ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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My most vivid memory of going to a downtown theater in Atlanta with my family in the 1950s was when we saw this movie in 1958.

I even remember walking up the street towards the Paramount Theater (the one that often played the better science fiction movies of the decade) and seeing the marquee with the title boldly displayed for all of Peachtree Street to see.





When we went into the lobby, the movie had already started and the cyclops scene was just about to end. Folks did that back in those days — a very weird practice. In fact, a friend of mine was coming into the lobby as he and his family left the theater after they had reached the point in the movie where they had arrived during the last showing!

So, this was my introduction to the movie!





The rest of the movie knocked my socks off too, of course. Is it any wonder that I remember the experience so vividly?







And several years later I began buying stills from the movies I loved from a theatrical supplier in Atlanta that starting selling stills, posters, and lobby cards to me and my friends. Here are two of them.







Yes, indeed, this is one truly amazing movie.

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______________ 7th Voyage of Sinbad — trailer

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]

[Pow]

Some 7th Voyage of Sinbad Trivia :

Ray planned to have Sinbad chased by a group of giant rats out of Soukurah's cave.

Also, there was a scene planned where Sinbad & his crew were trapped in a tree attacked by a giant snake. A Cyclops would have rescued them from the snake.

Sinbad's ship was a replica of Columbus' Santa Maria. It was a tourist attraction in the Barcelona Harbor.

The beautiful looking palace in the film was the Alhambra Palace located in Granada.

[Bud Brewster]

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Great post, Pow! Thanks for sharing that info. Where did you find it?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

From the superb book: Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life, Bud.

[Bud Brewster]

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Available in All Sci-Fi's Gift Shop. Feel free to browse before you leave today, folks!

__________Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Skullislander]

I heard the swordfighting skeleton from 7th Voyage made it to the Jason and the Argonauts final scene: impossible to single him out from the other six skeletons though!

Mind you, Harryhausen was well known for re-using a lot of his models and props.

The story about the producer called Small who kicked himself after turning down 7TH VOYAGE [it made a good profit] then went on to fund the huge flop Jack the Giant Killer released 3 years later tells you all you need to know about Hollywood!

[Pow]

That is true, Ray did reuse his skeleton from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad as one of the skeletons in Jason & the Argonauts.

[Krel]

I remember seeing this on TV back in the 60s, when we only had a B&W TV set. Then it was re-released in the early 70s, and I finally saw it in color. I sat through it twice.

David.

[Gord Green]

I can't believe I haven't commented on this movie yet!

I saw this on first run at the Varsity Theatre in Buffalo NY in "58. I immediately became a fan of Ray Harryhausen and stop-motion, but all that was aside from my total immersion in the story.

I recall buying the Dell Comics adaptation with a map of the Cyclops Island on the back and replaying the movie with my pals in a nearby park.





Together we revisited the opening of the Roc's egg and the battle with the cyclops!





We fought skeleton hordes long before we got to experience the real thing in JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS!





This movie was one of the iconic films of my childhood along with FORBIDDEN PLANET, EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS and THIS ISLAND EARTH.
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[Bud Brewster]

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Gord, this is the kind of post I love the most: a personal anecdote from your own memories of the movie.

Thanks.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

I always felt that this film was Ray's finest involving the Sinbad legend, as well as one of his very best stop-motion movies.

The later movies were entertaining but somehow never quite captured the fun & magic of the first Sinbad movie.

I wonder if in retrospect he should have moved away from Sinbad as the hero & gone with someone else?

He discussed doing Hercules or Tarzan as a movie & I think both could have worked very nicely.

[Bud Brewster]

[Gord Green]

TRIVIA
From the IMDb website :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057197/

While filming footage of the Argo off the coast of Italy, shooting was interrupted when a replica of the Golden Hind sailed into view. The British television series Sir Francis Drake (1961) happened to be filming in the same location. Producer Charles H. Schneer shouted, "Get that ship out of here. You're in the wrong century!" at the British crew, dispelling any tensions that arose from both shots being lost.





After Ray Harryhausen received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award recognizing his contributions to the film industry at the Oscars' Science & Technical Ceremony in 1992, Tom Hanks, the host of the event, said, "Some people say Citizen Kane (1941) or Casablanca (1942). I say 'Jason and the Argonauts' is the greatest movie ever made."

It took Ray Harryhausen four months to produce the skeleton scene, a massive amount of time for a scene that lasts, at the most, three minutes.











This British / American film was released in the waning years of the Italian-produced sword-and-sandal / mythological muscleman movies.
Many of those productions dealt with Jason.

