Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamb and this is Joe McCormack. And today, oh oh,
Speaker 1: I got an itch for some stop motion animation. That
Speaker 1: was what I was craving this week, I Rob. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you're the same way I am. I
Speaker 1: think stop motion monsters are one of my most nostalgic
Speaker 1: film elements. They remind me of when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: I had a VHS tape I think recorded in EP modes,
Speaker 1: a very grainy and low quality. But I had a
Speaker 1: tape of the Ray Harryhausen movie Sindbad and the Eye
Speaker 1: of the Tiger, which featured battles with stop motion skeletons,
Speaker 1: a stop motion robotic minotar called the Minoton, all kinds
Speaker 1: of great monsters in it. And so that's what I
Speaker 1: was in the mood forward this week, and that led
Speaker 1: us to the selection of Clash of the Titans, another
Speaker 1: Harry Housing classic, not directed by Ray Harryhausen, but doing
Speaker 1: some excellent special effects. We got scorpions, we got an
Speaker 1: all time say top three gorgon Medusa. We got Let's
Speaker 1: see what else is in there. We got a crack
Speaker 1: in all kinds of good stuff. Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: like eight different stop motion creatures in this, which is
Speaker 1: about tops for him. I think one Million Years BC,
Speaker 1: a film of his from nineteen sixty six or film
Speaker 1: that he did special effects on. I think that one
Speaker 1: also had eight different stop motion creatures. So it's quite
Speaker 1: a it's quite an onslaugh. This is a special effects picture, certainly,
Speaker 1: and it is very interesting to think about in terms
Speaker 1: of the history of stop motion the legacy of Ray Harryhausen,
Speaker 1: because this is we'll discussed this was his last special
Speaker 1: effects picture. He retired after this, so it's it's really
Speaker 1: his swan song. And it's also very interesting to look
Speaker 1: at Clash of the Titans as kind of the the
Speaker 1: perfection of a cinematic style or technique that was also
Speaker 1: already going out of fashion a little bit. I mean,
Speaker 1: this wouldn't be the end of stop motion effects. We
Speaker 1: have some fabulous stop motion effects that had come out
Speaker 1: in pictures after this, and a lot of that has
Speaker 1: to do with the legacy of Harry hows and how
Speaker 1: influential he was on other effects folks. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: this was this was his swan song. This is kind
Speaker 1: of this film, whatever else it happens to be, it
Speaker 1: is kind of an important effects historical marker. I was
Speaker 1: trying to think before we started recording about why I
Speaker 1: love stop motion effects so much for the creation of
Speaker 1: monsters in particular, and I think it has something to
Speaker 1: do with actual artifacts of like how the the animation
Speaker 1: is produced, you know, adding in these still frames in
Speaker 1: sequence to create the illusion of motion, the fact that
Speaker 1: it's not capturing something that was in reality when being
Speaker 1: filmed in continuous motion, the way that say people are
Speaker 1: when you film them, but was actually holding still in
Speaker 1: each still frame, ends up creating this kind of unnatural
Speaker 1: lack of smoothness and the motion, this kind of jerkiness
Speaker 1: that I think some people have singled out about stop
Speaker 1: motion effects you in a detrimental way and saying like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it takes away from the realism, like there's
Speaker 1: always limitations to what you can do with stop motion
Speaker 1: because of that kind of jerkiness. But it's exactly that
Speaker 1: quality that I love about them and why I think
Speaker 1: they make for uncanny creatures especially they're they're really great,
Speaker 1: especially for monsters and uncanny creatures. Oh, absolutely, yeah, something
Speaker 1: about the way they're articulated. It worked really well with
Speaker 1: It works really well with say giant crabs and things
Speaker 1: like that. You know, insects and aracnets that have that
Speaker 1: kind of articulation works extremely well. Like you said, with
Speaker 1: the inhuman monsters. Reanimated the skeletons, of course, was that
Speaker 1: Jason and the Argonauts that had the army of remanimated skeletons. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think that's in Jason, but there's there are also
Speaker 1: some reanimated skeleton monsters in Sinbad in the Eye of
Speaker 1: the Tiger. I remember there's a great battle with them
Speaker 1: where I think Sinbad ends up killing them by like,
Speaker 1: um kicking over a giant pile of like timber of
Speaker 1: logs and they like roll down and crushed the skeletons. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, though with with Harry Howson especially,
Speaker 1: I mean there he and his crew were brave enough
Speaker 1: to go after creatures that were far different from this,
Speaker 1: things like as we'll see in this film, a pegasus,
Speaker 1: a large vulture. Things that don't adhere to these qualities
Speaker 1: and seem, at least to my eye, far more ambitious,
Speaker 1: especially especially that pegasus really ambitious effect that they went
Speaker 1: for there, and I think they pulled it off. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean so exactly the same qualit that I think
Speaker 1: makes stop motion great for monsters. I think would make
Speaker 1: it hard to do a really cute, cuddly character in
Speaker 1: stop motion. It would be might be a little off putting.
Speaker 1: But this movie manages it with Bubo, and it maybe
Speaker 1: helps that Bubo is a robot. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I want to cuddle him, but he's
Speaker 1: very cute, has a lot of personality. Yeah, you might
Speaker 1: get some cuts and pinches that way. He might be
Speaker 1: a little hot, I mean yeah, considering where it came
Speaker 1: from too. So nineteen eighty one, Clash of the Titans. Um,
Speaker 1: why is it called Clash of the Titans? Do you
Speaker 1: know the answer to this? I don't, Um, I don't
Speaker 1: have the you know, the exact answer. A lot of times,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, well, the producers said it should
Speaker 1: be called this, or sometimes it's the it is the
Speaker 1: original title. It was dreampt up. But it's always been
Speaker 1: kind of a perplexing title because if you're going into
Speaker 1: this film with a pre existing, you know, head full
Speaker 1: of Greek myth facts, you're probably gonna say, WHOA hold
Speaker 1: on a minute, there are no titans in this picture.
Speaker 1: There are no tight to clash. How is it possibly
Speaker 1: going to deliver on the concept? And well, technically, I
Speaker 1: guess titans do clash in the picture, as long as
Speaker 1: you're willing to stretch the definition of titan and really
Speaker 1: embrace everything the movie tells you. I just watched it,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what you're talking to. I only
Speaker 1: recall the one they call the Krack in a titan,
Speaker 1: But what's the other titan? They they decide that Medusa
Speaker 1: is a titan as well, oh, which is also is
Speaker 1: also incorrect, equally incorrect, even though at least Medusa's from
Speaker 1: Greek mythology while the Krack is Norse mythology. So if
Speaker 1: you if you take their word for it, Okay, technically
Speaker 1: these titans will sort of clash. But yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a strange title, but it's a dynamic title. It
Speaker 1: inspires a lot of action, and we do see a
Speaker 1: lot of action in the picture. Well, to be fair,
Speaker 1: I recall when we did our episodes on Medusa, there
Speaker 1: were different origin stories from Medusa, so some say that
Speaker 1: she was you know, the priestess who was wronged by
Speaker 1: Poseidon and then uh and then doubly wronged by Athena
Speaker 1: and cursed. Was it Athena? I think it was Athena anyway.
Speaker 1: But then there's there's another story I think that says
Speaker 1: that she's just sort of one of the primordial monsters
Speaker 1: that was given birth to by some other combination of critters. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, as it's always the case when we've discussed this,
Speaker 1: unstuffably remind a lot with myths. I mean, there's there's
Speaker 1: there's Generally there may be famous accounts and famous attempts
Speaker 1: to sort of create a canonical version of a particular story,
Speaker 1: but generally there are lots of different stories regarding uh,
Speaker 1: these these beings and these these stories and these gods
Speaker 1: and goddesses and heroes, and then at some point somebody
Speaker 1: comes along and kind of cobbles them together, and ultimately,
Speaker 1: I mean that's what a film like Clash of the
Speaker 1: Titans does. It cobbles them together and takes characters from
Speaker 1: other myth cycles, other traditions, and other cultures and works
Speaker 1: them into the mix, which also is exactly what has
Speaker 1: been done in mythology and folklore and religion since time
Speaker 1: out of mind. Yes, And I guess that's one of
Speaker 1: the really fun things about say Greek mythology, for instance,
Speaker 1: which is that there is no canon of Greek mythology.
Speaker 1: You know, Greek mythology never had like a pope that
Speaker 1: could say like, okay, this is the approved version of
Speaker 1: the story, and other versions of the story are not authoritative.
Speaker 1: That didn't exist, So you've just always had different versions
Speaker 1: of the stories, different takes on these characters and themes,
Speaker 1: and so this is another one. Yeah. Yeah, Like like
Speaker 1: we mentioned in our episodes on the Medusa several years back,
Speaker 1: and if you want a deep dive into Medusa or
Speaker 1: a deeper dive in Medusa mythology, like that's the place
Speaker 1: to go. We're not going to spend as much time
Speaker 1: with it here, but you know, in that we point
Speaker 1: out that it's you see literary traditions regarding these stories
Speaker 1: and these characters, and then it's just like whatever ends
Speaker 1: up sticking in people's minds the most. And interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: I remember one of the authors we looked at for
Speaker 1: the Medusa episodes pointed out that class the Titans presents
Speaker 1: a version of the Perseus versus Medusa's story that has
Speaker 1: really stuck in the modern film moviegoer's mind. In some ways,
Speaker 1: it is a new authoritative version of the myth because
Speaker 1: of how popular it is. Yeah, or at least for
Speaker 1: a certain generation. I don't know what. I don't know
Speaker 1: how people are watching or how often they're watching Clash
Speaker 1: of the Titans today, But growing up watching a lot
Speaker 1: of like TBS and TNT on cable, I feel like
Speaker 1: they showed this movie every week. It was just always
Speaker 1: on television. You could always watch some part of Clash
Speaker 1: of the Titan. You might not ever watch it beginning
Speaker 1: to end, but you know, you spend a few years
Speaker 1: watching television, you're gonna see all of it at least
Speaker 1: two or three times, even if you're just catching little
Speaker 1: bits of it. You know, I actually never saw the
Speaker 1: whole thing until I was older. Well I say, I
Speaker 1: didn't see all of its always, or I thought I had,
Speaker 1: And then when I went to watch it with my
Speaker 1: son years back, I was like, I didn't realize there
Speaker 1: was so much nudity in this film because that was
Speaker 1: always cut from the Turner broadcast. Oh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's very tame nudity. It's like PG rated nudity, but
Speaker 1: there there is there is a little bit of nudity
Speaker 1: in there. You know. One thing I definitely would not
Speaker 1: have appreciated if I had seen this movie when I
Speaker 1: was younger, is is what what a treasure trove the
Speaker 1: cast is? I don't know if he should even say
Speaker 1: the full cast. I mean, this movie is full of
Speaker 1: things you might call cameos where a well known actor
Speaker 1: or actress is brought in to have like I don't know,
Speaker 1: like one or two lines, or even no lines, just
Speaker 1: be on screen. Yeah, there there are actors who do
Speaker 1: get a fair amount of a screen time in this
Speaker 1: film and have some some great lines. And then there, yeah,
Speaker 1: there're others that are just kind of standing around or
Speaker 1: they have just a just a few moments on screen. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is going to be one where we might not
Speaker 1: spend as much time with every member of the cast,
Speaker 1: but we'll try and mention everybody of note as we
Speaker 1: move forward towards the plot section. But before we get there,
Speaker 1: I guess we should make up dis couple of notes here. Well, first,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and listen to the trailer so we
Speaker 1: can get just a splash of the audio from Clash
Speaker 1: of the Titans. In an ancient age before recorded time,
Speaker 1: men were measured by their courage and women by their beauty.
