Stop Motion Dreams: The Greek Myths of Ray Harryhausen!

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Brilliant genius Ray Harryhausen made some of the greatest and most memorable kinos of all time, which were my absolute jam throughout my childhood and manchildhood, and hold up just as well today - better, in fact, because they told classic tales of heroism, instead of lamely and redundantly ""deconstructing"" them.

"Nooo you can't just heckin kill evil monsters! I'm going to make a statue reversing this! If you were media literate you'd know evil monsters are misunderstood and cool heroes are the real monsters" - both unironic Moviebob fans.

Jason and the Argonauts

Remember to stay hydrated.

Jason opens with a major plot intrigue never to be resolved: Jason is rightful heir to the throne of Thessaly, but in exile because the wicked Pelias rose up and killed his parents. Jason saves Pelias from drowning, unaware of who he is, but Pelias is forewarned that Jason will take his revenge, so steers Jason into what he believes is an impossible quest to find the Golden Fleece on far-flung Colchis. You'd expect the movie to conclude with Jason returning in triumph to overthrow Pelias, but this never happens, indicating they were hoping for a sequel. Whatever the case, I never felt short-changed the forty or so times I watched this as a kid, because the movie is packed with great setpieces and imagery.

I always liked this notion of the gods playing chess with the lives of mortals, although now I look at it, this game looks more like Risk.

Jason becomes a proxy in a game between Zeus and Hera, who are on friendlier terms here than they were in Kevin Sorbo's Hercules. Hera grants Jason five wishes, through which he burns at an impressive pace. I suppose he could just wish for the Golden Fleece, but maybe that would be against the spirit of the game. Anyway, Jason assembles a crew for the voyage that includes Hercules, and Hylas, an upstart who presumes to beat him at discus throwing by skipping the discus like a stone over the water. There's a moment where Hercules takes a beat to react to this and then cries out with delight, hoisting the little guy aloft in the air. It's a scene of bro bonding kino numales will sadly never understand.

They then went on a panty raid and TP'd the crusty old dean's house.

Even sadlier, this pair is doomed to disappear from the story in tragic scenes suggesting a redemptive Hercules spinoff was also mooted, but never produced. For the Argonauts run afoul of TALOS, who does this to their boat:

He swaps his sword to his other hand to do this because he's right-handed. Fucking imagine having that kind of attention to detail.

One thing about Harryhausen is that he knew the limitations of his medium of choice, and wisely opted to animate subjects in whom slightly stilted movements would seem natural, like giant bronze statues and, most famously of all, skeletons. For this is the one with the most famous stop-motion sequence of all time: the skeleton fight!

The design on the shield to the right of frame looks a bit like the Kraken that would later appear in Clash of the Titans. It could just be a coincidence, or maybe Harryhausen had a prototype already in mind, making this a reverse Easter egg. In support of this conjecture, note that the one behind it is clearly Medusa.

Harryhausen already dropped one banger skeleton fight scene in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, but this one is far more complex, with seven skeletons all fighting Jason's crew at once. The logistical legwork required to make this sequence land is literally incomprehensible to anyone alive today.

To put this in perspective, I can't even draw a fucking skeleton.

That wide shot alone must have taken more effort than most entire films, but the action doesn't tap out at a few sword swipes and shield blocks. Here our hero yeets a skeleton over a cliff using its charging momentum against it:

Come on, dub it with a slide whistle.

Beheading also works:

His surprised reaction to losing his head is so genuine. There are A-list stars in Hollywood right now who can't sell this much human emotion, and this is a muppet of a skeleton.

We might, however, question the utility of stabbing one between the ribs:

Nooo not the air between my ribs! My only weakness nooo!

Clash of the Titans

Me on the crapper.

Harryhausen's final epic saw him retvrn to the Greek myths at the dawn of the 1980s, when Star Wars was all the rage and Conan just around the corner. Clash concerns the legend of Perseus, who, with the aid of an invisibility helmet, must tame Pegasus, the winged horse, rescue Princess Andromeda from marriage to the deformed Calibos, follow a golden owl to the three witches from MacBeth to learn the way to slay Medusa, whose gaze can turn any living creature to stone, and use her severed head to in like manner petrify the Kraken, so saving the princess chained by the sea's edge in sacrifice to Thetis, Calibos' vengeful mother, who has an ongoing beef with Zeus. This might seem like a convoluted plot, but, like all Harryhausenkinos, it largely serves as a shuttle between one setpiece and the next.

weee

Because it dropped at such a specific moment there's a clear time-capsule appeal to Clash: Perseus' pet golden owl boops and beeps like R-2 D-2, and he's given friendly guidance by Mickey (Burgess Meredith) of Rocky fame. In fact the cast was so packed with famous names the guy that actually played Perseus got eighth billing in the end credits, being relegated to the "Mortal" category of cast:

Brutal.

