YOU BET JURASSIC RAY HARRYHAUSEN DID IT FIRST.......AND BY HIMSELF......

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953)    Before the pop culture landscape becomes engulfed and overwhelmed by the latest "Jurassic World" entry.......let's take a moment to recall who's the wellspring Godfather and inspiration for Dino chompin' epics.........

            Ray Harryhausen's first Dinosaur-Amuck-In-The-Big-City movie took its own inspiration from a a short story by Harryhausen's lifelong friend Ray Bradbury........in which a lonesome dino mistook the wail of lighthouse foghorn for a fellow monster.......

            Back in the 50's, no studio awarded monster movies with zillion dollar budgets........or vast platoons of animators to bring the creatures to life......

           Harryhausen scraped by with poverty budgets......but gifted with endless imagination, ingenuity and the creative alchemy to bring his stop motion figures to life, he worked miracles.

           And he left future generations of filmmakers spellbound and entranced.

           So we celebrate Ray and his wondrous dinosaur, the 'Rhedosaurus'......(a species that sprung strictly from his own mind.....

            No special effects artist every worked so hard (and singled handed) to delivered such eye-popping showmanship and sheer magic........

             For a Harryhausen film, the special effects credits didn't take 15 minutes to unspool......

            You only needed one name to show the guy who worked the wonders......

            So here's to Ray and his raging Rhedosaurus, stompin' on Coney Island and snackin' on New York city cops........5 stars forever,  FIND OF FINDS.......(no wonder it took a pre-Spaghetti Western Lee Van Cleef to shoot down Ray's beasty....)