Speaker 1: Mighty gods rule the universe, and fear and destruction cover
Speaker 1: the world. It was a time of darkness, when only
Speaker 1: the force of love could bring back the light. Now,
Speaker 1: Metro Goldwyn Mayer presents Clash of the Titans a sweeping
Speaker 1: legend of a golden age. Soon the motion picture epic
Speaker 1: of our time, enter into the wondrous world of Perseus
Speaker 1: and Andromeda. A world of passion and power, beauty and bravery,
Speaker 1: mystery and magic, the world that transcends fantasy into a legend.
Speaker 1: One courageous man rides between an angry heaven and the
Speaker 1: fury of hell on Earth. He rides a winged stallion
Speaker 1: across the sky. He rides to save the one who
Speaker 1: owns his heart. He rides towards wonders no man has
Speaker 1: ever seen, and terrors no man has ever faced. Clash
Speaker 1: of the Titans starring Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Ursula andres
Speaker 1: Burgess Meredith Claire Bloom and introducing Harry Hamlin as Perseus
Speaker 1: and Judy Bauker as Andromeda. It will touch you, shock you,
Speaker 1: dazzle your senses, and sweep you to the limits of
Speaker 1: your imagination. Clash of the Titans very sweeping, very mythic,
Speaker 1: very nineteen eighty one. I think the trailer should have
Speaker 1: had Jefferson Starship in it. It's important to note, and
Speaker 1: this is I mean, you can't approach this film without
Speaker 1: realizing that it of course comes out in the wake
Speaker 1: of Star Wars, the massive hit of the Star Wars
Speaker 1: comes a few years later. There are aspects of the
Speaker 1: picture that are clearly going after that Star Wars money,
Speaker 1: kind of going after that Star Wars vibe. I had
Speaker 1: the same thought, and one of the things that really
Speaker 1: jumped out at me was the character of Bubo, the
Speaker 1: robotic owl created by he faced Us, modeled on the
Speaker 1: organic owl of Athena. This struck me as obviously R
Speaker 1: two D two with wings. Did you have the same thought, Oh, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: It's clearly an attempt to cash in on that droid magic.
Speaker 1: It even speaks like a droid. It kind of speaks
Speaker 1: in its own kind of like droid whirls and beeps
Speaker 1: and so forth. And we also get to the point
Speaker 1: where Perseus can understand the owl when it's speaking to him,
Speaker 1: and so we get these kind of like human droid
Speaker 1: interactions like we see in Star Wars. And I also
Speaker 1: thought Perseus in this movie seemed to be strongly influenced
Speaker 1: by Luke Skywalker. Yeah, but without that sort of I
Speaker 1: don't know, definitely some different Like it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: it's weird to go back and look at at Luke
Speaker 1: in the first Star Wars film and decide how you
Speaker 1: feel about him, because he's more flawed and relatable. You know,
Speaker 1: he's like a kind of a grumpy He's a grumpy
Speaker 1: team and Perseus is the son of a god who
Speaker 1: gets a lot of stuff handed to him, and so
Speaker 1: Perseus spends a lot of the film not being particularly relatable,
Speaker 1: I think. But oh, we can discuss that as we
Speaker 1: move forward. I mean, I think it's kind of a
Speaker 1: problem that exists in the core myth. Like, unlike Luke Skywalker,
Speaker 1: he doesn't have that sense of lacking and yearning, you know,
Speaker 1: he's just he's just grad at everything from the get go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, before we move forward, if you're you're wanting
Speaker 1: to watch this film for yourself, well where can you
Speaker 1: find it? Well, first of all, make sure you put
Speaker 1: that nineteen eighty one in there, because otherwise you're gonna
Speaker 1: end up watching the remake. I think the remake comes
Speaker 1: up first in search, but that's a crime. I haven't
Speaker 1: even seen it. I don't know why I judge that.
Speaker 1: I just know without watching it that it's awful. Um,
Speaker 1: all I can say for it is that you have
Speaker 1: computer animated monsters instead of stop motion monsters. You have
Speaker 1: what leam Neeson is in it, and so Is Ray
Speaker 1: Finds is in it as well. He plays Hades, who
Speaker 1: isn't in the Hades doesn't factor into this one, but
Speaker 1: he pops up in the remake, and so they're fine.
Speaker 1: You have those are two great actors. Put them in
Speaker 1: some shiny and weird armor and they're they're they're cool.
Speaker 1: But then there's also like a scene where the new
Speaker 1: Perseus finds a robotic owl and like a trash can
Speaker 1: or something and he's like no, thank you and like
Speaker 1: shuts it, and it's like, yeah, it's clearly it has
Speaker 1: the the opinion that it doesn't need to be cute
Speaker 1: and impressive and needs just to be like it just
Speaker 1: needs to be like hard and an action packed. So
Speaker 1: I don't know I think I enjoyed it when I
Speaker 1: watched it, and it's worth watching drag Us for a
Speaker 1: couple of performances, but it's not as as fun and
Speaker 1: touchable as this film. Love, a CGI laden remake that
Speaker 1: just gets in some digs at the old movie. Yeah
Speaker 1: that was I think that was the main dig. But
Speaker 1: it was like, yeah, I didn't. It rubbed me the
Speaker 1: wrong way for sure. Yeah, So where can you watch
Speaker 1: this film if you want to watch it? Well, if
Speaker 1: if what I know from my own experience is still true,
Speaker 1: I would say turn on TPS now, now, go ahead
Speaker 1: and flip to TNT whichever channel it's on, go ahead
Speaker 1: and watch it there. But if it's not available to
Speaker 1: you on television right now, you can rent or buy
Speaker 1: this pretty much anywhere in any way that you get
Speaker 1: your films. This is not one of our more obscure choices.
Speaker 1: It's it's out there all right. Well, let's jump into
Speaker 1: the humans involved. I'm gonna do things a little differently
Speaker 1: here and I'm just gonna hit all the behind the
Speaker 1: scenes folks right at the top. So the director of
Speaker 1: this is Desmond Davis, who lived nineteen twenty six through
Speaker 1: twenty and twenty one British camera operator turned rider and director.
Speaker 1: His first directorial credit was nineteen sixty four Girl with
Speaker 1: Green Eyes, starring Peter Finch and Rita Toushingham. One of
Speaker 1: his immediate follow ups was nineteen sixty six is Time
Speaker 1: Lost in Time Remembered aka I Was Happy There, and
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven Smashing Time. The first two of these
Speaker 1: at least seemed to be like really well remembered you,
Speaker 1: at least within their own genre, you know. I think
Speaker 1: it's kind of maybe a snapshot of kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, really cool sixties London type of stuff. He
Speaker 1: also directed the nineteen eighty four Donald Sutherland thriller Or
Speaker 1: Deal by Innocence, and an adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 1: tale The Sign of Four starring Ian Richardson in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three. He also did a lot of TV work.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've seen any of that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: certainly haven't seen the older pictures. I might have seen
Speaker 1: The Sign of Four. I'm not sure. I'd have to
Speaker 1: go back and really look at some screenshots. Who's Sherlock
Speaker 1: in that one? Is? Is that a Jeremy Brett movie?
Speaker 1: I believe it's in Ian Richardson. Oh, that's what you
Speaker 1: already said that. I'm sorry, Yeah, Jeremy Brett. All of
Speaker 1: those were for TV, and they did the Sign of
Speaker 1: Four at one point. All right. The writer on this
Speaker 1: is Beverly Cross, who of nineteen thirty one through nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight English playwright and screenwriter, longtime husband of actor
Speaker 1: Maggie Smith, who is also in this picture. Until his death,
Speaker 1: his screenplays include nineteen sixty three's Jason and the Argonauts,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, Gingha's Kahn starring Omar Sharif in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger or
Speaker 1: in the Eye of the Tiger. I can't remember what
Speaker 1: his relationships. Yeah, I don't think they could fit him
Speaker 1: in the Eye of the Tiger. Now, yeah, it's and
Speaker 1: of the Eye of the Tiger again. That movie is
Speaker 1: incredibly dopey, some very questionable casting decisions, but also a
Speaker 1: heck of a lot of fun. It's got great monsters
Speaker 1: and all that. Creator of visual effects on this and
Speaker 1: also a producer of the film is Ray Harry Housen,
Speaker 1: who mentioned already lived nineteen twenty through twenty thirteen. You know,
Speaker 1: I believe this is our first Harry Housen film. I
Speaker 1: know he's come up on the show before, but I
Speaker 1: don't remember what movie that was in the context of
Speaker 1: maybe we were just talking about something else that had
Speaker 1: stop motion in it. But oh man, I literally get
Speaker 1: warm feelings inside just hearing the name Ray Harry Housen,
Speaker 1: Like it sends the kind of like those jets of
Speaker 1: warm water through my chest. Well yeah, it even kind
Speaker 1: of sounds like it, right Housing, You're at how You're
Speaker 1: at home, and Harry, it's kind of like rubbed the
Speaker 1: fur right, yes, yes, yeah. So if you have it,
Speaker 1: ever been into movie monsters and special effects, then you
Speaker 1: know the name. He was an American British Oscar winning
Speaker 1: animator and special effects creator who is a major pioneer
Speaker 1: in the industry and created the dynamation approach to stop motion.
Speaker 1: I remember talking with Seth about this on one of
Speaker 1: the Weird Houses that he appeared on, probably the probably
Speaker 1: the one we were talking about Alice. But it seems
Speaker 1: like everybody that did stop motion they had some sort
Speaker 1: of cool name for it that wasn't stop motion. Almost
Speaker 1: like there was a rejection of the term stop motion,
Speaker 1: like it sounded too boring. Or something, or maybe they just,
Speaker 1: you know, just needed something you can copyright to call it.
Speaker 1: I don't know anyway. Harry Howsen's credits, You know, I
Speaker 1: usually don't list everything. I'm just gonna go and list
Speaker 1: I think all the major films that he did here
Speaker 1: forty nine, Mighty Joe Young, fifty three, The Beast from
Speaker 1: twenty thousand fathoms fifty five It Came from Beneath the Sea,
Speaker 1: fifty six, The Animal World also in fifty six, Earth
Speaker 1: versus the Flying Saucers fifty seven, twenty million Years to
Speaker 1: Earth fifty eight, The Seventh Voyage of the Sinbad nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: The Three Worlds of Gulliver nineteen sixty one, mysterious island
Speaker 1: that has a crab in it Yea sixty three, Jason
Speaker 1: and the Argonaut sixty four first, then in the Moon
Speaker 1: one million years BC in sixty six, the Valley of
Speaker 1: Guangi and sixty nine, the Golden Voyage of Sinbad in
Speaker 1: seventy three, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, and then wraps it all up in
Speaker 1: eighty one with Clash of the Titans. We may have
Speaker 1: to come back and do at least one of these
Speaker 1: other ones at some point, because I just love these
Speaker 1: monsters so much. Oh yeah, yeah, there's so many just
Speaker 1: iconic monster designs. They have so much character to them,
Speaker 1: and you've missed that kind of thing when you're watching
Speaker 1: something like the Luferigna Hercules movie that we covered, which
Speaker 1: is a very fune, very very exciting picture, but with
Speaker 1: the stop motion in that doesn't hold a candle to this.
