"Jason and the Argonauts" (1963)
Directed by Don Chaffey, Written by Beverley Cross & Jan Read, Based on the epic Greek poem "The Argonautica" from the 3rd century B.C.E by Apollonius Rhodius, Produced by Charles H. Schneer, Music by Bernard Herrmann, Cinematography by Wilkie Cooper and Edited by Maurice Rootes, Starring Todd Armstrong, Nancy Kovack, Honor Blackman, Gary Raymond & Laurence Naismith.
Ray Harryhausen is credited as Associate Producer & Creator of Special Visual Effects.
After saving the life of his royal father's usurper, Pelias, Jason is encouraged by the conniving murderer to begin a quest in search of the Golden Fleece. In doing so, Pelias hopes Jason will perish on the quest to thwart the prophecy that Jason will reclaim the throne.
Along the journey, Jason is protected by the goddess Hera and his crew includes the hero Hercules and Acastus who is a saboteur planted by Pelias.
In 1992 when Ray received his honorary lifetime attachment Oscar, In his intro the actor Tom Hanks said,
"Some say Casablanca or Citizen Kane but I say "Jason and the Argonauts" is the greatest film ever made"
I don't totally agree with that statement but this film is remarkable not only as a fantasy adventure film but is a truly stunning technical achievement for 1963 but compared to modern film a lot of this production still holds up!
What you need to understand is modern effects and CGI involves literally hundreds if not a thousand humans when it came to his "Dynamation" Ray Harryhausen worked pretty much alone. Due to the nature of the animation effects Ray produced he had to be on set and direct the live action elements that would then be blended with his creatures and effects this film was an especially huge undertaking and definitely his biggest and most involved production of his career so far.
Before I drill down into Harryhausen's effects and creatures lets look at the film as a whole,
Directed by Don Chaffey an English director who started his career making a string of quota quickies and B-Movies before working with Disney making live action films before making "Jason and the Argonauts" Chaffey had been responsible for Disney's "Greyfriars Bobby" (1961) which is pretty dreadful!
He did go on to direct for the great Hammer Films including teaming up with Ray again for "One Million Years B.C." (1966).
The script is an adaptation of the epic Greek poem "The Argonautica" from the 3rd century B.C.E by Apollonius Rhodius, Apollonius wasn't available to collaborate on the script so that duty fell to Beverley Cross & Jan Read (both men) Their adaptation does bare a strong resemblance to the source material but lots of characters, locations and creatures are transplanted from other tales from Greek mythology as well as a general sanitisation removing any of the gruesome death, infanticide, cannibalism or incest that tends to feature so regularly in Greek myths.
The film was shot on location in Italy and at Shepperton Studios, Surrey, England.
The production team did scout locations in Greece but apparently found possible locations "Dismal, Grey and Rundown" and enquiries with local authorities didn't fill the production team with confidence that permission would be granted to film so Italy became the obvious choice.
The american actors Todd Armstrong and Nancy Kovack were cast as the titular Jason and his love interest Medea but the rest of the cast was made up of very talented British character actors so after principle photography was complete Columbia Pictures gave notes requesting that the two Americans could have their dialogue overdubbed because the voices were jarring. So the English actor Tim Turner dubbed all of Jason's lines and Eva Haddon performed Medea's dialogue.
there are some remarkable performances in this film a few highlights are,
Honor Blackman played the Godess Herra (this was a year before she appeared as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger). Irish actor Niall MacGinnis is wonderful in his all too brief appearances as Zeus.
Wonderful character actor and feature Dr Who Patrick Troughton plays Phineus who the god Apollo had given the gift of prophecy but for revealing the future to mankind he was punished by being blinded and also tormented by the Harpies, who stole or defiled whatever food he had at hand.
Another great bit of casting was Nigel Green as Hercules. He puts in a great solid and fun performance as the strong man hero.
In this still the bearded actor over Green's shoulder is Andrew Faulds playing Phalerus, One of the actors who takes part in the iconic skeleton battle. In real life Andrew Faulds went on to be a Labour MP in the UK Parliament from 1966 – 1997.
