Ray Harryhausen, the great stop-motion animator and inspiration for many of today’s Special Effects Gurus passed away today at the age of 92.  I remember seeing The 7th Voyage of Sinbad at age 8 and it made quite an impression.  He was the first special effects artist I could actually name (it helped that he had an unusual name), and (I later learned) many of his films were scripted around his astounding animated creatures and concepts.  Unlike today’s Special Effects Extravaganzas, requiring armies of animators and effects technicians, Harryhausen supposedly did most of the animation himself.

I got to meet Mr. Harryhausen in 1982 when he took a tour of I.L.M. and I got to show him around the Optical Department.  I managed to secure his autograph on a Lobby Card from It Came From Beneath the Sea (which has faded somewhat since I had it framed and displayed).

Purists will condemn the colorization of old black & white movies, but for some strange reason, I never had an issue with it, as long as they’re not messing with the original negative (which is not the case with colorization).  The cropping of movie formats to fit within the squarish TV frame bugged me way more, but that’s another issue.  I’ve seen King Kong more times than I care to admit, and for my money it remains one of the greatest films ever made.  One of my great film memories is watching a reel (the very scene depicted in the YouTube clip) struck from the original negative in the Academy Theatre in L.A. with a cranked up sound system.  Awe inspiring.  The film is filled with incredible details in both the picture and sound.  For instance, we get to hear Fay Wray scream a lot, but next time you see the film pay attention to the screams of the unlucky Venture crewmen who suffer horrible deaths while pursuing Kong on Skull Island!