Speaker 1: That one did have some great visual flare, but yeah,
Speaker 1: not so much in the monsters. Yeah, who is that
Speaker 1: character who is like, oh, I don't know, some kind
Speaker 1: of like wizard who lived down on an asteroid or something. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's what's like I'm supposed to be datalless? Right? Oh
Speaker 1: yeah is it? Maybe? Yeah? That was great? All right,
Speaker 1: real quickly. The music and this is by Lawrence Rosenthal
Speaker 1: born nineteen twenty six, prolific Oscar nominated in Any winning
Speaker 1: composer who worked in TV, film, and stage. His film
Speaker 1: scores include A Raisin in the Sun, The Miracle Worker Beckett,
Speaker 1: and the nineteen seventy seven adaptation of the Island of
Speaker 1: Doctor Moreau. Father of noted stem cell scientist Professor Nadia Rosenthal,
Speaker 1: The music in this is very epic and sweeping, and
Speaker 1: you know it does its shot. What can you say?
Speaker 1: All right? Now? When he comes to the cast, this
Speaker 1: is going to be the story of Perseus and Medusa.
Speaker 1: So Perseus, you gotta have you a fresh hunk, right,
Speaker 1: I mean no, no old hunks will do yep. And
Speaker 1: the fresh one they had here was Harry Hamlin. I
Speaker 1: believe the credits are the credits to the trailer if
Speaker 1: you get with chef fans say and introducing Harry Hamlin
Speaker 1: just removed from his original packaging, and you know, as
Speaker 1: is often the case, it kind of feels that way
Speaker 1: with the performance. I mean, he's good in this, but
Speaker 1: and to be fair, he's playing Perseus, a hero, a
Speaker 1: son of a god, so there are how do you
Speaker 1: play that in a way that's relatable. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think the various shows where I've seen someone portraying Perseus
Speaker 1: and put Perseus is it's kind of a big a
Speaker 1: lift to make this feel like a real person. So
Speaker 1: Harry Hamlin does as finer job as you might expect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm gonna be honest, and I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: especially because I can say good things about his later career,
Speaker 1: I don't think his acting is stellar in this movie.
Speaker 1: He's he's kind of a slab, but he like he
Speaker 1: stands there and he's handsome and oo look at his
Speaker 1: shoulders and all that. He does not really do a
Speaker 1: great job of acting, I will say, but in his
Speaker 1: later career he did lots of stuff where I thought
Speaker 1: he was great. He was great and Madman. He was
Speaker 1: great on the Veronica Mars. You know he'd oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what. I guess he was just very
Speaker 1: young here, Oh yeah, I mean on Daftley he was
Speaker 1: very young. He I think he'd only been I think
Speaker 1: he's done some stage acting. He'd had one movie appearance
Speaker 1: before this. But yeah, I went on to be known
Speaker 1: more for again Madman. He was in La Law for
Speaker 1: the first five seasons of that. I would say that
Speaker 1: I'll come back to this, but I think there's one
Speaker 1: sequence in the film where his performance is is definitely
Speaker 1: better than the rest of the picture, and I think
Speaker 1: it's also the best sequence in the entire film, So
Speaker 1: we'll discuss in a bit. But he also has some
Speaker 1: interesting science connections as well. I didn't know about this,
Speaker 1: but his grandfather, Chauncey Jerome Hamelin founded the Buffalo Museum
Speaker 1: of Science, and his father, Chauncey Jerome Hamlin Junior it
Speaker 1: was an aeronautical engineer who helped design the Saturn rocket
Speaker 1: with doctor Verna von Braun. And yeah, Harry himself apparently
Speaker 1: co founded the Fusion Power Company or co founded the
Speaker 1: fusion power company TAE Technologies in nineteen ninety eight. Wow,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I did not know he ha fusion Power
Speaker 1: connections that. I had no idea either, But it's it's
Speaker 1: it's listed in more than one place, so I don't
Speaker 1: think I'm just being scammed on that. All right. Let's
Speaker 1: see other mortals of note in the picture. Well, Sean
Speaker 1: Phillips born nineteen thirty three is in it as Cassiopeia. Okay,
Speaker 1: so she's playing the queen of the City of Joppa,
Speaker 1: the mother of Princess Andromeda right right. And Sean Phillips
Speaker 1: is notable because well, I mean she was Reverend Mother
Speaker 1: Guy as Helen Mahiam and David Lynch's Dune in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, and she was also the Witch of Indoor
Speaker 1: in Ewak's The Battle for Indoor in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Terrific in both of those. She's a fun actor even
Speaker 1: if even if she doesn't, she does get to be
Speaker 1: a little like um. She does it like a stern
Speaker 1: sort of female mild villain roll really well, you know,
Speaker 1: like she she has that definite sternness to it, because
Speaker 1: in this she's like, Okay, I will sacrifice my daughter
Speaker 1: to the krack and it's what the gods want, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it. And before there's a scene
Speaker 1: where she earns the wrath of Maggie Smith by just
Speaker 1: standing in front of a statue of Maggie Smith of
Speaker 1: the goddess Thetis, and just being like, by the way,
Speaker 1: my daughter who's about to have her wedding day is
Speaker 1: more beautiful than the goddess I'm standing in front of
Speaker 1: right now. And of course then the ground begins to
Speaker 1: shake and all that. So bad call bad, call yes.
Speaker 1: So she's a lot of fun in the picture. Judy
Speaker 1: Bachner Plays and Drama a Board nineteen fifty four English actor,
Speaker 1: probably best known for this film, but she was also
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventy seven Louis Jordan Dracula movie and
Speaker 1: Franco Zepharelli's brother son Sister Moon in seventy two Okay,
Speaker 1: So she plays Andromeda, the princess of the city of Joppa,
Speaker 1: who in the original story she's she's rescued by Perseus.
Speaker 1: Though I like how in this version of the story
Speaker 1: there's more of a complicated backstory with the whole uh
Speaker 1: you know, her previous betrothal to what's his name Calabass
Speaker 1: and all that. We'll get to in a bit. All right, one, Well,
Speaker 1: there are two more mortals of note, but the most
Speaker 1: important mortal to discuss here is Amon, who is h
Speaker 1: He's what's supposed to be a like a Greek dramatist
Speaker 1: turned sort of. I don't know. He's just up for adventures, right,
Speaker 1: He's kind of a rogue, I guess. I guess, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I interpreted him as I guess a fictionalized
Speaker 1: version of Escalus or something. Yeah, yeah, I guess he's
Speaker 1: kind of he's kind of a bard, kind of the
Speaker 1: bar to the party here. And he is played by
Speaker 1: the terrific American actor of theater, film, and television, Burgess
Speaker 1: Meredith of nineteen oh seven through nineteen ninety seven. You
Speaker 1: gotta fight the go Rocky, you gotta fight out him.
Speaker 1: That's right. Many people will know him best for his
Speaker 1: role as the coach Mickey Goldmill in the Rocky franchise,
Speaker 1: or at least the first three pictures, but he was
Speaker 1: in so many things, like he played the penguin in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties TV series Batman. He One of his
Speaker 1: other really iconic roles is playing the character Henry Bemis
Speaker 1: in the classic Twilight Zone episode Time Enough at Last.
Speaker 1: This is the one about the guy who survives the
Speaker 1: apocalypse and then destroy just he survives a destruction of
Speaker 1: humanity and all lenses and and then he thinks he
Speaker 1: gets to read all the books in the library, but
Speaker 1: then he breaks his glasses and it's like, oh, the tragedy,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's great, but it's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's a famous episode. I was just trying to remember
Speaker 1: what happens to his character at the end of his
Speaker 1: arc in the Rocky movies, and I think, unless I'm
Speaker 1: remembering wrong, that in Rocky three, mister t is so
Speaker 1: rude to him that he has a heart attack and dies.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, really something like that. Well, like I said,
Speaker 1: he was in tons of stuff. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: try and list anywhere near all of it here, but
Speaker 1: I will say he's in nineteen eighty five Santa Claus,
Speaker 1: the movie Um on top of some other things, he's
Speaker 1: he's he's a tremendous actor, and he's terrific in this film.
Speaker 1: So this is a film that feed There's a lot
Speaker 1: of exposition, a young hunk who's very green, and then
Speaker 1: a lot of stoic hero and god speak, you know.
Speaker 1: But Meredith makes you believe virtually every line he delivers.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a master class in breathing life into
Speaker 1: lines that could otherwise fall completely flat. I agree, Yes,
Speaker 1: this is a quality we often see in older actors
Speaker 1: and actresses, who like, once you've been doing it long enough,
Speaker 1: you kind of acquire a sort of cumulative magic that
Speaker 1: allows you to transcend the written material you're given. I
Speaker 1: rarely notice this quality in younger actors. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is this is exactly why you bring in an
Speaker 1: older character actor like Burgess Meredith to play a role
Speaker 1: like this and to work with the younger, more inexperienced
Speaker 1: actors and sort of bring something out of them. All right.
Speaker 1: One other mortal of note, and that is Tim Pigot Smith,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen forty six through twenty seventeen play Thallow.
Speaker 1: This is kind of our He's kind of like the
Speaker 1: miscellaneous guard dude that lasts the longest in the picture.
Speaker 1: You know, he's just a member of the party. Just
Speaker 1: he's like the fighter of the party. He's a soldier
Speaker 1: in a big soldier's helmet wearing a hilariously short skirt.
