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THE HARRYHAUSEN BOX
(Columbia/TriStar)

IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA – 1955 – 78 mins. B&W
Directed by Robert Gordon. With Kenneth Tobey, Faith Domergue.
EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS – 1956 – 83 mins. B&W
Directed by Fred Sears. Screenplay by Curt Siodmak.
With Hugh Marlowe, Joan Taylor
20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH – 1957 – 82 mins. B&W
Directed by Nathan Juran. Screenplay by Bob Williams and Christopher Knopf.
With William Hopper, Joan Taylor
MYSTERIOUS ISLAND – 1961 – 100 mins. Color
Directed by Cy Endfield.
With Michael Craig, Joan Greenwood, Michael Callan, Gary Merrill, Herbert Lom.
H.G.WELLS’ FIRST MEN IN THE MOON – 1964 – 103 mins. Color. 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Directed by Nathan Juran. Screenplay by Nigel Kneale and Jan Read.
With Edward Judd, Martha Hyer, Lionel Jeffries, unbilled cameo by Peter Finch.

Although these seem to be the same pressings as when originally released, with the same featurettes being repeated on disc after disc, it is nonetheless a grand holiday boxed set if, let’s say, you only have one or two of them in your collection. Another box of Sinbads will follow.

IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA is the earliest entrée herein contained. It’s not a major Harryhausen work, though the octopus is mesmerizing. Its tentacles roll around buildings and bridges with a stop-motion weight and grace that are impossible to resist. Faith Domergue costars; as we’ve seen in THE AVIATOR, Howard Hughes took to her while she was underage, but I guess he didn’t steer her toward the choicest roles once she’d matured into her thirties…

EARTH VERSUS THE FLYING SAUCERS came next in Harryhausen’s lexicon, and the story is more creepy and compelling. Aliens were worrisome during that time period, and they do some nasty things to us humans over the course of the film, for which we compensate by disabling their navigational systems resulting in some spectacular crashes.
(Perhaps, since 9/ll, the Washington locale for the third act pyrotechnics has acquired an extra queeziness). It’s Harryhausen’s least favorite amongst his films, but more for reasons of genre than lack of pride in the effects.

Back in ‘69/70, when Harry Hurwitz and I were selecting clips to populate THE PROJECTIONIST’s protagonist’s fantasy life, we were given access to the Columbia stock library, and were told that we could purchase anything we wanted as long as we didn’t use the stars’ faces. We proceeded to grab the saucer crashes from this film, and the octopus from ICFBTS, which were the real stars, and nobody caught on. But just imagine how they would have pounced on us if we’d dared touch any footage of Kenneth Tobey!?

20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH is Harryhausen’s last B&W film, and a cornucopia of stop motion work. A Venusian creature is transported back to earth inside an alien egg, but after the rocket ship crashes into the sea off Sicily (a great opening sequence), it hatches and gets away, growing in size throughout the film and usually prodded into violence rather than being openly hostile, until finally it takes a bazooka hit in the Colosseum and falls to its death with a mournful roar.

As always, the acting is seems perfunctory, but take pity on those poor yeoman thesps who had to emote against nothing, pretending there was a monster before them. The pacing is superb, and since the ‘Ymir’ grows geometrically, it never becomes redundant…not that Harryhausen’s effects ever could.

JULES VERNE’S MYSTERIOUS ISLAND was an odd porridge, mixing a Civil War prison hot-air balloon escape with desert island frivolity and giant fauna violence. Herbert Lom’s crusty Captain Nemo is saved till almost the last act, too late for him to rescue the film. The color matte and rear screen shots are more disparate quality-wise than those in, say, THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, and much more so than those in later films like THE VALLEY OF GWANGI. Still, children will enjoy it, if they’re not already too hip to CGI, and even if they are, I believe they can be clued in. I remember showing SEVENTH VOYAGE, whose Cyclops still thrills me with its stilted, sensual movements and skin, to a nine year old girl who, at one point, staring at the screen, said, “It’s so……clay!”

Giving MYSTERIOUS ISLAND its due, the fight with the crab is a tour de force, made even better with the knowledge that it was a real crab, which Harryhausen bought at Harrod’s department store in London. And Bernard Herrmann’s score contains many rewarding passages.