The film itself is great. The acting is melodramatic and at times rears towards panto but it is a family action adventure film made in 1962 in a genre that was sort of new a Family swords and sandals creature feature based on Greek mythology. They were breaking new ground with this.
What you have to keep in mind is this film was made for around $1M in 1962 which in 2024 would still only be $10.4M. Films made today with a small cast in rooms just talking! cost $15M to make.
The main reason a film filled with effects and creatures could be made for $1M was Mr Ray Harryhausen.
Ray was in charge of 90% of all the special visual effects on this production not only the creatures brought to life via his "Dynamation" but all visual effects.
As you may imagine while trying to pull off a project as ambitious as "Jason and the Argonauts" money was always a concern to the producer Charles H. Schneer so they did use some stock footage which does look the most "Janky" in the movie.
i) right at the beginning of the film when soldiers are sacking Thessaly and the footage looks washed out with flames superimposed that is footage from the film "Helen of Troy" from 1956.
ii) In the scene where Aeëtes discovers the Hydra dead and the golden fleece gone and calls out to the God Hecate who reigns down fire on the Hydras body. That shot of the sky with the cheesy forked lightning is stock footage.
since I have covered what Ray didn't do in the film let's look at what he did.
The first bit of animation in the film is the discus sequence.
The discus was animated using the "Dynamation" process over footage of the water and rock. A reel stone was skipped on the water to make the splashes and ripples.
Then we get!
TALOS,
When Jason and his crew run low on supplies, The Goddess Hera guides him to the Isle of Bronze, warning him to take nothing except food and water. But, Hercules steals a brooch pin the size of a javelin from a building filled with treasure activating and bringing to life the gigantic bronze statue of Talos.
Talos attacks Jason and his crew in an action packed sequence. Again Jason turns to Hera for help and she tells him the only way to defeat Talos is to remove a large plug on the back of Talos's heel to release the giant's "ichor" (magic god blood).
This sequence is truly stunning and exciting. Ray animates Talos to move in a metallic way and perfectly demonstrates how something that massive and heavy would move.
Harryhausen devised a sequence where Talos heads off the fleeing ship by straddling their escape route reenacting the iconic Colossus of Rhodes.
When Jason finally does defeat Talos he unscrews the hatch on the giants heel and spills his "ichor" (god blood) the effect of the blood spilling out was achieved by attaching a ring of red cellophane attached to a glass disc which was spun and lit filmed behind the model foot. so simple and so effective.
The next hit of "Dynamation" we get is the two "Harpies" who are terrorising Phineus.
In Greek mythology, a harpy is a half-human and half-bird, often believed to be a personification of storm winds.
But when Ray designed any flying creature he did favour a bat style wing and he opted for a more sinister demon form of creature.
These scenes with Harpies flying around were hand animated by Ray and have about 4 minutes of screen times so Ray performed approximately 11'520 adjustments to the models and when Jason and his men capture the Harpies he also had to animate a miniature fishing net threaded with copper wire. The scene looks great.
The next special effects sequence in the film was one of my favourites, The clashing rocks.
While in the original myth the clashing rocks are two gigantic rocks either side of a narrow channel that bash together and destroy any ship attempting to sail past. Ray opted for more of an aggressive rock fall / land slide style of event where large boulders fall and smash up boats as they attempt to navigate the channel.
Jason and his crew foil the deadly trap by calling on a sea god "Triton" the son of "Poseidon" and "Amphitrite" he does resemble "Poseidon" but "Triton" is depicted as a Merman half man half fish.
Filmed in a water tank in Shepperton Studios. Two large model cliffs were constructed along with a scale replica of the ship The Argo.
Then casting the role of Triton the then 27 year old English Bodybuilder (and future Darth Vader) David Prowse but when he looked good he actually had a surprisingly short arm length and his armpit to wrist measurement had to be as long as the ship model was wide.
Ray directing the scene.