Speaker 1: That's the That's the thing I was, you know, I
Speaker 1: always loved checking out the IMDb user submitted parental warnings
Speaker 1: about the picture, and one of them was that saying
Speaker 1: that the the the the star of this film, Harry
Speaker 1: Hamlin is I think believe they said mostly nude the
Speaker 1: entire picture, and it's like, he's not really most I
Speaker 1: don't know if i'd say he's mostly nude, but yes, he,
Speaker 1: like a lot of characters in the film, is you know,
Speaker 1: often wearing a very short outfit. Anyway, Tim Pickott Smith
Speaker 1: here is the kind of actor I'd probably spend more
Speaker 1: time talking about in another picture that's not so loaded,
Speaker 1: but suffice to say, accomplished English actor with a long
Speaker 1: career on stage, screen and TV, and in the later
Speaker 1: stages of his career, he appeared in such big productions
Speaker 1: as Gangs of New York Work from two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: Alexander from two thousand and four, v for Vendetta from
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, and The Quantum of Solace from
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. All Right, moving on, let's get
Speaker 1: to some monsters. We mentioned Calibos already. This is the
Speaker 1: tragic beast man villain positioned as the son of Thetis
Speaker 1: instead of Achilles, who's actually her son in various Greek myths,
Speaker 1: but instead this character is actually based on Caliban from
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's The Tempest. The Caliban connection makes sense because so
Speaker 1: while Calabos is of course one of the villains of
Speaker 1: the movie, he does a lot of evil and he
Speaker 1: lashes out for revenge, he's also a character like you
Speaker 1: feel his pain. Yeah, And I remember this from watching
Speaker 1: this movie as a kid, even like I sympathize with
Speaker 1: Calabos a lot, and part of that was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's the monster character in a movie full of a
Speaker 1: lot of humanoid characters. But I think also it's just
Speaker 1: baked into the movie, like the movie stresses that, yeah,
Speaker 1: he did some terrible things, but also the gods have
Speaker 1: been potentially unfair to him and have punished him with
Speaker 1: this monstrous transformation. There's like a whole scene on Mount
Speaker 1: Olympus where the gods are talking about how oh, if
Speaker 1: he'd been the son of Zeus and he'd done all
Speaker 1: the same stuff, he wouldn't have gotten punished. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: Zeus is like, but he's not, and yeah, oh god,
Speaker 1: we'll get to Zeus in a minute. But yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's any anyway. Calabos is played by Neil McCarthy who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen thirty two through nineteen eighty five and yet
Speaker 1: a very distinct face, so you'll recognize him from a
Speaker 1: lot of pictures. He was in sixty eight Where Eagles Dare,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, Zulu, and he was in Terry Gilliam's
Speaker 1: Time Badits from nineteen eighty one. Other monsters in this
Speaker 1: picture that are played by human beings, we have the
Speaker 1: Stygian witches. So there are three witches we talked, we
Speaker 1: talk about these these characters that they're based on a
Speaker 1: good bit in the Medusa episode. But these are the
Speaker 1: three blind witches that Percius has to go to in
Speaker 1: order to find Medusa essentially, and they're played by Flora
Speaker 1: Robson who lived nineteen o two through nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: Anna Manahan who lived nineteen twenty four through two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, and Freda Jackson who lived nineteen o seven
Speaker 1: through nineteen ninety. Great witch performances by all three, though
Speaker 1: I do not know which one is which, because they're
Speaker 1: all they all have a lot of makeup on and
Speaker 1: they all three have very packed filmography. So maybe in
Speaker 1: the future will hit on a movie that has one
Speaker 1: of them in and will refer back to it. But
Speaker 1: suffice to say, great witch scene. Three great witches here
Speaker 1: very much agree that they are great, but they kind
Speaker 1: of act as one. They're not very individually distinctive by design. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think we've said this before. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like it is. There is a lot of sexism
Speaker 1: in the whole Older female actors end up playing witches
Speaker 1: in a lot of pictures, but when they do it
Speaker 1: really well, you got you gotta give them credit. And
Speaker 1: all three of these witches are great. All right, let's
Speaker 1: move on to the gods. Yeah, speaking of sexism, let's
Speaker 1: get to Zeus. Well, you know he is he is
Speaker 1: the king of the gods, so we have to start
Speaker 1: with him, and and yeah, he is pretty sexist. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the great Laurence Olivier playing Zeus. Laurence Olivia,
Speaker 1: of course, lived nineteen o seven through nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest British acting names of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: appearing in in Clash as the Greek king of the Gods,
Speaker 1: and what I'm to understand was largely a favor to
Speaker 1: co star Maggie Smith and her husband. Okay, so her
Speaker 1: husband wrote the movie and decided to really play up
Speaker 1: the part of the goddess Thetis and then have his
Speaker 1: wife cast in that role, and then get their friend
Speaker 1: Lawrence Olivier to play Zeus. Right, Yes, that's what I've
Speaker 1: that's what I've read. That being said though, and also
Speaker 1: taking into the fact that apparently Olivier was sick during
Speaker 1: the filming, I think he's he's really good in this.
Speaker 1: Like it's yes, he's playing he's playing a god, he's
Speaker 1: playing Zeus, and he may just he doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: he's going through the motions. Maybe he was, and that's
Speaker 1: just how good he was as an actor. But I
Speaker 1: feel like there's some wonderful dimensions to this performance as
Speaker 1: this egotistical, calmly threatening tyrant who is also not the
Speaker 1: villain of the piece. No, it's interesting. Yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: he's not the villain, even though a lot of what's
Speaker 1: happening in the movie as a result of his capriciousness
Speaker 1: and hypocrisy. And there's just just it's kind of accepted,
Speaker 1: sort of as a law of nature that Zeus is
Speaker 1: just completely unfair and that's just the reality. It's like
Speaker 1: the Yeah, it's just the reality everybody has to deal with. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I kind of like the scene. I think it's very
Speaker 1: pronounced in the scene where he asked Athena to give
Speaker 1: up her owl to Perseus and she doesn't want to,
Speaker 1: but he's like, but it's my wish, and he does
Speaker 1: it in this way where it's like, oh, it's just
Speaker 1: so good. He hits it perfectly well. Also, the backstory
Speaker 1: is hilarious because Athena already gave Perseus a helmet that
Speaker 1: would make him invisible. That's pretty good, right, That's that's
Speaker 1: a good Christmas present and a percys He's like, wow,
Speaker 1: I lost it dry dropped it in the swamp. So
Speaker 1: Zeus is like, you will get my little boy a
Speaker 1: new present. Yes, give him your toy, give him your
Speaker 1: favorite thing, and uh and you know she has to
Speaker 1: do it, but she finds a loophole anyway. Lawrence Olivier
Speaker 1: tons of tons of pictures that he was in. He was,
Speaker 1: of course a major Shakespearean actor of stage and screen,
Speaker 1: and his credits and compass everything from the likes of
Speaker 1: nineteen forties Rebecca directed by Alfred Hitchcock, forty eight's Hamlet,
Speaker 1: and also such later day largely, I guess genre hits,
Speaker 1: such as nineteen seventy eight's The Boys from Brazil nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six is Marathon Man in nineteen seventy two Sleuth.
Speaker 1: He is the diabolical Nazi dentist in Marathon Man, right,
Speaker 1: and he's a Nazi hunter and the Boys from Brazil,
Speaker 1: so I guess you know they bounce out Boys from
Speaker 1: Brazil of course, is the they Tried to clone Hitler movie. Oh,
Speaker 1: I've never seen that one. Yeah, it's oh, it's it's uh.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it in a while, but I remember
Speaker 1: thinking it was good. It has Gregory Peck in it.
Speaker 1: Gregory Peck plays doctor Mangela on the run. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: other gods and try and run through some of these
Speaker 1: quickly because okay, we have hair up played by Claire
Speaker 1: Bloom born nineteen thirty one, known for such films as
Speaker 1: fifty twos, Limelight, sixty three is The Haunting in two
Speaker 1: Thousand Tents, the King's Speech still active, still going at it.
Speaker 1: Doesn't do much in this picture. She's got like three
Speaker 1: lines maybe, yeah, But then we have Maggie Smith again
Speaker 1: playing thetus born nineteen thirty four. Yeah. Legendary Maggie Smith,
Speaker 1: known probably more to modern fans for her roles in
Speaker 1: Gosford Park, Dalton Abbey and the Harry Potter franchise, but
Speaker 1: she's had a very long career and is also still active.
Speaker 1: She still has she has upcoming pictures coming down the pipe,
Speaker 1: and she's been active on TV and screen since nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five. Maggie Smith is great in this She's great
Speaker 1: in everything I've ever seen her in. She's always excellent,
Speaker 1: and her character is really interesting because you see her
Speaker 1: from two completely different sides to the human characters. She's
Speaker 1: basically a villain like she imposes the need to sacrifice
Speaker 1: Princess Andromeda to the Kraken as she speaks out of
Speaker 1: a statue to lay a curse upon the city. But
Speaker 1: then you also see the other side, which is that
Speaker 1: on Mount Olympus she's the underdog. You feel for her,
Speaker 1: and you see that Zeus mistreats her. So she appears
Speaker 1: both as a kind of sympathetic hero and as end
Speaker 1: as a cruel, overbearing villain, depending on whether your point
Speaker 1: of view is earthly or heavenly. Yeah, yeah, so she
Speaker 1: definitely gets a lot of screen time and has a
Speaker 1: ultimately a really well defined character. And then on the
Speaker 1: other end of the spectrum we have Ursula Andres has
Speaker 1: Aphrodite born nineteen thirty six. She only has like one
Speaker 1: line in this film, but the Swiss model turned actor
Speaker 1: was a major sex symbol of her time, with a
Speaker 1: breakout role in nineteen sixty two's Doctor No Bond film.
Speaker 1: Her other at its are kind of all over the place, like,
Speaker 1: for instance, she's in Sergio Martino's Slave of the Cannibal
Speaker 1: God from nineteen seventy eight. I was not prepared for this.
Speaker 1: On rewatching, I was like Ursula Andress Oh, I guess
Speaker 1: it was excited to see her in this movie. She says, well,
Speaker 1: like one thing, yeah, yeah, just one line, and I
Speaker 1: think she was pretty highly built in the picture too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, other gods we still got multiple guns to
Speaker 1: go here. God packed this movie, but we have Poseidon,
Speaker 1: a severely I think depowered Poseidon played by Jack Gwillam
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen o nine through two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: He had parts in sixty two Lawrence of Arabia, seventies Patent.
Speaker 1: He played Van Helsing in nineteen eighty seven's The Monster Squad,
Speaker 1: and he was also in such films as nineteen seventies Cromwell,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six is A Man for All Seasons in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four is the Curse of the Mummies Tomb
Speaker 1: A Man for All Seasons? Is that the one that
Speaker 1: that has Robert Shaw as Henry the Eighth? I believe
Speaker 1: that's right. I've seen this film before, but it's been
Speaker 1: a while yet. Robert Shaw and a pretty stacked cast.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got people like John hurd In at
Speaker 1: Orson Wells, etc. A really good cast. Okay, so they
Speaker 1: brought in another heavy hitter to play Poseidon. And does
Speaker 1: Poseidon even have one line? I don't remember. Ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he speaks, but yeah, he's a very meek
Speaker 1: Poseidon like. Basically, his role is to go down in
Speaker 1: the water and call up the Kraken once, Zeus has
Speaker 1: said released the Kraken, so's he's the one who actually
Speaker 1: does the releasing. So especially given how powerful Poseidon is
Speaker 1: in many of the traditions of Greek mythology, really he
Speaker 1: really feels depowered here. But I would say in this film,
Speaker 1: Maggie Smith as Thetis fills the role that would have
Speaker 1: been played by Poseidon. M Yeah, I think I think
Speaker 1: you're right that rolands up absorbing a lot of the
Speaker 1: power from various other figures in it in the film.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because another one another made your character from mythology. Athena,
Speaker 1: the goddess Athena is in this played by Susan Fleetwood,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen forty four through nineteen ninety five. Her
Speaker 1: other credits include nineteen nineties The Craze, This is the
Speaker 1: one about the Underworld, London, Underworld Twins, nineteen eighty five's
Speaker 1: young Shirlock Holmes, and she's in apparently in Tarkovsky's nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six film The Sacrifice, which as I remember, is
Speaker 1: very haunting and heavy and also very long. I love Tarkovsky,
Speaker 1: but I haven't seen that one. It's uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of a it's it's good. It's a deep picture.
Speaker 1: I saw it in college. Ye, go to see it
Speaker 1: on the big screen. But judging by this movie, Okay, Athena,
Speaker 1: what's she got us of you know, like wisdom, crafts
Speaker 1: wore any of that stuff. No, I think she's got
Speaker 1: us of owls in this movie. Yeah, Goddess of pet
Speaker 1: ownership basically, that's all she does. Goddess of veterinary practice.
Speaker 1: Oh but we also have one more god. We have
Speaker 1: a Festus in this played by Pat Roach. Big Pat
Speaker 1: Roach who lived nineteen thirty seven through two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: He plays the robot owl repairman of the gods. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he is the one you would, I guess,
Speaker 1: go to for this sort of thing if if you
Speaker 1: can't get ahold of data lists, you know, if you
Speaker 1: want to keep it in Mount Olympus, then yeah, he's
Speaker 1: the one to go to. Well, he didn't he train
Speaker 1: data lists given some of the traditions. Oh maybe anyway.
