Luke
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Tash Jayasinghe
CibbuanoJason and the Argonauts
January 11th 2007 08:01
Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
If there's one film from my childhood that will forever hold a special place in my heart it would have to be 'Jason and the Argonauts'. I must've watched this movie at least once a week for two years, marvelling at the amazing monstrous images conjured up before my eyes. The creepy jerkiness of Ray Harryhausen's famous stop-motion animation was as realistic to me as my own imagination... after watching it I would run outside and stomp around like Talos the bronze giant, terrorising my sister and wreaking havoc on mum's flowerbeds.
For anyone who hasn't seen this film, I'm telling you now - you're missing out! It's an old school epic adventure, drawing on one or two greek myths (primarily the story of Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece). Jason assembles a crew of brave and fabled Greek heroes, including the mighty Hercules, and peoples his ship with them to help him track down and claim the magical Golden Fleece. What transpires is the adventure to end all adventures, Jason and his Argonauts battle with harpies, a seven-headed dragon known as the Hydra, an army of unkillable skeletons and - most famously - Talos; a gargantuan giant made of bronze.
This is just good old-fashioned fun. I've always been a fan of Harryhausen's various stop-motion mythical adventure films (EG. the Sinbad movies), they're terrific and are always full of larger-than-life heroes and fantastic monsters, and 'Jason and the Argonauts' is probably the best of them, if not one of the best. Some people might be put off by the stop-motion style, which might seem fake to today's CGI-accustomed audiences, but to them I say - BAH! This is art and it's magic and if you can't appreciate it then maybe you should go back to being an accountant or maths teacher or whatever boringness motivates you to be a boring unimaginative snob.
This film is worth seeing if only for the Talos sequence and the battle with the skeletons (a sequence that took more than a few months to create). The acting and plotline might be a little less complex or 'intense' than today's audiences are used to seeing, but it's all about the action, and there's a cool appearance from Doctor Who's Patrick Troughton as an old blind man tortured daily by malignant harpies. There's something kind of scary about stop-motion animation too, it used to give me all kinds of cool nightmares.
Long live the mighty Talos!
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Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
A massive Harryhaussen fan here too. I was actually planning on doing a retrospective soon.
Argonauts could well be his finest achievement but I love the Sinbad films, Earth vs The flying vs the flying Saucers, 20, million Miles to Earth etc, as well.
Comment by Luke
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Comment by Always Eighteen
Always Eighteen
That's also the same movie where he throws the discuss like a nut, right? And it flies off really far?
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Comment by Keira
Keira's Blog
I could be thinking of Evil Dead 3 or something.....
Comment by Luke
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