This is Ray Harryhausen’s final movie, and it showcases some Damn fine work. Does it look kinda cheezy? Well, yeah, some of it but, shit, it’s fucking crazy though how many stop-motion effects were pulled off in this. And mostly really well integrated. Those scorpions? Fuck yeah! And the story doesn’t suck either. It’s why we’re still telling it again, like, 4,000 years later. They even named stars after these fuckers. Where’s the Shakespeare constellation? Or the Spongebob Squarepants star cluster? Yeah, that’s right. Suck it, lack-of-Simpsons Nebula.
Some real Bastard sends his wife and newborn into the sea in a coffin. Guess what, the Greek Gods don’t take kindly to that. Specifically Zeus, the main Dude. Two sons of the gods, one blessed, one cursed, are essentially pitted against each other, because those Gods be petty bitches. Perseus gets some awesome armor and sword, Calibos gets unwashed ruffians and scalywags in a swamp. I can understand his frustration. But the bastard did, like, kill almost all of the winged horses. Who the fuck would do that? So yeah, fuck you Calibos, you deserve the mutantsy instilled upon ye! Perseus has a to step up though, and he does, in a suitably heroic fashion. And then there’s Burgess Meredith. He’s not quite as heroic as Perseus, but he does have a nice sense of drama.
I must admit, I was gifted a fine illustrated book of Greek Mythology as a youngin and made me a big fan. I loved the stories, and the illustrations were kinda cool. D’Aulieres? Not my style back then or now, but it helped the imagination. And they are great stories, literally for the ages. The archetypes of what are basically the, what, Seven Plotlines that a story can take, true to this day. And Perseus is one of those classic hero’s journeys, presented here with a lot of pomp and circumstance and bombastic score. And a great finale to the old-school big-budget stop-motion live action era that Harryhausen helped elevate and make really fuckin cool effects for. Sure you see stop-motion used in some movies after this, most notably with Nick Park’s Wallace & Gromit series and Henry Selick’s works like A Nightmare Before Christmas, but this was the real final hurrah of live action stuff that wasn’t Army of Darkness. And then computers just Tron’d us into believing pixels were real. Harryhausen still lived for many years after this, but mainly dedicated his time to film history preservation and his contributions to it. And, starred alongside actor extraordinaire Terry Gilliam in the John Landis film Spies Like Us. Heh. That’s just kinda funny in itself.