Speaker 1: Pat Roach British wrestler turned actor who's really in tons
Speaker 1: of nostalgic flicks from the eighties and nineties. I think
Speaker 1: one of the big ones that most people were familiar
Speaker 1: with is he of course, plays that German mechanic that
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones fistfights underneath the propeller driven airplane in Raiders
Speaker 1: of the Last Lost Arc in nineteen eighty one. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it gets turned into Nazi soup by the propeller. He's
Speaker 1: I think he's actually in all three of the original
Speaker 1: Indie movies playing smaller roles, and I think he plays
Speaker 1: another role in Raiders of the the Lost Art, but this
Speaker 1: is the big one. He plays the wizard that turns
Speaker 1: into a monster in nineteen eighty four is Conan the Destroyer.
Speaker 1: So he's one of many big, meaty men in a
Speaker 1: movie that has like a whole cast of big meeting men.
Speaker 1: I like that you'd make even your wizard big in meady. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's that's a very very meaty picture,
Speaker 1: that one. It's weird. It's like I think if I
Speaker 1: were to talk about a Conan film on Weird House,
Speaker 1: I think it would need to be Knan the Destroyer.
Speaker 1: That's the goofire one. Anyway. Pat Roach also played General
Speaker 1: Kale or Kale I can't remember how it's pronounced in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight's Willow. This is the dude with a
Speaker 1: big like guerrilla skull on his mask. And oh and
Speaker 1: he also played the titan Atlas and Jim Hinson's The
Speaker 1: Storyteller the Greek Myths. So even though he's not a
Speaker 1: Titan in this and there are very questionable titan classifications
Speaker 1: in this film, he has played a Titan before. That
Speaker 1: series of Jim Hinson Storyteller, by the way, I'd say,
Speaker 1: is probably my other favorite adaptation of this story of
Speaker 1: like the Perseus and Medusa arc and has a I
Speaker 1: would say, has a Medusa design to rival this one. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that one did the wings, which you do
Speaker 1: see in a number of the accounts of old All right,
Speaker 1: we'll show we get into the plot of Clash of
Speaker 1: the Titans. These Titans got a clash, baby, so let's
Speaker 1: let's find out how they do it. Okay, Well, one
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to denote is it is amazing how
Speaker 1: much plot they are able to cram into two hours
Speaker 1: in this movie. We may focus in more granular detail
Speaker 1: on the earlier parts of the movie and then hop
Speaker 1: around for some of the later adventures. But it has
Speaker 1: a great opening as howling wind dust blowing in the
Speaker 1: foreground and then through a haze. We see a procession
Speaker 1: of Greek soldiers escorting like a coffin or a litter.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a box. And then we get the
Speaker 1: opening lines spoken by the wicked king, a crazy Us,
Speaker 1: who says, bear witness Zeus and all you gods on
Speaker 1: high Olympus, I condemn my daughter Danae and her son
Speaker 1: Perseus to the sea. Her guilt and sin have brought
Speaker 1: shame to Argus. I A crazy Us, the king. Now
Speaker 1: purge her crime and restore my honor. Their blood is
Speaker 1: not on my hands. And then he has them put
Speaker 1: into the box. Danny is clutching her baby boy and
Speaker 1: they put him in the box, cast him into the ocean,
Speaker 1: and we see the box being tossed cruelly by the waves.
Speaker 1: Now we know in the story that a Crazius does
Speaker 1: this to avert a prophecy that Perseus will bring about
Speaker 1: his doom. Does the movie tell us this? I don't
Speaker 1: think it does, or if it does, I missed it. No.
Speaker 1: What I got from it was just the basic like
Speaker 1: something's wrong. Zeus demands this, so I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: That's all there is to it. Zeus said it. I
Speaker 1: believe it. There you go. But it turns out Zeus
Speaker 1: does not want this, because we're going to go to
Speaker 1: Mount Olympus in a minute, and Zeus is going to
Speaker 1: be like, why did you do that? So what I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask first, I couldn't tell where a lot
Speaker 1: of the location shots in this movie were coming from.
Speaker 1: There are parts right here at the opening on this coastline,
Speaker 1: which I assume is supposed to be in Greece, but
Speaker 1: they looked like Scotland. Yeah. I read that they filmed
Speaker 1: at Pinewood Studios, I guess for you know, the interiors,
Speaker 1: and then they also shot in various places in the Mediterranean,
Speaker 1: So I mean that's ultimately I'm not sure where that
Speaker 1: they are in this particular scene though. Well, from here
Speaker 1: we go to the opening credits and we zoom over
Speaker 1: beautiful landscapes and you see the mountain peaks, the spires,
Speaker 1: glacier pockets and the crevices of the rocks. And this
Speaker 1: is the kind of landscape stuff that always works on me,
Speaker 1: you know, it puts me in the right mood for
Speaker 1: an epic. I recall thinking that Krull also got a
Speaker 1: lot of mileage out of just beautiful landscape shots that
Speaker 1: weren't strictly related to the story. Just put a camera
Speaker 1: up on top of the mountains and you know it works.
Speaker 1: They do it for a reason. Well, Krol is the planet,
Speaker 1: so you got to see a lot of her. Yet, right,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen meet Kroll. But from here we go
Speaker 1: to Mount Olympus, which this is not on a mountain,
Speaker 1: it's an indoor studio set, and the you know, bunch
Speaker 1: of gods in white robes are standing around on marble
Speaker 1: floors with big columns in the background. I'd love Clash
Speaker 1: of the Titans, but I feel like the Olympus set,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it feels kind of boring to me.
Speaker 1: I feel like they could have made the gods look
Speaker 1: more interesting. Yeah, it's like it basically looks like a
Speaker 1: bunch of older people are about to be adult baptized.
Speaker 1: You know, they have like baphysmal gowns on, and they're
Speaker 1: standing around in like the standing around a big mall
Speaker 1: somewhere with a lot of white marble. Though I do
Speaker 1: love the Throne, The Throne. When we switched the scenes
Speaker 1: of the Throne, it's pretty pretty great because there is
Speaker 1: Laurence Olivier in his big sterling white robe with a
Speaker 1: gold lion on one side, a gold snake wrapped around
Speaker 1: an egg on the other. He is on a throne
Speaker 1: of white marble, and behind his head is like a
Speaker 1: blue laser show. Yes, I do like the laser show.
Speaker 1: And I guess that's to show the power emanating from
Speaker 1: the throne of Zeus. And he clearly he's more powerful
Speaker 1: than all the other gods. They're not going to do
Speaker 1: anything without his approval. So one of the gods brings
Speaker 1: the report of what he just saw, which is King
Speaker 1: of crazis, Hey, he threw his daughter and her baby
Speaker 1: son into the ocean in a box. And some of
Speaker 1: the gods here, I think maybe this is this is
Speaker 1: Thetis or Hera, maybe Thetis. They try to defend a
Speaker 1: crazy Us. They say, hey, look, Zeus, he built a
Speaker 1: lot of really solid temples. He dedicated them to you.
Speaker 1: Who really cares if you throw a woman and a
Speaker 1: child in the ocean. But Zeus is incensed by this.
Speaker 1: He says, a hundred good deeds cannot atone for murder.
Speaker 1: I don't care how many temples he dedicated to me.
Speaker 1: You can't. You can't do this to people. And in
Speaker 1: this scene, we go around, he kind of like addresses
Speaker 1: each of the gods. We see Athena holding her owl.
Speaker 1: We see Aphrodite, and again this is Ursula andres here
Speaker 1: and she It's interesting, you know, Aphrodite is supposed to
Speaker 1: be the goddess of love, but she is making a
Speaker 1: face like she has just handed someone a goblet full
Speaker 1: of poisoned wine and is watching them drink it, like
Speaker 1: she just found out that all of her dialogue got
Speaker 1: cut from the Yeah. So Zeus is demand he demands justice.
Speaker 1: He says, nothing can erase this horrible crime. And so
Speaker 1: he says that King Acrazius must be punished, but not
Speaker 1: just him, him and his people too. By the way,
Speaker 1: let's let's just do his whole city. Let's throw them
Speaker 1: in there. So he calls up Poseidon. He says, I
Speaker 1: command you to raise the wind and the sea and
Speaker 1: then let loose the kraken. Oh, and also protected Danny
Speaker 1: and her son. He's like, make sure they get some
Speaker 1: worse safe. Yeah, because they I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: revealed yet, but they revealed shortly after this that, of course,
Speaker 1: as we know from from the mythology, Perseus is Zeus's son,
Speaker 1: So of course he's invested in this particular individual and
Speaker 1: his mom because it's for Zeus. It's all about him,
Speaker 1: like that's and I guess he is the king of
Speaker 1: the universe in this narrative, so maybe he has a
Speaker 1: reason to feel So I feel that way, But that's
Speaker 1: how he approaches everything, right, that is what happened. And
Speaker 1: they go back to sort of like all the god's
Speaker 1: gossiping about it. They're all like, oh, you know what
Speaker 1: really happened. He Zeus quote loved that girl, Danny, and
Speaker 1: then he got her pregnant with Perseus, and so that's
Speaker 1: his own son. So that's why he's protecting them, and
Speaker 1: that's why he's mad. Now, Rob, did you have any
Speaker 1: thoughts about the fact that in this movie Zeus appears
Speaker 1: to have a miniatures hobby, As I know you sometimes
Speaker 1: mess around with some miniatures yourself, so so yeah, what
Speaker 1: are your thoughts. Well, I mean, I think this is
Speaker 1: one of the great set pieces in the picture because
Speaker 1: he has this room with this these wonderful shelves. Each
Speaker 1: one has a mini on it, a mini representing a
Speaker 1: different mortal in the world. Um. On one level, I've
Speaker 1: always liked this because this is just prime. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is a prime way to display your miniature collection. But
Speaker 1: also it's a it's a great set and it it
Speaker 1: really nicely displays this idea that the mortals are, in
Speaker 1: this case literally the playthings of the gods. Like they're like,
Speaker 1: that's that's literally, Like he'll we see this time and
Speaker 1: time again. You know, they'll pick one of these up
Speaker 1: and they'll do something to it. They'll break it or
Speaker 1: they'll repair it. And it has real world ramifications for
Speaker 1: the individual it represents. But to the gods, it's it's
Speaker 1: solid game. It's all ultimately about them, or at least
Speaker 1: that's what the movie is saying. So Greek Pantheon, if
Speaker 1: you're listening, I'm just interpreting what the film is saying.
Speaker 1: It's not me, don't turn me into a spider. We
Speaker 1: see Zeus kind of pulled it does he pull down
Speaker 1: the craziest mini fig here and he's like, ooh, I'm
Speaker 1: done with you and just crushes it it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then we see like basically then we see the real
Speaker 1: life King just have a heart attack in the middle
Speaker 1: of the street while the winds and are rolling in
Speaker 1: and the earthquakes are beginning. Yeah, he just goes and
Speaker 1: blood starts coming out of his mouth, and and also yes,
Speaker 1: argos the city is doomed. So we see Poseidon. He's
Speaker 1: underwater and he raises up the waters and causes like
Speaker 1: a tidal wave to wash over the city, destroy all
Speaker 1: the buildings, kill all the people, and then the cracking attacks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the effects here, you know, by modern standards, are
Speaker 1: maybe a little a little rougher around the edges, but
Speaker 1: there's no denying the cracking when he shows up. This
Speaker 1: is our first glimpse at the big stop motion beast here.
