THE FABULOUS WORLD OF JULES VERNE

Prisoner: Lubor Tokos

THE FABULOUS WORLD OF JULES VERNE (aka The Deadly Invention/Vynalez zkazy/1958). Director: Karel Zeman.

In the late 18th century Simon Hart (Lubor Tokos), an assistant to Professor Roch (Arnost Navratil), is kidnapped along with his employer by Count Artigas (Miroslav Horub) and his piratical associate, Captain Spade (Frantisek Cerny). The count has appropriated a submarine with which he rams ships and robs them of their bounty One of the survivors is a young lady named Jana (Jana Zatloukalova). Everyone is taken to the count's headquarters inside an extinct volcano, where the professor is forced to work on an explosive with which Artigas hopes to eventually rule the world. Simon and Jana try to figure out a way to escape ...

Octopus attack

The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, filmed in "misti-mation," is a real oddity. The images of the film can be quite arresting, as it presents a combination of live action, cartoon animation, crude stop--motion, cut outs, drawings and other techniques, but despite this it still comes off a bit backwards in the FX department (especially as compared to such items as Harryhausen's The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, which was made the year before and was state of the art). It would have been more impressive had it been a silent movie, which in many ways it resembles. Although it cites another Verne novel as its source, this is clearly most inspired by 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and is vastly inferior to the 1954 Disney version despite that picture's flaws. Fabulous World does boast some striking art direction and photography (there is a wonderful shot of masses of birds surrounding a small balloon in mid-air), has an interesting score by Zdenek Lista, and a sequence when the sub rams a ship is rather well-handled. However, this Czech film has been vastly over-praised and will ultimately have many discerning viewers reaching for their fast-forward buttons.

Verdict: Clever in some ways, but not very exciting. **1/4. 

RAY HARRYHAUSEN 1920 - 2013

Ray Harryhausen with one of his models

RAY HARRYHAUSEN 1920 - 2013.

Even with the advent of CGI computer effects, I was still impressed by and often prefer the stop-motion animation work of master FX man Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen did not invent the technique, but he mastered and perfected it. He worked with Willis 0'Brien [King Kong] on Mighty Joe Young, then branched off on his own with such films as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, It Came from Beneath the Sea, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad in the fifties, his masterpiece Jason and the Argonauts and the wonderful Valley of Gwangi and Mysterious Island in the sixties, and such films as Clash of the Titans in later years. His work was always excellent, but he resisted making the films he worked on a little more "adult," and the "dynamation" he employed to bring monsters and creatures to life became increasingly expensive [and was always painstakingly slow]. Often his effects were the only reasons to watch the movie; One Million Years B.C. for instance is a bore except when the beautifully animated monsters appear, and some of his latter day Sinbad films were a bit disappointing. Still most of the movies he worked on remain tremendously entertaining today, with Jason and the Argonauts arguably his finest achievement and one of the best fantasy films ever made. Other Harryhausen films include First Men in the Moon, and The Three Worlds of Gulliver.

He was one of the greats, he will be missed, but his work is, thankfully, on view on DVD and will be for generations to come. The amount of joy that I and millions of others have gotten from his films is inestimable.

CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981)

CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981). Director: Desmond Davis. 

"I was partial to tragedy before experience taught me that life was quite tragic enough without my having to write about it." -- Ammon [Burgess Meredith]. 

 

When the lovely princess Andromeda (Judi Bowker) is told by the angry goddess Thetis (Maggie Smith) that she must be sacrificed to the Kraken or her entire kingdom and everyone in it will be destroyed -- because Andromeda's mother dared suggest her daughter was more beautiful than Thetis -- the smitten Perseus (Harry Hamlin) sets out to capture the head of the gorgon Medusa, to use to destroy the Kraken. (Both the Kraken and Medusa are "titans," hence the title.) The deliberate pace of the film -- it does take a while to get going -- turned off the critics at the time of its release, but it's actually a fine fantasy film with excellent Ray Harryhausen stop motion FX (although it is not quite in the league of Harryhausen's masterpiece Jason and the Argonauts). The scene when Perseus and his pals invade the temple of Medusa to slay her is outstanding, and there are also some fine scuttling giant scorpions, the winged horse Pegasus, and the hideous Kraken who shows up for his sacrifice -- and supper. The scene when Thetis condemns Andromeda is handled with dramatic flair (as opposed to a similar sequence in the recent remake). Hamlin is fine as Perseus; Meredith is excellent as his friend, the writer Ammon; Bowker and Tim Pigott-Smith memorable as Andromeda and the warrior Thallo. Laurence Olivier, merely flexing his acting muscles, is superb in his portrayal of Zeus, King of the Gods, and he gets wonderful support from Smith and Claire Bloom. Laurence Rosenthal's score and the art direction are assets. Bubo, the mechanical owl that is a gift from the Gods, is slightly irritating, but he grows on you. The scene with Perseus confronting the three blind witches (Flora Robson, among them) is also notable. 

