Post "Jason and the Argonauts" you would think the world would be Harryhausen's oyster but as I mentioned previously Hollywood was never banging on Ray's door due to movie bosses being happy sticking performers in rubber suits rather than committing to making real movie magic. Luckily for us Ray maintained a healthy working relationship with film producer Charles H. Schneer who knew what a talent Harryhausen was.
Next Schneer, Harryhausen teamed up again with "20 Million Miles to Earth" & "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" director Nathan Juran to make...
"First Men in the Moon" (1964)
Directed by Nathan Juran, Screenplay by Nigel Kneale & Jan Read, Based on the 1901 novel "The First Men in the Moon" by H. G. Wells, Produced by Charles H. Schneer, Music by Laurie Johnson, Cinematography by Wilkie Cooper, Edited by Maurice Rootes, Starring Edward Judd, Martha Hyer & Lionel Jeffries.
In 1964, the United Nations has launched a rocket flight to the Moon. A multi-national group of astronauts in the UN spacecraft land, believing themselves to be the first lunar explorers. However, upon embarking on their debut moonwalk, they discover a battered Union Jack flag on the surface and a handwritten note, dated some 65 years earlier, claiming the moon on behalf of Queen Victoria. Stranger still, the note is written on the back of a court summons for one Katherine Callender from the village of Dymchurch in England...
Harryhausen planned on following "Jason and the Argonauts" (1963) with an adaptation of H.G. Wells' 1904 novel "The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth" when he met with legendary writer Nigel Kneale. "Food of the Gods" would have been a fantastic project for Harryhausen but sadly is filed under "Unrealised Projects".
The story was adapted into a movie in 1976 by director Bert I. Gordon and it is terrible! The story involves the farming of gigantic animals and Gordon used that cheesy technique of filming real animals and making them look massive which looked awful in 1950's monster B movies let alone 1976!!... ANYWAY!!
But Harryhausen had also held a long standing desire to tackle Wells' "First Men in the Moon" Kneale gravitated more towards the Moon story than the giant animal tale however producer Charles Schneer was not enthusiastic about it, mainly due to concerns regarding the film's period setting.
Ray remembered "Charles would look at me and bring up the same logical arguments, namely that there was no variety in it, and that space exploration had advanced to such a degree that it would seem difficult to make the story seem believable to modern audiences".
But Nigel Kneale thought it was an excellent ideal and he came up with a brilliant concept of: a prologue and epilogue structure that would frame the story and it would give film goers a contemporary story while still preserving the essence of Well's story.
It is true that the film does suffer from straining to be funny instead of playing to its strengths of being a fantastical sci-fi adventure. You can argue the concept of "Steampunk" wasn't around so the concept of Victorian era technology achieving fantastic things should be grounded with humour and a sense of the ridiculous but George Pal had nailed it in "The Time Machine" (1960) four years before so it is a shame they didn't approach the tone of this project differently.
Charles Schneer said Nigel Kneale "is a very dour, straightforward, serious classicist. He was recognised in England as being the contemporary science-fiction screenwriter. I hired him because we needed his technical expertise. Then, we superimposed on that what we thought audiences would appreciate".
Schneer took on another writer to rework Kneale's script. According to Kneale: "They wanted to jazz it up, make it funnier than I had imagined".
Apparently motivated by the casting of actor Lionel Jeffries.
Lionel Jeffries was an English actor, director, and screenwriter. Who is probably most famous for playing Grandpa Potts in the 1968 film "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". He appeared in more than 70 feature films and Lionel also wrote the script for and directed the 1970 Classic film "The Railway Children".
It's funny that when "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" was filmed Jeffries was 42 and Dick Van Dyke was 43.
The film was not a Box office success with most criticism being levied at the films humour and uneven tone that the producer had welcomed into the project.
I think a contemporary review published in Variety sums the film up accurately,
"Ray Harryhausen and his special effects have another high old time in this piece of science-fiction hokum filmed in Dynamation", adding that "Wells' novel and has been neatly updated", and concluding that "The three principals play second fiddle to the special effects and art work, which are impressive in colour, construction and animation".
Basically Ray's work eclipses the script.
Ray again was an "Associate Producer" on the film and is credited as the creator of "Visual Effects". Harryhausen was responsible for...
The "UN Moonship" at the start of the film and its descent to the Lunar surface and the Victorian "Space Sphere".
The "Moon Bull"
Kate Calendar’s Skeleton,
Ray also created the "Grand Lunar" the king of the "Selenite" race.
The moon "Selenite" insect creatures (the good ones) sadly many of these were played by people in costumes and it does somewhat lower the tone of the production.
Ray's next job was as a hired hand to provide the creatures for Hammer Productions 1966 prehistoric adventure film...