Speaker 1: I've always loved this design. It's you know, there's a
Speaker 1: certain amount of creature from the Black Lagoon wound up
Speaker 1: in him. But you know, he also has these these
Speaker 1: four long arms that are kind of squid like. He's
Speaker 1: also very reminiscent of some sort of great gigantic mirbast. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say a cross between creature from the
Speaker 1: Black Lagoon and kind of a Capuchin monkey. Yeah. All right,
Speaker 1: So we get a report about that in ment Olympus.
Speaker 1: That city's been destroyed and Danny and her child have
Speaker 1: been brought to safety on the island of Sara Foss,
Speaker 1: where they will be allowed to live in peace and security.
Speaker 1: And then we get some scenes indicating that Perseus has
Speaker 1: really grown up fast, because we see him do like
Speaker 1: trick riding on ponies on the beach. Yeah. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: a strapping young lad. And Zeus is commenting on this.
Speaker 1: He's like, the advantage of a strong body and a
Speaker 1: handsome face. What could any mortal desire or deserve more?
Speaker 1: He puts him up there on the shelf iget it's
Speaker 1: great because he's like, he's like, it's a all these
Speaker 1: these mortals are to him, are just like fancy beautiful playthings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one he's personally invested in. Yeah, He's like Herah,
Speaker 1: tell me my son is handsome. Oh. But then so
Speaker 1: Maggie Smith comes in and she you know, he's talking
Speaker 1: about his son, and she goes, what of my son Calibos.
Speaker 1: This is the first we've heard of him. But Zeus
Speaker 1: essentially is like, well, it sucks to be him. We
Speaker 1: get the impression that Calibos was sort of a Taz
Speaker 1: like figure, just sort of like going around destroying everything
Speaker 1: he touched. He even killed all of Zeus's flying horses
Speaker 1: except for the one Pegasus, and for his crimes Calibos
Speaker 1: has been sent to live in a soggy marsh where
Speaker 1: he is transformed into a monster, a mockery of the
Speaker 1: human form. And we don't see Calibos yet, but we
Speaker 1: do see a mini fig of him. Yeah, is that
Speaker 1: I think this is kind of the transformation sequence right
Speaker 1: where he puts He puts the figurine of human Calabos
Speaker 1: in the middle of this arena they have there, and
Speaker 1: then we cut to the shadow of the mini and
Speaker 1: we see it twist and mutate into this beast man.
Speaker 1: And so I always love this scene because, yeah, we
Speaker 1: don't actually see a man turn into a monster. We
Speaker 1: just see the shadow of a mini figure of that
Speaker 1: man turn into a monster. And it's still highly effective,
Speaker 1: I agree. But then, of course Maggie Smith, she's she's suffering.
Speaker 1: She's like, how could you do this to my son.
Speaker 1: He's to marry the princess Andromeda, and Zeus says, let
Speaker 1: the princess look upon him. Now. Now, of course, Thetis
Speaker 1: points out Zeus's hypocrisy here. She's like, you know, if
Speaker 1: if that were your son, you wouldn't do this to him.
Speaker 1: So eventually, when Zeus is gone, she's like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to get revenge. If my son is not to marry
Speaker 1: Princess Andromeda, then no man will I will speak to
Speaker 1: the priests of Joppa in dreams and omens, and as
Speaker 1: my son Calibas suffers so well Andromeda. So she's gonna
Speaker 1: send send some people some revelations that will interfere with
Speaker 1: Andromeda's ability to live a happy life and and with
Speaker 1: the general well being of the city of Joppa. But
Speaker 1: what of Perseus. Oh yeah, she's got to get revenge
Speaker 1: against Zeus's son as well. So here's where she I
Speaker 1: didn't quite get this, as like, why is this vengeance?
Speaker 1: But her vengeance is Perseus. Now he's grown up. Now
Speaker 1: he's Harry Hamlin. And he's just laying out on the
Speaker 1: beach one night, you know, just laying there and saying,
Speaker 1: looking at the stars, I guess, And she says, time
Speaker 1: to know the terrors of the dark and look on death.
Speaker 1: Time your eyes were open to grim reality. And she
Speaker 1: picks up the mini fig of him and moves it
Speaker 1: to an amphitheater setting, and somehow Harry Hamlin is transported
Speaker 1: from the island of sarah Foss to the Amphitheater of Joppa,
Speaker 1: and there he wakes up. Yep, did you understand why
Speaker 1: this was revenge? You just see, Well, I'm going to
Speaker 1: take you to a random different place. I yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, she has the forethought of a goddess, so
Speaker 1: maybe she knows more about it. But at the very least,
Speaker 1: I guess it's like, I'm going to take you away
Speaker 1: from your secluded beach home and I'm going to drop
Speaker 1: you into the middle of a very complex and dangerous
Speaker 1: city and we'll see, we'll see how fancy you are.
Speaker 1: But when he wakes up here, he meets a mysterious
Speaker 1: figure wearing a grotesque theater mask and shouting at him,
Speaker 1: who are you walking among all the smoke? But it
Speaker 1: turns out to be Burgess Meredith, who is perfectly friendly
Speaker 1: as this character am on once they get to know
Speaker 1: each other, and he explains, oh yeah, yeah, I see.
Speaker 1: I pretend that this amphitheater is haunted to keep people away.
Speaker 1: This is the Amphitheater of Joppa. Here's where you are now,
Speaker 1: and you must have made the gods angry somehow to
Speaker 1: get transported here. I'm not sure what the business model
Speaker 1: for this amphitheaters. Yeah, I wonder about that, but they
Speaker 1: share some backstory. It turns out Amon already knows Perseus's
Speaker 1: backstory because he even wrote a poem about it. It
Speaker 1: turns out Perseus is famous and he didn't even know it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but every every moment with Amon, it's just a lot
Speaker 1: of fun because again it's it's a lighthearted character and
Speaker 1: Bertie's Meritith just brings so much to this performance. It
Speaker 1: just breathes life into every little line. I like how
Speaker 1: he's got a lot of kitty cats around his house. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of like you just can't even get
Speaker 1: to important paperwork because they're just kitty cats everywhere. He
Speaker 1: gives Perseus a prince costume, so he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: welcome to Joppa. You know, this is more befitting of
Speaker 1: your role as a prince because you are the son
Speaker 1: of Zeus. And then Zeus finds out that Thetis transported
Speaker 1: Perseus from Sara Fas to Joppa and he's mad about this.
Speaker 1: So what's he going to do about it? He's like, well,
Speaker 1: Perseus is naked. That's no good. We've got to equip
Speaker 1: some items with him. He says, we need weapons of
Speaker 1: divine temper, So what are the weapons he gets, it
Speaker 1: seems like only two of the three things are actually weapons,
Speaker 1: but let's describe them all. So he gets a magical
Speaker 1: helmet from Athena, he gets a sword from Aphroda and
Speaker 1: a shield from Hera. And what's the deal with all
Speaker 1: three of these things. Well, let's see what. The magical
Speaker 1: helmet makes him invisible. The sword is just really good.
Speaker 1: And the shield Zeus can talk to him through the shield.
Speaker 1: I think that's the main power. I think he only
Speaker 1: does one time though. Well. The shield is reflective, that's
Speaker 1: what it is. It has a nice mirror on one side.
Speaker 1: It's a mirrord shield, which will come in with Medusa.
Speaker 1: But the sword from Aphrodite, I don't know why Aphrodite
Speaker 1: has the strongest sword in the world, but it's a
Speaker 1: sword that can cut through stone. Oh yes, yeah, we
Speaker 1: see a scene where it cuts through the stone. That's right.
Speaker 1: But all of it's really shiny. All of it looks
Speaker 1: really good. And this is also really It also kind
Speaker 1: of feels at this point in the picture it's kind
Speaker 1: of like lazy dungeon mastering because our character has just
Speaker 1: been moved by the gods, dropped into a new location
Speaker 1: and instantly given three legendary strength magical items, which he
Speaker 1: doesn't have to do anything in order to get them.
Speaker 1: They're just laying around when he comes to But I'm
Speaker 1: imagining Perseus here having to do wisdom saving throws, and
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. Yeah, I'm gonna have a
Speaker 1: disadvantage there because I don't you know, he hasn't done
Speaker 1: any real adventuring. He's done some horse tricks on a
Speaker 1: beach somewhere, but we have nothing to indicate that he's
Speaker 1: He's ready from an experienced standpoint, to do a lot
Speaker 1: of adventuring. But again, he is the son of a god,
Speaker 1: though ideally, I guess there's a lot of this. It's
Speaker 1: just sort of built into his godlike DNA, I guess. So.
Speaker 1: But as soon as Perseus figures out that the helmet
Speaker 1: makes him invisible, he puts it on and runs off
Speaker 1: to Joppa. So in Joppa, Perseus is amazed by the culture.
Speaker 1: He's a small town boy, after all, he's from the
Speaker 1: sleepy island of Sara Fa, so I think he's never
Speaker 1: seen the big city before. And he goes around marveling
Speaker 1: at all the sights and sounds in the marketplace. The
Speaker 1: most impressive of which, in my opinion, is the man
Speaker 1: with the iron mustache. A guy who is lifting up
Speaker 1: this like it's got this lady getting into a harness
Speaker 1: and this dude uses it to lift her entire body
Speaker 1: off the ground with his mustache. It is most impressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this though, I love this whole sequence here because
Speaker 1: it's like lepers, strong men, you know, fancy ladies, seductive ladies,
Speaker 1: people selling things. It's just it's it's it's a neat scene.
Speaker 1: But then Perseus comes across a horrible site, a body
Speaker 1: burning on a steak, and he meets a guard. Is
Speaker 1: this Thalo? Is that this would be him? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: he meets Thalo and he gets some expositions. So we
Speaker 1: learned that this guy burning over here, this was a
Speaker 1: suitor to the beautiful Princess Andromeda and Robina's mother, Cassie
Speaker 1: Appia originally pledged Andromeda's hand in marriage to Calabos. But
Speaker 1: Calibos was cruel and he did some bad stuff. He
Speaker 1: was kind of a taz and then he got transformed
Speaker 1: into a horrible monster, so now he's very ugly. And
Speaker 1: Andromeda refused to marry him, and as a result, the
Speaker 1: city is cursed, it's swarmed with stinging marsh flies. And also,
Speaker 1: now any man can propose to Andromeda. I guess they've
Speaker 1: lowered their standards. But he's got to answer a riddle first,
Speaker 1: and those who fail the riddle die. Perseus, however, is
Speaker 1: up for a challenge. He seems interested in this. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe this is this is where I should apply myself. Right,
Speaker 1: So he puts on the invisible helmet sneaks up to
Speaker 1: Andromeda's room at night. And I was thinking, what's the
Speaker 1: plan here? Does he be like, Hi, you don't know me,
Speaker 1: but I can turn invisible. What do you say we
Speaker 1: get married? And I skip the riddle? Yeah? Like what?
Speaker 1: Denny just sort of like he just looks at her
Speaker 1: while she's sleeping like a creek for a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: come on, Perseus, but I guess the ideas he confirms
Speaker 1: like he's loved at first sight. He realizes I am
Speaker 1: now in love with her. I will do whatever it
Speaker 1: takes to get a shot at this riddle and answer
Speaker 1: it right. And he sees that every night to her
Speaker 1: room comes lies a giant vulture like that settles on
Speaker 1: her balcony and brings a cage, and I think her
Speaker 1: soul leaves her body and it gets into the cage,
Speaker 1: and then the vulture carries it off. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is another great hairy house in effect, this giant vulture.