I remember as a kid I always looked away when the Medusa came onscreen in case she turned me to stone. I choose to champion this as evidence of the power of cinéma instead of further proof that I'm retarded, but the memory stays vivid either way. Nor was Medusa the only formative nightmare fuel in the picture: Calibos looked creepy as hell too:

IDK why they chose to switch between an actor for the closeups and a model for the wides. Maybe synching the animation to the character's dialogue would've been prohibitively time-consuming. We should take a moment to appreciate his taste in furniture: this is the edgiest chair I've ever seen (I want it).

But the coolest of all Harryhausen creatures hands-down is the Kraken. Though invariably depicted as an octopus or giant squid in lesser hands, the master said fuck that and designed the sum of all cool monsters land-locked or aquatic. Harryhausen's Kraken is like King Kong meets the Creature from the Black Lagoon but with four arms and an immense crocodilianesque tail. Its arms even appear to have little suckers on them, making them halfway between arms and tentacles.

"I endorse the aquatic ape theory and the historicity of Atlantis" - Ray Harryhausen (I assume).

Top Ten Moar Accidentally RW Movies!

Last time we looked at accidentally right-leaning movies, I was forced to cull a much longer list of candidates to a more wieldy top ten. But since art is truth and truth is nature, hierarchy and God, whenever a movie is good it must in some sense also be rw. With that in mind, here are some more subtly self-defeating recs and how to parse them:

Hud

Imagine putting this line in your movie having no idea what it means.

One of the most revealing instances of the propensity for audiences to misunderstand and/or improve upon the intended messaging of a film is 1963's Hud, in which Paul Newman plays the titular shitheel son of an old-timer cattle farmer (Melvyn Douglas). Simmering resentment between the two prompts a hard choice of role model for Hud's young nephew (Brandon de Wilde). Loosely adapted from the novel Horseman, Pass By, the film greatly expands the Hud character with the aim of rendering him an embodiment of that perrennial pseud boogeyman, cApItAlIsM.

What's most fascinating about audience reactions is that both sides took the wrong intended message - libsoys (who today would presume to lecture you on media heckin literacy) just saw Hud as a cool rebel, while affable chuds empathised with the old man set in his ways who sings along enthusiastically to the corny classics at the movies, proving yet again that economics isn't as important to the right as values, and that leftardry is just a thousand shades of fuck-you-dad.

Zulu

The best part of this flick is the random cattle stampede in the middle of the battle.

I never really understood why chuds like Zulu so much. The British are portrayed as loutish, arrogant, ignorant, quarrelsome, lecherous grotesques. Despite all they do in the movie being to defend themselves, they conclude by agreeing that they feel ashamed of their actions, as though they should have unpacked their heckin privilege and let themselves be massacred instead. In spite of this highly dubious messaging, the sole pacifist character is also portrayed as a buffoonish strawman, because it gives the lib filmmakers a pretext to give Christianity its customary kicking.

But flash forward to the 2020s and Zulu was named alongside such other dangerous works as those of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R.R. Tolkien, and Shakespeare, on a list of things your kids might read that will radicalise them into ebil far right natzees. Apparently the fear that someone, somewhere might root for any white faction against any black faction for any reason renders this lib fantasy of yesteryear unacceptable to today's right-thinking people. Perhaps this fear set in long before the thoughtcrime list was published, since a prequel, Zulu Dawn, was released in the 70s hammering home the message that The White Guys Are The Villains with the subtlety of a late night talk show monologue. What a pity, because the Zulus had a cool, innately cinematic aesthetic, and had this material been treated intelligently, it could have produced the classic its cheerfully oblivious fanbase imagines it to be.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy

Trust the experts, biggot!