One Million Years B.C. (1966)
Directed by Don Chaffey, Screenplay by Michael Carreras, Based on the 1940 film "One Million B.C." by Mickell Novack, George Baker & Joseph Frickert, Produced by Michael Carreras, Music by Mario Nascimbene, Cinematography by Wilkie Cooper & Edited by Tom Simpson, Starring Raquel Welch, John Richardson, Percy Herbert, Robert Brown & Martine Beswick.
A prehistoric man called Tumak is banished from his tribe before meeting a pretty woman called Loana. She belongs to a gentler coastal tribe, but he must fight caveman Payto to win her favours.
This film is a pre-history fantasy film which ridiculously shows humans living on earth alongside dinosaurs. According to the geological time scale, the last non-avian dinosaurs became extinct 66 million years ago, and modern humans (Homo sapiens) did not exist until about 300,000 years B.C.E. so the premise and the title are nonsense.
Ray Harryhausen, did say that he did not make One Million Years B.C. for "professors...who probably don't go to see these kinds of movies anyway."
Ray modelled & animated a Brontosaurus, Archelon, Allosaurus, Triceratops, Ceratosaurus,
Pterodactylus, Rhamphorhynchus and the Pterodactylus Hatchlings.
Here is an example of Ray's amazing work on this film,
As we know Ray was spellbound by seeing King Kong on the big screen when he was 13, King Kong was brought to life by special effects pioneer Willis O'Brien who Ray went on to meet and actually get to work along side on more than one project.
O'Brien had been trying to make a project loosely based on the plot of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book The Lost World first published in 1912 called "Valley of the Mists" from 1941.
The plot of "Valley of the Mists" was, Cowboys discover a living dinosaur in the Grand Canyon, After finally roping the dinosaur, they put it in a Wild West show but the creature, now called "Gwangi", breaks free and fights lions from the show that have also escaped. After killing the lions, Gwangi goes on a rampage around the town and is run off a cliff by a man in a truck.
O'Brien worked on the project at RKO Pictures during most of 1942 but the studio cancelled the production, reportedly because RKO decided the public did not want to see a picture about dinosaurs!
As we all know kids hate dinosaurs and cowboys!!
O'Brien went on to make Mighty Joe Young for RKO instead of his "Gwangi" project.
Harryhausen's hero and friend Willis O'Brien passed away in 1962 at the age of 76 with "Gwangi" unrealised.
After "One Million Years B.C." Harryhausen had the opportunity to bring his heroes vision to fruition
Directed by Jim O'Connolly, Written by William Bast, Julian More & Willis H. O'Brien,
Produced by Charles H. Schneer, Associate Producer Ray Harryhausen, Music by Jerome Moross, Cinematography by Erwin Hillier, Edited by Henry Richardson & Selwyn Petterson,
Starring James Franciscus, Gila Golan, Richard Carlson, Laurence Naismith, Freda Jackson &
Gustavo Rojo.
TJ's wild west show has fallen on hard times. He hopes to rejuvenate the business when he discovers a tiny extinct horse, "A Eohippus" investigating where this creature came from leads them to discover the Forbidden Valley, where dinosaurs are still thriving. The cowboys capture a Tyrannosaurus and bring it back to feature it in the show. It will come as no surprise that the creature gets loose and runs amok.
The film is not exactly O'Brien's story but it is close enough and it is safe to say what Ray achieves with the special effects definitely eclipses what would have been achievable in 1942.
The special effects is really what this movie is all about, lingering on sequences with the creatures where the plot oriented scenes seem to take a back seat.
As you may imagine this leads to a film that really does showcase Ray's skills and what his "Dynamation" process was capable of. It is a shame a Cowboy V's Dinosaur movie wasn't a hit in the late 60's but apparently the film suffered from the timing of its production and release.
Harryhausen himself said "we got trapped in a change of management shuffle at Warner Bros. If only they had publicised it properly! They just dumped the picture on the market. A lot of people who would have loved it never got a chance to see it, never knew it was playing."
Producer Charles Schneer said,
"The new administration didn't give it the kind of release I expected," "They (Warner Bros.) didn't know how to market our type of picture as well as Columbia did. It was their money and their property, and they did what they wanted. I had no rapport with that new management. There was nothing I could do to change their minds."
That may be the case but the fact is that by 1969 the movie studio's interest in monster movies of this type was seriously waning so suits at Warner probably viewed the movie as old fashioned without even seeing it.
In the film "The Valley of Gwangi" (1969) Harryhausen created and animated, A Horse,
Eohippus, Pteranodon, Ornithomimus, Gwangi, Styracosaurus and an Elephant.
Here is the original trailer.
The scene where Gwangi suddenly appears from behind a hill and snatches the fleeing Ornithomimus in his mouth was totally copied by Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park movie as a homage.
The film is not available to stream on a service but it is available to rent via Prime Video or Apple TV for £3.49 or even better buy it on physical media.
(End of Part Five)
