CLASH OF THE TITANS 1981 FILM HOW TO
Now Perseus needs to work out how to defeat the Kraken. Perseus meets Thallo ( Tim Pigott-Smith), introduces himself, correctly answers the riddle, presents the severed hand of Calibos, and is given permission to marry Andromeda.Īt the wedding, Queen Cassiopeia compares Andromeda’s beauty to that of Thetis herself, so Thetis demands that Andromeda be sacrificed to the Kraken on pain of Joppa’s destruction. Calibos attacks, Perseus loses his helmet, and Calibos loses his hand. Perseus captures Pegasus, the last of the flying horses, and follows Andromeda to the next riddle. Zeus wants to help, and sends Perseus a special helmet from Athena ( Susan Fleetwood) which makes its wearer invisible, a magical sword from Aphrodite ( Ursula Andress, who only gets one line in the whole film!) and a shiny shield from Hera ( Claire Bloom). Thetis doesn’t like this at all, so she transports Perseus from Seriphos to an abandoned amphitheatre in Joppa, where he meets an old bard named Ammon ( Burgess Meredith) and learns that Andromeda is cursed unless her suitor successfully answers a riddle – fail and be burned at the stake (not unlike some dating rituals today). Zeus punishes Calibos by turning him into a monstrous satyr and sending him into exile. Calibos has reduced the countryside to a lifeless swamp and hunted Zeus’s sacred flying horses to near-extinction. Calibos ( Neil McCarthy), son of the sea goddess Thetis ( Maggie Smith), is a young man engaged to marry Princess Andromeda ( Judi Bowker), the daughter of Queen Cassiopeia ( Siân Phillips) and heir to the rich city of Joppa. In retribution, Zeus kills Acrisius and orders Poseidon ( Jack Gwillim – Rex Harrison rejected the tiny role) to destroy Argos and to, “Release The Kraken!” Meanwhile, Danaë and child arrive on the island of Seriphos where Perseus grows up ( Harry Hamlin). King Acrisius of Argos ( Donald Houston) becomes jealous of his own daughter Danaë ( Vida Taylor) and imprisons her and, after Zeus ( Laurence Olivier) impregnates her, sends Danaë and his newborn grandson Perseus to sea in a wooden chest. The story of Perseus’s love for Andromeda and their many trials before her final rescue from the Kraken is typically episodic (all Harryhausen stories run in straight lines) but his animation is as good as ever: giant scorpions the winged horse Pegasus the melancholy monster Calibos the gigantic Kraken and the fiendish gorgon Medusa with her hair of writhing snakes. It’s certainly a lavish production, starring respected Shakespearian-trained performers such as Ursula Andress, Honor Blackman, Clair Bloom, Burgess Meredith, Laurence Olivier, Tim Pigott-Smith, Flora Robson and Maggie Smith, but there’s something kind of sad about it, as if Harryhausen’s imagination had been petrified by the numbing waters of some mythic stagnant pond, or trapped in some sort of time-loop ever since The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, with the same awkwardly shambling monsters and trite plot looking more old-fashioned with each new film.
Actually, the next announced Harryhausen fantasy was to have been Sinbad On Mars, a truly intriguing idea, but the project was shelved when MGM put up the cash for Clash Of The Titans, the most expensive Harryhausen film ever, at around US15 million. His final film was Clash Of The Titans (1981), after which he retired.
During his life, his innovative effects has inspired many filmmakers, not least being Tim Burton, Joe Dante, Tom Hanks, Peter Jackson, John Landis, John Lasseter, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. His most famous films include Mighty Joe Young (1949) with his mentor Willis O’Brien, The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad (1958), and Jason And The Argonauts (1963) which features a furious fight with seven skeleton swordsmen. Essentially, Harryhausen was a Hollywood special effects artist who created his own style of stop-motion model animation known as Dynamation. If you’re reading this, I have no doubt you already know who Ray Harryhausen is but, just in case you’ve been on Mars the last fifty years, I’ll give it to you in a nutshell. In order that the dreaded Kraken not be released, Andromeda has to be sacrificed and Perseus searches for the Medusa her head is the only thing that can stop the Kraken.” (courtesy IMDB) Trouble appears in the shape of Calibos, the princess’s former love, and his mother, the Goddess Thetis. “By answering a seemingly impossible riddle Perseus, the son of Zeus, wins the hand of the Princess Andromeda in marriage.
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