There are so many ways the big screen treatments of Tolkien's beloved novels might have turned out awful that it is a movie miracle they didn't. Many deserve credit, but the core reason they worked was the decision Jackson et al made not to impose their own politics on Tolkien's stridently Catholic, traditionalist vision. While the great man's autistic refusal to confirm any direct allegorical meaning to his writing afforded him plausible deniability that let his work inspire everyone from John Boorman (who planned to make a film version with the Beatles as the hobbits) to Gary Gygax to every single heavy metal band, it's scarcely possible not to see your slimy lib ""friends"" in the prideful, glory-supporting sellout Saruman and his odious gimp Wormtongue, who whip up historical ethnic grievances in the men of Dunland against the Rohirrim and poison the king's mind against his loyal but blunt and guileless friends (compare Eomer to Kent and Theoden to Lear for an idea of how things might have turned out had not Gandalf set things right). The extended editions make the parallels with today's rainbow flag dystopia even plainer: the orcs, who make nothing beautiful themselves, have torn down a statue of one of the old kings of men. Mostly Peacefully, one assumes.

A Few Good Men

Hilariously, this famous line appears on all these inspirational quote templates, and is attributed to Nicholson, as though he just randomly said it.

For years I legit thought the entire point of this movie was that Jack Nicholson is right. Of course he is right, but I would later learn that wasn't meant to be the point - the point was that he's Wrong Anyway. The steelman version of this flick I had imagined I had seen acknowledged two realities: that Nicholson & co.'s treatment of Pvt. Santiago was harsh at the interpersonal level, but that it was necessary at scale, because no man is an island and a society requires that each man do his part. This seemed intelligent, nuanced and tragical, and allowed every character in the drama to follow his or her convictions with an implicitly disastrous result for the country down the line. Astonishing how poorly Sorkin understands his own writing - if, indeed, he doesn't, and has not simply retreated to keep pace with the Overton window's endless leftward slide.

Glengarry Glen Ross

What did he mean by this?

David Mamet wrote Glengarry Glen Ross while a lib, intending it as a critique of - you guessed it - meanie grim bleak peepee poopoo capitalismerino. Later, he became a pro-market ziocon, perhaps upon realising there existed strange new worlds of loathsome cuntery in which to wallow just across the aisle. None of this has any bearing on how I read Glengarry Glen Ross, though - it's obvious the seething commie Moss (played by the seething commie Ed Harris, who sulked through Elia Kazan's Oscar moment because how very dare he Name Names in the face of the worst ideology in history totally dominating the most powerful propaganda machine that's ever existed?) is meant to be a thin-skinned, narcissistic douche, while amoral hotshot Roma (Al Pacino, as himself) justifies his grandiosity by being funny, and talentless-but-diligent token autist Aaronow (Alan Arkin) survives by keeping his head down as the the neurotypicals steal, cheat and bicker all around him.

The Star Wars prequels

While I'm ancient enough to belong to a world that saw the prequels as new-fangled trash, it must be said that prequel fans are much less douchey than OT purists and the prequels, having had a second lease of life as memecore, now work wonderfully as unintended comedies. While everything Lucas has ever written was intended as a Boomer Truth allegory of World War Heckin Two, the story arc of the prequels belies a far more striking and relevant historical resonance. An elected leader manipulating a secession crisis to create a war to grant himself tyrannical emergency powers isn't the story of Heckin Hitl0r, it's the story of Abraham Lincoln.

The Matrix

Neo dodges bullets (1999, colourised).

The Wachowski brothers now insist the movie about SS-cosplaying übermenschen triumphing by will over the matrix of mass media and global finance was t-totally intended as a transsexual allegory instead, biggot! I believe them (not that it was trooncore; just that it was meant to be a pozfest) due to the prior history of pinko messaging in their flicks. It's just funny that the term "red pill" was immediately co-opted by all the filthy thought criminals they despise because they hid their agitprop intentions a little too well. Note that H*llywood hasn't made that misstep (or a good movie) since. On a similar note...

They Live

Never forgetti Dobson's spaghetti.

John Carpenter accidentally made the most old/pol/ movie of all time, which he predictably protests was about CaPiTaLiSm you guys!!! (how strange that CaPiTaLiSm, like The Patriarchy and Hegemonic White Supremacy allows, funds and markets these critiques of it, and nothing else). I believe him that it wasn't meant to be about Jews, but, hilariously, Jews did not, and protested the movie because apparently bright blue aliens brainwashing everyone made them think of themselves. You think I'm making this up, but I'm not. To be fair, Carpenter's intended message doesn't make any sense because CaPiTaLiSm isn't a secret (or a real thing), and the rich of the late 80s didn't hide in plain view. The movie's implicit metaphor has to pertain to a powerful group that looks like anybody else, but, as we've seen, understanding their own writing isn't H*llywood's strong suit.

Halloween

This guy was the real MVP.