Luckily they found a man by the name of Bill Gudgeon who appears in the film. Gudgeon was a retired heavyweight boxer from Canada who still had that brawler physique and was known for his reach as a fighter sporting notably long arms.
Gudgeon was in the tank wearing swim shorts with a latex fish scale effect girdle over the top. The fish tale was not attached to him and was a separate puppet rig being operated by technicians.
Ray utilises many film techniques to create this sequence in addition to the physical sets models and performers. He used "travelling matte" photography and high speed photography shooting at 96 frames per second and playing it back at 24 frames which gave the water, rocks and Triton himself this sense of heft, scale and weight. It really works very well.
The Hydra!
When the crew of the Argo finally arrive in Colchis Jason discovers the Golden Fleece is guarded by The Hydra which is a multi headed serpentine monster. This creature is borrowed from the Hercules mythology where defeating the Hydra was the second of his Twelve Labors.
In the Jason story the Golden Fleece is guarded by a dragon and Ray and the production team all felt a dragon didn't offer the audience anything new so they transplanted the Hydra to the Jason story.
You can see in the clip above care of the "Creature Features" YouTube channel that Ray animates the seven-necked and headed beast with his usual flair. The amount of tiny movements needed across the body and all seven necks heads and mouths 24 times for a second of film. I guess for the two minutes the Hydra appears on screen Ray must have made something like 60'000 adjustments to the Hydra model while remembering what each head has just done it really is mind boggling.
After Jason dispatches the Hydra and escapes with the fleece, Aeëtes discovers the Hydra dead calls out to the God Hecate which sends down fire and reduces the Hydra's body to a skeleton, Aeëtes orders his men to collect the teeth from the Hydra's skulls.
The teeth are then planted in the ground and rapidly grow into Seven armed human skeleton warriors who are the "children of the Hydra's teeth" Jason, Phalerus and Castor, battle with the skeletons.
This fight scene is probably the most iconic scene in the movie and is still stunning 61 years later. The animation of the Skeletons and the amount of personality Ray infuses into these characters is just amazing.
Check out the sequence in the video link bellow again care of Creature Features channel.
The Skeleton fight scene was painstakingly choreographed and rehearsed by the actors with human stunt performers as opponents then the actors performed the fight moves without the stunt performers present. Then Ray worked his Dynamation magic.
"I had three men fighting seven skeletons, and each skeleton had five appendages to move in each separate frame of film. This meant at least thirty-five animation movements, each synchronized to the actor's movements. Some days I was producing just 13 or 14 frames a day, or to put it another way, less than one second of screen time per day, and in the end the whole sequence took a record four and a half months to capture on film."
You can see in the video below how much work Ray had to do to bring these characters to life. Now multiply that by seven!!
All of the visual effects (except the stock footage) is remarkable and if you are only going to sit and watch one Ray Harryhausen movie it should be this one.
An amusing fact about this film is the construction of the actual practical boat used as The Argo cost a significant chunk of the film's limited budget. It was a Dutch built fishing vessel equipped with engines by Mercedes Benz then the production team constructed what we see on top.
Conveniently as they were wrapping up "Jason and the Argonauts" The studio 20th Century Fox were starting production on "Cleopatra" (1963) the epic with Elizabeth Taylor.
The very savvy producer Charles H. Schneer managed to sell the boat to Fox and recouped the cost.
Having just re-watched the film to write this blog the weird thing is it does just kinda end.
we get a brief speech from Zeus which on the surface seems to be leaving things open for a squeal and then credits roll. The reason for that is really down to the story. The film had just told the story of the most heroic part of Jason's life and the events of Jason's life after the film ends are horrendous and filled with child murder and all that standard Greek Myth stuff.
So its for the best that they left things there!
I own the HMV premium collection Blu-ray which is now out of print so I advise jumping on Ebay and buying a used one ASAP!
But you can Buy the movie as a digital download on Amazon Prime or Apple TV for £7.99
Or you can rent the film from Amazon Prime or Apple TV for £3.49
