released, Jason and the Argonauts was released as a single film to many A theaters in the United States. Although it did not do well at the box office, at the time, any fans agree with Harryhausen in that Jason and the Argonauts is his best film.
In 1964, Harryhausen made The First Men in the Moon, based on a novel of the same name by H.G. Wells. The one criticism this film received was, it did not keep up with the changing tastes of the 1960s. Harryhausen had a tendency to set his films in the past and many movie-goers wanted to look forward, not backward. When approached about First Men in the Moon, Charles Schneer had a similar concern. Writer, Nigel Kneale, thought the setting fit the piece and he persuaded Schneer to go along with the picture. Another writer would be brought in to revise Kneale’s script.
This movie would be shot in Panavision, which used anamorphic projection lenses to utilize widescreen shots. It was founded in 1953 and enjoyed a lot of popularity. This decision came as a way to improve on the film’s commercial prospects, which was said to have “terrified” Harryhausen. Because of cost concerns for the Panavision process, The First Men in the Moon was the only one of Harryhausen’s films to be shot using it.
The sphere in which the Victorian astronauts use to travel to the moon was designed by Harryhausen according to the description H.G. Wells provided. Even though many critics said the model was beautiful and unique, they also said the plot for the film was cynical and lacking in some of the lighter aspects of other films.
Creatures for this film included the Selenites, named for the moon goddess, Selene. These were constructed miniatures for the close-up scenes. In other scenes, they were played by children in detailed rubber costumes. Another of the creatures, the caterpillar-like “moon cows” was a miniature model, brought to life by stop-motion.
Spacesuits used in the film were Windak high-altitude suits, the kind worn by the Royal Air Force. Each suit was fitted with a 1960’s-type aqualung cylinder worn in a backpack. These suits would later be used in two Doctor Who episodes. In the Star Wars trilogy, the suits are worn by the bounty hunter, Bossk, and Bo Shek.
Reviews for the film were less than favorable. Even if the film was considered one which made money, The New York Times wrote, “Only the most indulgent youngsters should derive much stimulation, let alone fun, from the tedious, heavy-handed science-fiction vehicle that arrived yesterday from England.”
Reviews of this nature and a changing climate in Hollywood caused Harryhausen to break from a few projects at the time and consider himself a free agent.
In 1966, Raquel Welch would star in her second film One Million Years B.C. Produced by Hammer Film Production and Seven Arts, this remake of the 1940’s fantasy, One Million B.C., would be printed in dye-transfer Technicolor in the United Kingdom and in DeLuxe Color in the United States. The U.S. version was also nine minutes shorter and released in 1967.
It isn’t difficult to see what drew Harryhausen to this film. It depicts dinosaurs cohabitating with humans–which is historically inaccurate but fun to watch. Exteriors were filmed in the Canary Islands and boasted a six-seven-foot volcano built from wallpaper paste, oatmeal, dry ice, and red dye. As was typical, by this time, Harryhausen built all of the models and did the stop-motion work, himself, at his personal studio in London.
As with Jason and the Argonauts, this movie would feature several live creatures. An iguana, a tarantula, a warthog, and a cricket were Harryhausen’s idea in an attempt to add realness.
An encounter with a dinosaur skeleton gave Harryhausen the chance to work with a larger jointed model. For this sequence, the skeletal structure had to appear much larger than its actual size of twelve inches in length. Unlike other skeletons, this was made from plaster. Harryhausen was trying a new technique to give the model more flexibility. Shooting against a blue screen and matting in the foreground were examples of using older techniques for better results. The scene had the desired effect of building tension for what was to come.
The Allosaurus attack was one of the more complex sequences. The dinosaur drags one of the actors out of the water and shakes them. This required suspending the actor from wires and superimposing an animated model over the final product. As the Allosaurus chases other villagers, a few of them attempt to take shelter in a structure. The dinosaur destroys the structure in order to get to them. To achieve this scene, a scale structure had to be built and rigged to collapse. A miniature of the dinosaur held a model in its mouth, then was animated. The live scenes and the stop-motion parts were lined up on a rear projection plate.