And while we're on the theme of John Carpenter (long the sovlless to Wes Craven's sovl), we'd be remiss not to mention that his first major hit, Halloween, was rendered retroactively reactionary by the academic and critical libstablishment insisting that The Shape was obviously meant as a divine punishment for the teens of Haddonfield, IL smoking pot and having premarital coitus. The theory went that (spoilers!) Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, the IMAGINE copypasta) is the sole survivor of the rampage because she's a morally pure straight edge virgin. Never mind that Carpenter protested this was never his intent, nor the fact that Curtis' character does smoke weed in the picture, contradicting one of the only two pillars of the theory. Shitlibs who would call you schizophrenic for noticing blatant leftshit in 99% of movies projected that Carpenter just must have been hiding a based & redpilled agenda in his low-budget slasher. Carpenter, the basicest of basic bitch libs, being unable to shake the shitlord label foisted on him in an act of unforced friendly fire for decades is one of the funnier meta-stories in cinema.

Once Upon a Time in the West

But by far the greatest of all accidentally-rw movies is Once Upon a Time in the West. Perhaps incensed that no one picked up on his subtle yet embarrassingly dumb messaging, Sergio Leone later went on to quote all-time mass murder and pie-eating contest champion Mao Tse-Tung in his rightly forgotten tantrum Duck, You Sucker, but, seethe though he might, his legacy will always be giving chud icons Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson the spotlight in his better-known works.

Imagine putting THIS line in your movie having no idea what it means.

Bronson's enemies are crippled businessman Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti) and his slick hired thug Henry Fonda (as himself). Leone wants you to believe Bronson and Fonda are sort of kindred spirits as opposed to Morton, who is a pathetic loser incel who can't even walk, and represents...well, you know the drill. The thing is, though, the film escaped Leone's clumsy grasp, as great works often do, because the Good is stronger, wittier and wiser than the Adversary, and the Muse serves the Good as the artist serves the Muse. When Morton dies crawling in the dirt, a muddy puddle echoing his failed dream to reach the ocean with his railroad, Leone wants us to jeer like subhumans, but the scene defies his spite-filled designs and resonates with the pathos of tragedy. When Bronson whacks Fonda in the kino's climax, we don't see two equal-and-opposite giants in an honourable duel; we see ascended chud Bronson righteously executing slimy Marxoid Fonda for the crime of lending his blue eyes to the cause of ugliness and evil. In the end, Fonda and Leone lost the creative mandate of Heaven, and the movie closes out with based shitlord Cheyenne (Jason Robards) telling Claudia Cardinale not to be a hash tag me too drama queen as she brings water, her smile and beauty to a flourishing frontier town to the Wagnerian strains of Morricone's score.

"They" cannot conquer forever.

Greatest Album of All Time of the Week: Sorry!

Yeah, the first image that came up when I searched for this was a poster instead of the actual album cover, which has the driver running over a ball in the road. On the poster there is no ball, making a nonsense of the album title. Oh well.

Just as my favourite Pink Floyd album is Adam and Eve by Catherine Wheel, so too my favourite Smashing Pumpkins album is Sorry! by, uh, Catherine. No offence to Billy Corgan (who, despite what soybeards will tell you, was probably the 90s' least douchey rockstar), but Sorry! is more consistent than any given Pumpkins album and makes good on the haze-of-noise component of the sound to which the Pumpkins never quite committed to my liking. We can, however, credit the Pumpkins 100% for the template: "Saint" opens with a drum roll just like "Cherub Rock", while "2am" swipes the cinematic string section from "Spaceboy", and the signature squirrelly lead-work that set the Pumpkins leagues apart from the grunge pack can be found throughout (although, again, I prefer Catherine's guitar tone. Sorry!). Moreover, the blend of dazed boyhood whimsy and sneering aggression is no less authentic for being studiously cribbed from the more famous Illinoisans. It's just all so much more interesting than Burt Cobain's one-note whining, it makes you wish more people had ripped off Corgan over Cobain. Catherine is funnier too: the Bee Gees' "Every Christian Lion-Hearted Man Will Show You" is an inspired cover choice. And Catherine weren't afraid to colour outside of the lines either: "Flawless" anticipates Bri'ish shoegazers Slowdive's diversion into blissed-out country (as Mojave 3) by a cool year. Most importantly, their video for "Saint" was the most 90s video of all time.

Catherine released another album, 1996's Hot Saki and Bedtime Stories, which cut back on the noodling and leaned more into red-cup pop-punk house party vibes, but for my money was somewhat weaker overall. Still, Sorry! stands the test of time as one of the mid-90s' finest gems. Give it a spin, asshole!

