MAX BLAKE: ‘Azza

I first came across Ray Harryhausen’s work many years ago when “Earth vs. The Flying Saucers” was broadcast on television. At that time I was still young and impressionable, but Harryhausen’s animation struck me as stunning. Though clearly, thought I, an old film (being in monochrome, as it is), the animation seemed vastly younger than the rest of the film. The scene where the flying saucer flies over the car along the great flat roads of the American deserts was burnt into my mind for years afterward as I tried to find out the name of the film (being broadcast on BBC they did not play short intros to the film after advert breaks because there were none), as was the classic scene depicting the aliens frying a group of soldiers with a heat ray.

Though the flying saucers were easier to animate than puppets and dolls used in his other films, Harryhausen also animated the falling masonry seen repeatedly when the saucers attack buildings or crash into them. This gave the explosions an extra degree of realism above the usual noise, flash of light and cloud of smoke which had been employed before.

Much will have been said on this blog about his pioneering work, and loath though I am to repeat what will have already been said, Harryhausen was a man ahead of his time, a legend in cinematic history and a man without whom the science behind special effects would have meandered slowly along without the leaps and bounds that it did thanks to Harryhausen. Below are two of my favourite YouTube clips, the original trailer for “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers” and that fight scene from “Jason and the Argonauts”. And, purely because I mentioned Argonauts, there is an extra special video of them pootling around collecting air.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Ray, a true legend.