The beloved and celebrated special effects maestro Ray Harryhausen steadily built up a 1950's filmography of low budget, black-and-white (but startlingly iconic) sci-fi creature features.
With producer-partner Charles Schneer, he used his stop motion animation artistry to unleash a menagerie of truly fantastic beasts....the raging dino of "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms", the bridge crushing giant octopus of "It Came From Beneath The Sea", the destructive alien discs of "Earth Vs.The Flying Saucers", and the rapidly growing Venusian reptile of "20 Million Miles To Earth".
Then in 1958, Schneer and Harryhausen broke new ground for themselves and stop motion special effects films......
The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad (1958) an enchanting Arabian Nights fantasy, arrived in full glorious technicolor and Harryhausen's imagination and skill reached all new heights. Adults and children gasped at the jawdropping array of sights before them.....an island of one-eyed Cyclops monsters, a woman turned into a bizarre snake creature, the Roc, a two headed giant bird, a fire breathing dragon and the premiere showstopper, a sword fighting skeleton for Sinbad to battle.
Nobody had seen anything quite like it and for the rest of his career, Harryhausen never looked back, concentrating mostly on mythological fantasies (with a few excursions into fanciful sci-fi like "First Men In The Moon".
We could spend an eternity singing the praises of 'Sinbad', but for now we'll just concentrate on the film's primary MVPs. Star Kerwin Mathews brought great humanity and vulnerability to his heroes and no actor excelled better at convincing us he was really interacting with Harryhausen's creations. Torin Thatcher made a perfect sinister villain and child actor Richard Eyer captivated kids as the pint-sized genie.
Best of all, Hollywood's most genius composer, Bernard Herrmann, began his collaboration with Harryhausen that continued on for three more films, "The 3 Worlds Of Gulliver", "Mysterious Island" and "Jason And The Argonauts." Herrman's music for these films, propulsive, beautiful and richly symphonic, became landmarks in film scoring history.
Need we even go on? 67 years later, 'Sinbad' still stands as amazing and engaging as ever, a 5 stars must (*****) for everyone who loves cinema.
The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960) came two years later, a rather bold attempt to condense and simplify Jonathon's Swift's 16th century satire "Gulliver's Travels". Once again it featured Kerwin Mathews in the title role and one of Bernard Herrmann's most delightful scores (a personal favorite of Herrmann himself).
The project was a bit disappointing in that it offered Harryhausen little opportunity for his dazzling creature animation. Here it's limited to a forest squirrel and in the film's one and only bravura sequence - a crocodile who's let loose on Gulliver by the giant King of Brobdingnag.
Given the material, of course, the effects concentrated first on a giant-sized Gulliver among the tiny Lilliputians then his harrowing days as a miniature man in the land of the giants. (For romance, the script provided him with a fiance (June Thorburn) who shares his Brobdingnag adventures.
In all of Harryhausen's work, audiences would gaze in wonder at his ability to combine flesh and blood actors with the unbelievable things around them......(In 'Gulliver' it's the stunning scene of Mathews pinned down and bound on the beach, surrounded by the real Lilliputian army standing guard over him. In 'Sinbad' it's the breathless duel between Sinbad and the skeleton, where you can actually see them cross swords against each other.)
Getting back to 'Gulliver' it does feature one the finest supporting casts assembled for a Harryhausen film - for Lilliput, a full compliment of British greats (Basil Sydney, Martin Benson, Peter Bull) and a wonderfully hammy Gergoire Aslan as King Brob of the giants.
(And all these years later, we couldn't help chuckling through the scene where Gulliver, his libido volcanic, urgently demands King Brob marry him and Elizabeth so their wedding night can proceed immediately. )
Though specifically targeted at families and small children (even featuring a few musical numbers), the film manages to squeeze in a fair amount, albeit watered down, of Swiftian political satire.....especially at the expense of the foolish Lilliputians, who wage war on a neighboring country who won't conform to opening their eggs at the small end like they do.
And then there's that marvelous Herrmann score, which alternates between grand orchestral bombast and delicate fairy tale charm, as if it's the composer's very own Nutcracker Suite.
65 years later, 'Gulliver' remains the same spectacular classic as 'Sinbad'. If you have any kids (or grown up movie buffs unfamiliar with the films) treat them to a 5 star (*****) double feature.
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