Jimbo: The Thinking Barbarian - 20. One Way Ticket to Midnight (Part 5)!

Previously...

Theme: From the Arcane Mists of Prophecy - Visigoth

Thus ended the last extant codex on the life and times of Jimbo, the Thinking Barbarian. For sans corroboration, all the latter tales of this era have long been relegated to apocrypha. Who now recounts the song of nomads from the northern tundra? Of the rise and fall of āltepētls on the sun-baked plain, or in the humid jungles of the world? All that was whispered by the elders fades to myth, and some will doubt that such things ever transpired, as the men of those days came to doubt that giants ever reigned over the earth. What became of those who went before us has seemed destined to remain a mystery.

Until now.

For the four winds blow, the sands shift, and the the topmost pinnacles of step pyramids long buried emerge from out the sea of dust, and answers may be found within the ruins long abandoned to the earth. I am weary, and I yearn for that sleep which the living cannot know, but it will have to wait, because I still have work to do.

RANKED: The Top 10 Animals!!!

"That's all very well, Pat", you muse, fresh off yet another binge of my superlative blôggue because it's the only thing worth reading on the internet, "but what exactly are the top ten animals? For I, a plebeian fuck, know only maybe dogs, cats, hamsters, birds - all of which I just call birds - and perhaps goldfish. Tell me more about the wonders of nature". OK.

Indian Giant Squirrel

I once travelled to the wilds of Maharashtra in search of this squirrel, which most of the twenty billion Indians don't seem to be aware exists. Well your humble blogguiste can confirm they're real, and they come in a wild variety of colours and patterns from reddish brown and white to full purple and orange. If I were Indian I would never shut the fuck up about these S-tier squirrels.

Binturong

The second greatest animal looks like a combination of so many other animals it might have been mashed together by an overly broad AI prompt. Often known as a bear-cat, to me it looks more like a raccoon-spidermonkey, complete with prehensile tail. Based on videos where they wrap themselves around people's shoulders, a binturong would be an excellent accessory for a pirate in some period adventurekino set in Indonesia, if anyone made good movies I want to see anymore.

Giant Oarfish

Every source you will find on the giant oarfish spins with a straight face that they may have "been mistaken for" or "inspired tales of" mythical sea serpents, instead of admitting that sea serpents are real and are simply a massive fish instead of a massive snake. Just look at this fucking thing.

Okapi

Once mistaken for a forest zebra due to its patterned hindquarters, the okapi is in fact a closer cousin of the giraffe. I'll take it over either, though, because it's great. The okapi has an extremely long prehensile tongue which it can wrap around a bunch of vegetation and rip it out for eating. If I had this, I would use it to steal ice cream cones from children, and then laugh in their stupid faces as they cried.

Resplendent Quetzal

The most /fa/ civilisation in history, the Aztecs, accessorised with the unparalelled plumage of this alien-looking bird, one of nature's most strikingly weird beauties, like Anya Tayylmao if she were of the avian persuasion.

Peacock Tarantula

Another kino animal almost unknown to its multitudinous countrymen, the peacock tarantula is endemic to a single forest in Andhra Pradesh. A bright blue spider is the most made-up-sounding thing you can imagine, but it's real. Even the most arachnophobic little baby bitch should celebrate this overlooked jewel in God's creation.

Yeti Crab

I gave my thoughts on the yeti crab one million years ago, and they have not changed. What an excellent animal.

Sun Bear

Like the okapi, the sun bear has an unusually long tongue, but unlike the okapi, it is a bear, and uses it to scoop out honey from beehives or some such nonsense. Sun bears may not be the biggest bear, but they're the coolest one. Perhaps had Timothy Treadwell been Sun Man instead of Grizzly Man, he wouldn't have had his face eaten as he screamed. Food for thought!

Superb Fruit Dove

As you can already tell by its name, the superb fruit dove is a cut above lesser fruit doves, with a bright pink patch on its head like "what are you going to do about it asshole?" - an attitude shared by all flight-proficient birds, but seldom with such self-justifying flair.

Rhinoceros Hornbill

All hornbills are cool but for my money, the rhinoceros one is the best. Named for the rhinoesque curvature of its casque, this bird is better than anything you've ever done or heard of in your pointless life. They can give off a majestic call with the amplificatory effect of the casque, and their eyes are colour-coded, with the males' being red and the females' white. I wish you'd go away.

But those are just my thoughts, what are yours? List your favourite animals in the comments and subscribe to EmptyHero on YouTube dot com.