Technical aspects of the animation scenes could also be simplified. In the scene in which Raquel Welch is picked up by a pterosaur, she falls behind a rock. Then, the model is shown coming down, picking her up, and flying away. The actress was substituted for a model. For the closer scenes, two large rubber claws were created and Welch was dropped into the water from the dummies.
Old-fashioned makeup was used on actor, Robert Brown. It was similar to what Lon Chaney wore when he played the role of Akhoba in the 1940’s One Million B.C.
In 1969, Charles Schneer produced The Valley of Gwangi, a fantasy Western directed by Jim O’Connolly and written by William Bast. For Harryhausen, this would be a type of homage to his mentor, Willis O’Brien, who conceived and storyboarded the larger elements of the film for his own project. Entitled, Gwangi, the plot was inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s book, The Lost World. In the original story, an Allosaurus is discovered by cowboys, then put into a Wild West show. The dinosaur breaks out and goes wild. The parallels between this proposal and King Kong are very obvious. O’Brien would never get to see his project finished, as he died in 1962.
After years of collaborations, Schneer and Harryhausen approached Columbia Pictures with the idea for The Valley of Gwangi but the studio turned them down. Warner Brothers offered to finance the picture, instead. Harryhausen attached himself to the project because it would see his mentor’s vision come to fruition. It was his idea to keep the story’s setting in the earlier 20th Century so as to eliminate the cliché of an army approaching every threat with guns and tanks. This was to be a good decision.
The allosaurus, Gwangi, was to be very different than the tyrannosaurus in King Kong, even if O’Brien made no such distinctions in his script. Harryhausen based his interpretation of the dinosaur on Charles R. Knight’s painting, one of the most famous of the subject. This sort of blending of the two dinosaurs gave Gwangi a unique look.
The model for Gwangi, scaled at around fourteen feet for the film, stood only twelve inches high.
For this film, the stand-out scene is the one in which Gwangi is captured by two cowboys who rope him from different directions. Because the actors had to have something tangible to lasso, a pole was used for this purpose. Then, the pole and the jeep it stood on had to be edited out. Harryhausen then had to align the actions of the cowboys with the reactions of the model dinosaur. Painted wires had to be matched with the real ropes used by the actors. Coordinating the actor’s movements with the horses’ reactions to Gwangi also had to be taken into consideration. The number of moving parts in this scene were incredible. More than 300 Dynamation cuts were used on just this scene, alone. It took almost a year was spent on this scene.
A more practical scene involving a diving act and a horse led to Harryhausen making a model of both the horse and the diver. Film cuts, wire work, and matte painting were all used in this sequence. It was becoming very easy for stop-motion to approximate more than just the movements of monsters and dinosaurs.
Life-sized models of pterosaurs were used for the scenes in which a character is snatched from the back of a horse. Wire work made it possible to bring the actor into the air, then the wires were painted out and an eight-inch model pterosaur was inserted into the scene. After the flying creature reached a certain point in the sky, the actor was replaced with a model.
Fans of Jurassic Park will recognize the scene in which Gwangi attacks a smaller dinosaur. Harryhausen said this was one of his favorite scenes to animate, as the ornithomimus had never been used onscreen before. It’s possible this is why the scene has been duplicated so many times since.
To achieve the flames of Gwangi’s death scene, several different effects were used. Flames were added by double-printing the camera. An example of this is the outside of the church. The bottom portion was the actual church, photographed in Spain. The top portion, the one burning, was a miniature. The different portions, added together, gave the appearance of the structure burning. The scene was one of the better ones in the film, if for no other reason than its technical mastery.
The Valley of Gwangi was Harryhausen’s last dinosaur-themed film.
For a more detailed view of the different aspects of this process, there is an excellent YouTube video which deals with early Harryhausen films prior to the 60s.
