June 1981 continues with Disney re-releases, Greek myths, and Indiana freakin' Jones
Plus Mel Brooks offers up a little historical hysteria
Disney’s desperation ploy this weekend looks even crazier with some perspective. Imagine thinking the way you handle the release of Raiders of the Lost Ark is by throwing three of your live-action comedies back into theaters as a triple feature. Spielberg and Lucas weren’t quite the unstoppable juggernauts that they are today, but this may be the moment that transition took place, and there’s nothing any studio could have counter-programmed that would have stopped this film’s success. But Freaky Friday? That’s just insane.
Let’s dig right into what may well have been one of the most important movie weekends of my entire life.
JUNE 12
Clash Of The Titans
Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom, Maggie Smith, Ursula Andress, Jack Gwillim, Susan Fleetwood, Pat Roach, Harry Hamlin, Judi Bowker, Burgess Meredith, Siân Phillips, Flora Robson, Anna Manahan, Freda Jackson, Tim Pigott-Smith, Neil McCarthy, Donald Houston, Vida Taylor, Harry Jones
cinematography by Ted Moore
music by Laurence Rosenthal
screenplay by Beverley Cross
produced by Ray Harryhausen and Charles H. Schneer
directed by Desmond Davis
Rated PG
1 hr 58 mins
The Greek Gods work out their inter-personal conflicts using humans like chess pieces. Also, there are monsters.
The most interesting idea in this film is perhaps undersold a bit, even though it’s the actual title of the movie. While Harry Hamlin is ostensibly the star of this film, playing Perseus, the half-human son of Zeus (Laurence Olivier), he’s a pawn in the actual story. Everyone who isn’t a god is basically just a clay figure on a shelf, subject to the whims and furies of these petulant Olympians. Everything that happens in the film is because of the various emotional storms generated by the interactions of Zeus and Thetis and Athena and Aphrodite. They are all too human, which is, of course, the point.
I’m not going to lie. This was one of the films I was most excited about going into the summer. When I saw the film at 11, I didn’t care about Zeus or Hera at all. I just wanted to get to the monsters. And it’s hard to blame me. That’s the primary selling point in any Harryhausen film, and before this is anything, this is a showcase for the work of one of cinema’s greatest effects masters. I love that he made this one last giant film as the ‘80s were changing the way visual effects were created for movies. It feels like him throwing down in the face of Star Wars and Alien and Close Encounters, saying, “Yes, but I can generate wonder in a way that is all mine.” It is remarkable that Harryhausen was always the primary selling point of Harryhausen’s movies, and that his name is the most important part of getting everyone in the theater. He has as recognizable a fingerprint as a filmmaker as any auteur stylist in any era. When you watch Perseus tame Pegasus and take his first triumphant ride through the skies, it is so clearly the same person behind those images who gave us the skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts or the Cyclops from 7th Voyage of Sinbad. And every single moment involving monsters or fantastic creatures in this film is amazing. I think the connective material is probably a bit better than in most of Harryhausen’s films, but some of it feels stiff and cheap. Part of the problem is that the stuff with the gods is written to be fun for the veteran stars packing Olympus, while the human stuff is perfunctory at best. Judi Bowker makes no real impression as Andromeda, but I wonder if anyone could make this role interesting.
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