Most unusual for the time was the casting of British actor Nigel Green as Hercules. Although he was very tall, Green lacked the bodybuilder physique that moviegoers were used to seeing for this character.

Ray Harryhausen stated that he wanted to avoid the Italian "muscleman" stereotype present in films at that time when casting Hercules.

The film may not have been able to match the scale of many of the European spectacles, but the elaborate special effects by Ray Harryhausen gave it the look of a more expensive production, contributing to its box-office success.

After the success of Sergio Leone's The Colossus of Rhodes (1961) (U.S. title: "Colossus of Rhodes"), it was decided to change the character of Talos into a living bronze giant. It would become one of Ray Harryhausen's most famous creations.





The skeletons' shields are adorned with designs of other Ray Harryhausen creatures, including an octopus and the head of the Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957).

In the early stages of story development the twin sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis, a centaur, and the three-headed dog Cerberus were intended to appear.





Colchis, the location of the Golden Fleece, is an actual place on the east coast of the Black Sea, in western Georgia.

The voice of Todd Armstrong, who played Jason, was dubbed by British actor Tim Turner. Turner's voice was well known as the narrator of the '60s Rank series "Look At Life"'.

He was also the narrator of trailers in many British films in the '50s, '60s and '70s, including the one for this movie, and provided the voice of Dr. Peter Brady, the titular hero of the popular late '50s British TV series, The Invisible Man (1958).

Presumably in order to capitalize on the success of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Ray Harryhausen originally conceived of the film as "Sinbad in the Age of Muses". The story would still have been set in ancient Greece and would have involved Sinbad joining Jason in the search for the Golden Fleece.





Contrasting with Bernard Herrmann's all-string score for Psycho (1960), the soundtrack was made without a string section. This leaves the brass and percussion to perform the heroic fanfares, and the woodwinds along with additional instruments (such as the harp) to dominate in the more subtle and romantic parts.

The voice of Nancy Kovack, who played Medea, was dubbed by Eva Haddon, an actress well known on BBC radio.

The previous Ray Harryhausen films were generally shown as part of a double feature in "B" theatres. Columbia was able to book this film as a single feature in many "A" theatres in the United States.

Bernard Herrmann's score liberally utilizes the technique known as "self-borrowing", which involves reusing elements from his previous scores.
Exact passage reuse is taken from scores for The Kentuckian (1955), Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953), 5 Fingers (1952) and others, and reworking of passages from North by Northwest (1959), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Vertigo (1958) scores, among others.

Nigel Green (Hercules) and Douglas Wilmer (Pelias) would both later play Fu Manchu's arch-enemy Sir Denis Nayland Smith in films starring Christopher Lee as the Chinese criminal mastermind: Green in The Face of Fu Manchu (1965) and Wilmer in The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966) and The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967).

Curiously, for the first time in the history of the trade name of Ray Harryhausen's "Dynamation" process, this film didn't carry the "Dynamation" brand, even in the opening credits.

Early publicity materials for the film did, however, advertise it as being filmed in "Dynamation 90" (90 referring to the double 45-degree exposure in the sodium-light traveling matte process, used in this film and some of his previous films as well), but was reportedly dropped for being "too gimmicky".

Additionally, the original pre-release prints carried the film's original title card, "Jason and the Golden Fleece" (which can be seen on the 1992 LaserDisc release by Criterion), before deciding on the film's eventual title, "Jason and the Argonauts", on March 1, three months prior to the film's release in early June.

In early press material, Mario Nascimbene was credited as the music composer of this film. This was because Nascimbene was considered for the job of composer in case Bernard Herrmann turned it down (which, as it turned out, he didn't).

In later interviews Nascimbene claimed he never heard of the film (most probably meaning Herrmann accepted the offer before Nascimbene could be approached). He did, however, go on to compose the music score for another Ray Harryhausen film, One Million Years B.C. (1966), which was also directed by Don Chaffey (who directed this film).

Terence Stamp was considered for the role of Jason.
From me : KNEEL BEFORE JASON!

[Bud Brewster]

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What a magnificent post!

Fascinating text, beautiful pictures, and they're perfectly blended to hold the reader's interest from the top of the post right down to the bottom!

I realize that not all of us have the time and the temperament to create posts like the one above . . . but then, Gord Green (and me) are retired, and we can park our carcasses in front of our computers for hours at a time and craft posts like Gord's, just for the fun of it.

I'm sure you guys loved his post as much as I did.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)