Seeing Clash of the Titans took me back to my youth and seeing such Ray Harryhausen films like Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jack the Giant Killer. The only difference here is instead of Kerwin Matthews and Torin Thatcher, we've got a cast list headed by none other than Laurence Olivier.
This was the period in Lord Olivier's life where he was just looking for bankable projects to leave a nice nest egg for the kids. He was one guy who really didn't have to prove anything as an artist. And I'm sure it amused him no end to be cast as Zeus, king of all the Deities.
Seeing Olivier trading lines with such folks as Maggie Smith and Ursula Andress and Claire Bloom in the realms of Olympus reminds me a lot of the Irwin Allen film, The Story of Mankind. It was a bad flop, but the scenes in which Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price, and Ronald Colman argued about man being good or evil are classic.
With such intervention and such traps as the Olympus crowd puts on earth. young Perseus, son of Zeus and a mortal like Hercules, fulfills his destiny and of course saves the princess Andromeda. Harry Hamlin and Judi Bowker made an attractive pair of young lovers. Certainly Harry Hamlin has gone on to a substantial career.
Burgess Meredith has a very nice role as companion/mentor to Hamlin, almost the same as the Mentor role in and to Captain Marvel. You've got to love that mechanical owl who speaks in bleeps that only Hamlin can understand. Clash of the Titans also was the farewell performance of Flora Robson who played one of the Stygian witches.
And like the dragons and cyclops and huge flying birds that Ray Harryhausen created in my youth, his version of a Kraken is a worthy addition to his gallery of monsters. Might even be better than the Kraken of Pirates of the Caribbean and without computer graphics to do it.
Clash of the Titans is aimed for the juvenile trade. But if it sparks an interest in the classics than the film will be worth the admission.
This was the period in Lord Olivier's life where he was just looking for bankable projects to leave a nice nest egg for the kids. He was one guy who really didn't have to prove anything as an artist. And I'm sure it amused him no end to be cast as Zeus, king of all the Deities.
Seeing Olivier trading lines with such folks as Maggie Smith and Ursula Andress and Claire Bloom in the realms of Olympus reminds me a lot of the Irwin Allen film, The Story of Mankind. It was a bad flop, but the scenes in which Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price, and Ronald Colman argued about man being good or evil are classic.
With such intervention and such traps as the Olympus crowd puts on earth. young Perseus, son of Zeus and a mortal like Hercules, fulfills his destiny and of course saves the princess Andromeda. Harry Hamlin and Judi Bowker made an attractive pair of young lovers. Certainly Harry Hamlin has gone on to a substantial career.
Burgess Meredith has a very nice role as companion/mentor to Hamlin, almost the same as the Mentor role in and to Captain Marvel. You've got to love that mechanical owl who speaks in bleeps that only Hamlin can understand. Clash of the Titans also was the farewell performance of Flora Robson who played one of the Stygian witches.
And like the dragons and cyclops and huge flying birds that Ray Harryhausen created in my youth, his version of a Kraken is a worthy addition to his gallery of monsters. Might even be better than the Kraken of Pirates of the Caribbean and without computer graphics to do it.
Clash of the Titans is aimed for the juvenile trade. But if it sparks an interest in the classics than the film will be worth the admission.