Speaker 1: The vulture takes it to the swampy stronghold of Calabos
Speaker 1: every night to receive the new riddle for her suitors.
Speaker 1: And so Perseus figures, hey, I could follow her to
Speaker 1: the enemy encampment and there I could learn the riddle
Speaker 1: in advance, so I can cheat the moral of the story.
Speaker 1: Real heroes cheat. I mean, I guess he realizes as
Speaker 1: a rig system. So he's gonna try and get than
Speaker 1: Tally needs. But in order to follow the flying vulture,
Speaker 1: he has to be able to fly himself. So first
Speaker 1: there's a scene where he has to capture Pegasus, the
Speaker 1: winged horse. You know, I liked Pegasus, but I don't
Speaker 1: really love the sequence. It feels kind of nasty when
Speaker 1: he's catching the horse by throwing a rope around its neck.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, the poor Pegasus. Oh yeah, I didn't
Speaker 1: think about that. So much is so blown away by
Speaker 1: how good this, uh, this effect looks. He kept thinking about,
Speaker 1: how like you're having to animate a realistic horse, which
Speaker 1: is a very dynamic animal. I mean this is ben
Speaker 1: like an articulated crab or a scorpion, like this is
Speaker 1: a horse. There's a lot, there's a lot of animal,
Speaker 1: and then on top of that you've added these beautiful
Speaker 1: wings to it and so um. Yeah, it seems like
Speaker 1: quite a challenge, but yeah, Harry house and pulls it off.
Speaker 1: But the taming process works. He tames and rides the pegasus.
Speaker 1: So now he's got one, and the next night he's
Speaker 1: got one. Like there's multiple pegasus, there's just one pegasus.
Speaker 1: I guess he'll last one, right, Yeah, he grilled up
Speaker 1: the other ones. I turned him into barbecue and so yeah,
Speaker 1: he rides pegasus to the swamp, follows the the vulture
Speaker 1: at the night and they go to the swamp of Kelabos,
Speaker 1: you know where the bull gators beller and the panthers squall,
Speaker 1: and they landed there. And I love this set. It's
Speaker 1: a you know, a classic misty indoor for outdoor swamp
Speaker 1: that's got skeletons hanging from trees and a little alligators
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. General thoughts about the Calibos sequence,
Speaker 1: Rob Well, I think if memory serves. The part of
Speaker 1: the situation of the Calibos character is that originally it
Speaker 1: was going to be entirely stop motion, and then at
Speaker 1: some point in creating the script, they realized they wanted
Speaker 1: they were going to need a human to play the
Speaker 1: character as well. So we do a lot of cutting
Speaker 1: back and forth between stop motion Calibus and the actually
Speaker 1: actual human actor and makeup and and so I guess
Speaker 1: it can still be a little jarring even in a
Speaker 1: picture like this that kind of that has a lot
Speaker 1: of cutting back and forth between an integration between live
Speaker 1: action and stop motion. But of course that being said,
Speaker 1: like the stop motion Calibos looks amazing. You get that
Speaker 1: tail sweeping around and so forth looks really good. And then,
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, the character of Calibos is we
Speaker 1: get to know him here. You know, he's he's a
Speaker 1: tragic villain. Uh, he's he's seated on this throne of
Speaker 1: sadness in his swamp um. It's so there's a this
Speaker 1: is a this is a fun sequence. Yeah. So Andromeda
Speaker 1: is there and and she begs him, you know, lift
Speaker 1: the curse from Joppa, release my soul. He's like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you a new riddle, so you know,
Speaker 1: use this to to doom. He had another suitor, another
Speaker 1: would be hero and uh you can see also but
Speaker 1: there's like a scene where she she touches his face,
Speaker 1: I think when she's asking him to lift the curse,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, it is very sad, like you
Speaker 1: see him, you know, like wishing he could have had
Speaker 1: a better life. Yeah, but oh she walks away and
Speaker 1: then Caliboss he looks in the sand and sees what
Speaker 1: is that is that invisible? The footsteps of an invisible
Speaker 1: Harry Hamlin And then he's mad, So Harry Hamlin. We
Speaker 1: see him walking off into the uh, into the swamp,
Speaker 1: and then Calibos ambushes him and they fight for a bit.
Speaker 1: The helmet of invisibility gets knocked off of Perseus's belt
Speaker 1: and falls into the swamp waters. Bye bye. Yeah, one
Speaker 1: legendary magical item completely gone, just lost it. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: we don't know exactly how the fight resolves. We see
Speaker 1: Perseus like land some kind of blow with his sword,
Speaker 1: and then it just cuts to the next day where
Speaker 1: Andromeda is. They are gathered I guess in the Temple
Speaker 1: of Thetis in Joppa, and you know they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: is anybody gonna step up and propose marriage to her?
Speaker 1: Perseus does, and so they ask him the riddle, and
Speaker 1: I was like, this is not a riddle. She just
Speaker 1: describes a strange image and then says, what can it be?
Speaker 1: And the answer does not really rely on any cleverness.
Speaker 1: The answer is the ring on Caliboss's hand, which Harry
Speaker 1: Hamlin has because he cut Caliboss's hand off. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so he fills us in. He says, hey, yeah, I
Speaker 1: defeated Caliboss in battle. I cut off his hand and
Speaker 1: a spared his life on the condition that he lift
Speaker 1: the curse from the city. So he correctly answered the riddle,
Speaker 1: and the curse it seems at least has been lifted.
Speaker 1: So are we happily ever after now? But that wouldn't
Speaker 1: make sense. We're only like forty five minutes into the movie.
Speaker 1: I know, it seems like things are going well. The
Speaker 1: labyrinth is a piece of cake. But so while they're
Speaker 1: off partying and you know, Perseus and Andromeda are kind
Speaker 1: of getting to know each other, they're like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: I guess we are in love now. Calibos comes into
Speaker 1: the temple. He kneels before the statue of Thetus, and
Speaker 1: he prays for a way to get revenge on Perseus.
Speaker 1: He says, show me how to punish Perseus for this blasphemy,
Speaker 1: and they just says, damn, well, can't hurt Perseus because
Speaker 1: Zeus protects him. So Calibos instead is like, well, then
Speaker 1: let me get revenge on the people Perseus loves Andromeda
Speaker 1: and the people of Joppa. He begs her to send
Speaker 1: the kraken. So I think it's the next day there's
Speaker 1: the marriage ceremony, They're about to be joined together forever.
Speaker 1: And then it's at the marriage ceremony that the Queen
Speaker 1: Cassiopeia is like, good thing, my daughter is even more
Speaker 1: beautiful than the goddess in this statue here, and then
Speaker 1: the statue is like and its head falls off, and
Speaker 1: then we get that scene where suddenly it's Maggie Smith's
Speaker 1: face like superimposed onto the statue speaking to them. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say this effect looks funny, and I don't think
Speaker 1: it was supposed to. Most of the effects in this
Speaker 1: movie I think are beautiful, but this one is a
Speaker 1: bit comic. I like that. I mean one level. I
Speaker 1: like the effect of it. It's like you really nest up.
Speaker 1: You you went too far. You mocked the gods. And
Speaker 1: so now the goddess is appearing to you through this
Speaker 1: crumpled statue and pronouncing doom. That's what she does, lay
Speaker 1: out some doom. Yes for the insults to me and
Speaker 1: my son, I demand the sacrifice of Andromeda in thirty days.
Speaker 1: We're going to feed her to the kraken. So now
Speaker 1: Perseus has a new riddle to solve, and that is,
Speaker 1: what are we gonna do about this cracking? Yeah, how
Speaker 1: do you kill a kraken? Ammon originally says, no man
Speaker 1: knows how to kill a kraken, and so Perseus says, oh,
Speaker 1: that's no good. But Ammon says, but there may be
Speaker 1: a woman who does, actually three women. We must consult
Speaker 1: the Stigian witches. They may know a way, but there's
Speaker 1: a problem. They tend to eat people. But the heroes
Speaker 1: are not deterred. So all of our all of our
Speaker 1: friends now get together. Harry Hamlin, Burgess, Meredith, Andromeda, what's
Speaker 1: his name, the soldier that Thallo or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: and then a bunch of other unnamed soldiers who are
Speaker 1: might as well be wearing in a red star fleet shirts, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're damn do you know that? They're just pure
Speaker 1: monster fodder. So they're going to head off to find
Speaker 1: the witches. Now I think they don't initially know how
Speaker 1: to find the witches, but Zeus has a way to
Speaker 1: help with this. We go back to the gods and
Speaker 1: Zeus is like, this is the part where he goes
Speaker 1: up to Athena. He's like, hey, that helmet you gave
Speaker 1: my son, well he dropped it in a swamp. He
Speaker 1: needs a new gift. Give him your owl, your friend
Speaker 1: the bubo here. You know it is all seeing, all knowing.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't be a problem for you to give it
Speaker 1: a give it to my son. And she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: let a mortal have my owl. That's gross. So she's
Speaker 1: not going to do that. Instead, she gets pat Roach
Speaker 1: to make him a robot owl, and we briefly see
Speaker 1: a scene in the Forge of effaced Us where he's
Speaker 1: kneeling over a table and like a watchmaker, he's messing
Speaker 1: with all little gears and stuff. Yeah, it's a fun Sepence.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's a different type of role for
Speaker 1: pat Roach here. And also it's kind of like we've
Speaker 1: talked about the tactile nature of the stop motion effects,
Speaker 1: and Boobo really has that tactile feel. And it really
Speaker 1: begins here watching him physically assembled by a vestus. Now
Speaker 1: he flies up to our heroes and settles down on
Speaker 1: a tree branch. But Boobo was also played for comic relief,
Speaker 1: much like the Droids and Star Wars. He kind of
Speaker 1: like beepee boop, and then he falls off the branch
Speaker 1: and land's head first on the ground and goes whoo whoo.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, this is again. Every time Boobo does something,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of movements to it, like a lot.
Speaker 1: A lot of love went into creating this effect. I
Speaker 1: do love Bubo, and I bet little kids especially love Bubo.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. I remember showing this to my son a
Speaker 1: couple of years, but he loved He wasn't up for
Speaker 1: rewatching it. He wasn't interest in rewatching it with me
Speaker 1: for this episode, but he's watched it a couple of
Speaker 1: times in the past and loved all the monsters in
Speaker 1: a Dicurse and loved Boobo. The ancient Greek astromechdroid yeah
Speaker 1: which does it does serve a navigational function guides them
Speaker 1: to the three witches. That's exactly right. Bobo can lead
Speaker 1: them to the shrine of the Stigione witches, and so
Speaker 1: they go there. They have to climb a mountain to
Speaker 1: get up to the shrine. The three witches, just as
Speaker 1: in the myth. The three of them share one eye
Speaker 1: between them, though it's not an eye here really, it's
Speaker 1: like a crystal ball. They hold it up to their
Speaker 1: forehead into their like fleshed over eye sockets, and there's
Speaker 1: a certain amount of squabbling among them about who gets
Speaker 1: to use it next. And oh but yeah, this sequence
Speaker 1: is a lot of fun because there's a lot of cackling,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of I oh, of course, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you about the about way you can find I guess
Speaker 1: they revealed that they're not even looking for Medusa at
Speaker 1: this point, right, but they revealed that Medusa's a way.