H.G.WELLS’ FIRST MEN IN THE MOON is a charming sci-fi fantasy that emulates George Pal’s THE TIME MACHINE, and while never equaling that film’s power, acquits itself respectably. Lionel Jeffries lends comic touches to the proceedings, and Edward Judd has nearly the Victorian smoothness of Rod Taylor. The stop-motion effects are a little sparser than in many of Harryhausen’s other flicks, but there’s nice miniature and matte work, and pleasing art direction. Additionally, the film was shot in Panavision, an aspect ratio uncommon for his work. The DVD image is deliciously sharp, if a slight bit worn, the colors are dense, and the sound is resonant and bold.

All of these were produced by Harryhausen’s partner, Charles Schneer. What they display, given their limited budgets, is a visceral sense of the artist’s hand. Schneer may have crunched shooting schedules, and he may have skimped on hiring name actors, but he rarely seemed to lean on Ray (an example to the contrary being the ICFBTS octopus which, due to cost-cuts, was turned into a ‘sixtopus’). Given that the special effects were the raison d’etre for these films, beginning with the color features the scores were the second greatest things about Harryhausen’s films. He worked with the likes of Bernard Herrmann (MYSTERIOUS ISLAND), Miklos Rosza, Laurie Johnson (FIRST MEN IN THE MOON), Jerome Moross, and Mario Nascimbene. This box doesn’t contain the best of the scores, but you do get Herrmann and, because Herrmann outpriced himself after JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, you also get Johnson, and those’re elements to swoon over.

Included on several of the discs are the ‘making of’ SEVENTH VOYAGE featurette, which is in fair condition, and the far more satisfying THE RAY HARRYHAUSEN CHRONICLES, an hour long documentary, directed by Richard Schickel (who will receive the William K. Everson Film History award this year at the NBR Awards Ceremony on January 11th). Harryhausen, looking seasoned but fit, takes us on a tour of most of his films, accompanied by excellent clips from his earliest home-made shorts, through what is his most endearing work – created with his mentor Willis O’Brien – MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, and on to his farewell epic, THE CLASH OF THE TITANS. The doc, made in ‘97 ends with footage of Harryhausen accepting his Academy Award, presented by old friend Ray Bradbury. Harryhausen speaks throughout in his typically deliberate, sluggish manner which, despite the remarkable collection of clips, keeps the tone of the film rather quiet. His slow, laconic voice belies the fact that he is a bonafide master in his field. (One wonders in passing if he hadn’t perhaps sniffed too much latex over the course of a forty year career.) Incidentally, the only odd note in the doc (literally), is the use, on two occasions, of what seems like Miklos Rozsa’s music from BEN-HUR…or maybe I’m mistaken and the music from THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD was so similar as to fool me?

Consider accompanying the Harryhausen Box with the Harryhausen book. RAY HARRYHAUSEN: AN ANIMATED LIFE, co-written by Tony Dalton, with a forward by Ray Bradbury, is a 300-page, $50. coffee table tome by Watson-Guptill Publications. It’s a good, straight-forward read, very much like its author’s personality, and is copiously illustrated with everything from film frames to storyboards to the artist’s Gustave Dore-influenced production sketches.

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The ‘UP’ COLLECTION
(First Run Features) 1964-1971-1978-1985-1992-1999

Six documentaries, spaced seven years apart. Produced by Granada Television. Directed by Michael Apted.. 576 minutes. Color & B&W. Audio Commentary by Michael Apted on 42 UP.

When I interviewed Michael Apted several years ago, he was feeling smothered by what he’d gotten himself into. But he was also very tired that day, promoting his narrative
thriller EXTREME MEASURES, and I’m sure at most other times he’s pleased at what he’s done with this unique and extraordinary series of films chronicling British life through the aspiring eyes of children up through their doubtful years, their disappointing years, and their recovering years. It’s equally interesting to see how footage from the preceding installments is whittled down to comprehensible yet wieldy shape so that the latest information can be incorporated without creating a bloated experience and a monstrous running time.

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