Verdict: Not Harryhausen's best, perhaps, but still quite entertaining. ***.

ARMY OF DARKNESS

ARMY OF DARKNESS (1992). Director: Sam Raimi.

A sequel to Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 has hero Ash (the charismatic Bruce Campbell) falling through a time warp and winding up in the middle ages. There he learns that the only way he can get home is to find the Necronomicon (a mystical book that was actually invented by H. P. Lovecraft). Along the way he encounters more demons, tiny, giggling duplicates of himself, an evil doppelganger, witches, flying creatures, and living skeletons. The movie is busy but by no means should it be confused with a decent fantasy, sword and sorcery, or horror film; it's a travesty in every sense of the word -- and an effort to sit through for the most part due to its monumental silliness (as opposed to genuine humor). There's no real story and no real characters. Director Raimi, who co-scripted with his brother, seems to have been trying to turn star Campbell into some kind of slapstick comedian. Campbell can handle everything the script throws at him with aplomb, but he deserves better. And so do horror-fantasy fans. There's some acceptable stop-motion work, but none of it is of Ray Harryhausen quality, and there's nothing in this that compares to the climax of Jason and the Argonauts. Some effective, amusing moments, but much of this is just clumsy and foolish. Pretty much a moron movie.

Verdict: Full of sound and fury ... *1/2.

THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN

THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN (1956). Directors: Edward Nassour; Ismael Rodriguez.

Jimmy Ryan (Guy Madison) runs a cattle ranch in Mexico with his friend Felipe (Carlos Rivas), but a creepy fellow named Enrique (Eduardo Noriega) wants to drive him out of town. Things between the two men worsen when it appears that Enrique's fiancee Sarita (Patricia Medina) is attracted to Jimmy. Meanwhile, some of Jimmy's cattle are disappearing ... Based on an idea of cowboys encountering dinosaurs by King Kong special effects man Willis O'Brien (who, reportedly, was supposed to do the effects for this film), Beast of Hollow Mountain was essentially remade as the vastly superior Valley of Gwangi (with effects by Ray Harryhausen) in 1969. The monster in this almost seems like an after-thought at times. It's 45 minutes until it makes its first (off-screen) appearance, and an hour until it bursts on the scene in full glory. However, the next twenty minutes until the film's end is full of lively Tyrannosaur Rex action. (No explanation is given for why it survived or why it's living inside a hollow mountain in Mexico.) The crude (but not necessarily dreadful) stop motion effects were done by Louis DeWitt, Jack Rabin and others, employing an inferior "replacement" animation [christened "regiscope" for this film] that uses several models instead of one fully articulated one. The monster looks better running in long-shot than in close-up. It's interesting to imagine how Harryhausen would have handled the final sequences, with the beast sliding down a sandy slope, reaching its claws into a crevice, galloping across the desert, and finally, falling into the swamp as Jerry swings temptingly before it on a rope. Some nice CinemaScope photography, although you rarely if ever see a close-up of any of the actors. Carlos Rivas, who has little to do, also appeared in The Black Scorpion (1957), as did Pascal Garcia Pena (as the "coffee break" scientist) and little Mario Navarro ( as Juanito), who in Beast respectively play Pancho and his son Panchito, who have a touching relationship that ends in tragedy.

Verdict: No world beater, but monster completists will want to see the final twenty minutes. **1/2.

IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA

IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955). Director: Robert Gordon.

The true star of this movie is special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen and his stupendous stop-motion giant octopus, which attacks ships, snatches people off the shore, destroys the Golden Gate Bridge, and smashes unstoppably through San Francisco in search of squiggling and screaming human food. Flawed by its minuscule budget, the movie nevertheless holds the attention and has some splendid sequences, particularly those shots of soldiers using flame throwers to push back the gargantuan tentacles of the sea beast as they snake through the city. Faith Domergue is fun and sexy as a more liberated kind of lady scientist than usual, while Ken Tobey and Donald Curtis are more or less solid support as, respectively, a Navy sub commander/romantic interest and a colleague of Domergue's. Lots of creepy fun. The DVD, which has an excellent print, also features a documentary on Harryhausen and other extras.

Verdict: Great fun! ***.