Speaker 1: But well, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Like, in
Speaker 1: order to get the advantage, of course, of Perseus has
Speaker 1: Bubo flying and steal the eye, so now he has
Speaker 1: something to bargain with. Yeah, so they're like, give us
Speaker 1: back the eye, and he says, no, first, you got
Speaker 1: to tell me how I can defeat a krack in
Speaker 1: and they do tell him an idea, yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: you should go get the head of the Meduce. It
Speaker 1: works even if she's been slain. Of course. The only
Speaker 1: problem is she's more dangerous than the krack in, so
Speaker 1: you're you're going to have a really hard time pulling
Speaker 1: this off. And in the midst there's all sorts of
Speaker 1: fun stuff going on in here. They have a big
Speaker 1: cannibal stew going. They have to like push a squirming
Speaker 1: hand back into it. And I really love the one
Speaker 1: which who's she's like talking about how, yes, you'll be
Speaker 1: able to use the Medusa's head against against the kraken,
Speaker 1: a titan against a titan, and she's all excited about it.
Speaker 1: It really excited to deliver on the film's title, Oh yes.
Speaker 1: And I do love that they're disgusting cauldron of slop.
Speaker 1: There is very funny sound effects and when like a
Speaker 1: human hand reaches out of it, going like ah, and
Speaker 1: they just kind of like tuck it back in the
Speaker 1: quiet get down in there, all right. So next thing
Speaker 1: is they got to get the head of the Gorgon Medusa.
Speaker 1: So they crossed the river sticks to get to the
Speaker 1: island of the Gorgon. There is, of course a big battle.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go into detail about everything about
Speaker 1: this bottle. You you just need to watch it for yourself.
Speaker 1: But it is wonderfully atmospheric. It's very well paced. Like
Speaker 1: the lead up to it, a little things they see
Speaker 1: approaching her layer, the human shaped stone statues that kind
Speaker 1: of crumble. Oh, and that, of course, we find out
Speaker 1: the Medusa has been working in the Kremlin with the
Speaker 1: two headed dog. Oh yeah. The two headed dog I
Speaker 1: think may have been cut from the Turner broadcast. They've
Speaker 1: probably cut it got the movie for length, So I
Speaker 1: don't remember ever seeing the two headed dog when I
Speaker 1: watched it. Maybe I'm wrong on that, But and the
Speaker 1: two it's a two headed dog instead of a three
Speaker 1: headed dog. It's not cebrous. It's not cerbrous. But I
Speaker 1: think it's because it was too much work to do
Speaker 1: a three headed dog. That's what I've always read, so
Speaker 1: they went with two. They scaled it back a bit.
Speaker 1: I don't love the two headed dog fight because I
Speaker 1: don't know. I just always seeing somebody fight a dog,
Speaker 1: even a vicious one with the sword, always just makes
Speaker 1: me feeling. Oh yeah, Like the movie doesn't lose anything
Speaker 1: to have that whole sequence cut in my opinion. But
Speaker 1: setting aside the battle with the two Headed Dog, I
Speaker 1: would say the Island of the Dead sequence here where
Speaker 1: they find Medusa's layer, go in fight Medusa. Multiple soldiers
Speaker 1: get killed by Medusa. We have this fabulous stop motion Medusa.
Speaker 1: This whole sequence is just absolutely perfect. No matter what
Speaker 1: problems you know you might have with the rest of
Speaker 1: the picture and its tone and the lazy d m
Speaker 1: ing and Harry Hamlin's performance and being a bit green,
Speaker 1: I feel like every things firing on all cylinders in
Speaker 1: this sequence. Even Harry Hamlin, I think is really good
Speaker 1: because he's he's he embodies this like hero's fear rather well.
Speaker 1: I think in this sequence like it feels like there
Speaker 1: are actual stakes, even for the son of a God.
Speaker 1: Completely agreed. Pretty much everything in this scene is pitch perfect.
Speaker 1: There are so many little details I love. I like
Speaker 1: how quiet it is. Actually you would have expected the
Speaker 1: whole thing to be, you know, ramping up with like loud,
Speaker 1: intense music, but there are parts of it that are
Speaker 1: actually very quiet, and I love that it contributes to
Speaker 1: the creepy atmosphere, like the part before you see the
Speaker 1: gorgon when they're looking for her and they're walking between
Speaker 1: the columns, and then suddenly you see her shadow go
Speaker 1: move into the move onto the wall, and there's this soft,
Speaker 1: almost silent slithering sound, just the sound of a snake,
Speaker 1: you know, moving over a stone and not even hissing yet,
Speaker 1: just just that little gliding and you see the shadow
Speaker 1: with the snakes writhing in her hair, and oh, it's
Speaker 1: so good. Oh yeah. The lighting is brilliant in all
Speaker 1: of this as well, so so many Harry Hamlin, not
Speaker 1: Harry Hamlet, Harry Housing scenes. You often have things going
Speaker 1: on in very like stark lighting U, but in this
Speaker 1: sequence it's you know, it's just a dark cavern with
Speaker 1: with fires lighting everything, deep shadows and so forth. It's
Speaker 1: so good. Also, the moment when you see Medusa kind
Speaker 1: of activate her powers to turn one of the other
Speaker 1: soldiers to stone, where we zoom in on her face,
Speaker 1: which is horrifying, and her eyes glow green and the
Speaker 1: power emanates from her and then's he's calcified. That is
Speaker 1: just it's a scene for the ages. Absolutely. I've also
Speaker 1: read I don't know if this is true or not,
Speaker 1: but I've read that Harry Hamlin himself had to argue
Speaker 1: for the traditional beheading of the monster. I think there
Speaker 1: I had read read that like some version in the
Speaker 1: script or the way they were going to shoot it
Speaker 1: was him throwing the shield and using it as a weapon.
Speaker 1: Supposedly it's like to have it be a little less
Speaker 1: gory for censors. And I don't know if this is true,
Speaker 1: but it said that Harry Hamlin was one of the
Speaker 1: ones was like, no, we should stick to the myth
Speaker 1: on this. I don't know, but at any rate, and
Speaker 1: if that is the case, I'm glad they did because
Speaker 1: it Yeah, I can't imagine this, this sequence playing out
Speaker 1: any other way. Yeah. And then he and you can
Speaker 1: feel the danger in the scene. Even after he has
Speaker 1: beheaded her, he's afraid. He's being very cautious, like because
Speaker 1: her blood is running out and her blood, her blood
Speaker 1: is like it's like the blood of the xenomorphin Alien.
Speaker 1: It's just this burning acid that melts his shield and
Speaker 1: he takes her head, but he's afraid. He's like careful
Speaker 1: not to accidentally even look at it. He's like holding
Speaker 1: it out of his view. I'm glad you mentioned Alien
Speaker 1: because Alien came out a few years earlier, and I
Speaker 1: feel like this sequence has some similarities to that final
Speaker 1: showdown on the Life that Soul between Ripley and the Xenomorph,
Speaker 1: you know, the sense of intense danger, like the monster
Speaker 1: is so dangerous that the wrong move will just be
Speaker 1: absolutely lethal. I can see exactly what you mean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that similarity is there, And they also both prey take it, yes,
Speaker 1: both fairly dressed, yes, and the posture with which the
Speaker 1: hero is oriented to the monster with like with the
Speaker 1: back to it, but against you know, hiding behind an obstruction.
Speaker 1: And so when we finally finish up the Medusa secrets,
Speaker 1: it almost feels like we've done it. This is the
Speaker 1: end of the movie, right, Like it's just so satisfying,
Speaker 1: but we still have like a large chunk of the
Speaker 1: film to go at that point, because they have to.
Speaker 1: This is just a side quest to get something to
Speaker 1: defeat the ultimate threat in the picture. Though I do
Speaker 1: think it is the highlight. But we yeah, we do
Speaker 1: get several other battles. There's a great battle Caliboss shows
Speaker 1: back up and attacks Perseus and his friends with scorpions,
Speaker 1: a giant scorpions. This is your you know, this is
Speaker 1: about as classic Harry housing as you get you know, stop,
Speaker 1: most scorpions come into your heroes and they have a
Speaker 1: big fight. And then Calibos comes in himself and they
Speaker 1: fight him, and Calibos is good. He's bringing a whip,
Speaker 1: which is that's great. Yeah, he has the whip, and
Speaker 1: he also he's replaced his hand with like a stabby
Speaker 1: tool which he used to like stab the medusa head,
Speaker 1: get it bleeding and the blood turned into scorpions on
Speaker 1: the ground. Yeah, But Calibos is defeated in the end.
Speaker 1: And then finally, how is Percy is going to defeat
Speaker 1: the krack in? While we see Andromeda, you know, they
Speaker 1: take her down to the shore. It's like, yep, too bad,
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to give you to the ce monster
Speaker 1: and he pops up. Perseus at the last minute is
Speaker 1: able to unveil that gorgon head to show it right
Speaker 1: to the monster and just stone him up. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then he crumbles, which is something I always liked, and
Speaker 1: I remember it as a kid. I was thinking about this.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like, Okay, the creature its body can
Speaker 1: physically hold itself together while it's flesh, but once it
Speaker 1: becomes stone like it like it just begins to crumble,
Speaker 1: like it can no longer stand. I don't know, is
Speaker 1: like that that detail? Yeah, but it introduces the brittleness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's very dramatic too. It's like, not only is
Speaker 1: the monster petrified, but now it crumbles into pieces. It's
Speaker 1: completely destroyed. And then we get like we do get
Speaker 1: a little sort of outro with the gods, which felt
Speaker 1: kind of weird because we've we've seen how how petty
Speaker 1: and cruel they are, and they just have this kind
Speaker 1: of bit where the other gods are like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: these humans, these mortals really showed how heroic and brave
Speaker 1: they can be. It's I hope there aren't too many
Speaker 1: brave ones otherwise we're going to be out of a job.
Speaker 1: And they're just they kind of have like a bemused
Speaker 1: laugh at all of this, but are also kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: humans are all right after all, and they all live
Speaker 1: happily ever after. Yeah. So I love Clash of the Titans.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, Yeah. This is a This one's near and
Speaker 1: dear to me. So it's great to finally discuss it
Speaker 1: here on Weird House Cinema. And like you say, maybe
Speaker 1: in the future will come back and look at another
Speaker 1: Hairy Housing picture. There are a number of good ones
Speaker 1: to choose for them there. All right, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and wrap this one up. But yeah, we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from everyone out there. Do you have memories
Speaker 1: of seeing Clash of the Titans on Turner Networks growing
Speaker 1: up like I do? Or did you see it in
Speaker 1: the theater? What was that like back in eighty one?
Speaker 1: Let us know. We'd love to hear from you. If
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for other films to cover in the future.
Speaker 1: Do you have favorite Harry House and Effects or monsters
Speaker 1: or favorite Harry House in movies? Yeah, right in we'll
Speaker 1: discuss it on listener Mails, which published on Mondays. We're
Speaker 1: primarily a science podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 1: On Wednesdays we do a short form artifact or monster fact,
Speaker 1: and then on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns
Speaker 1: to just talk about a weird film here on Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema. And if you want to see a list
Speaker 1: of the films we've covered in the past, you can
Speaker 1: go to a couple of different places. I blog about
Speaker 1: these episodes at Samutamusic dot com, and also if you
Speaker 1: go to letterbox that's l tt r boxd dot com.
Speaker 1: Well that we have a user account there weird House,
Speaker 1: and we have a list of all the films we've
Speaker 1: covered and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming up
Speaker 1: in the week to follow. Huge thanks to our audio
Speaker 1: producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 1: say hi, you can email us at contact at stuff
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