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Clash of the Titans

Clash of the Titans

List Price: $14.96
Your Price: $11.22
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Stop Animation at it's best from the master.
Review: Before computers, there were real clay handmade characters that had to be position one frame at a time to bring them to life. This film features the best of stop animation, and many tense moments that will excite you, and tickle your imagination. Excellent movie.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Quite good
Review: This movie talks about Zeus' son and how he found his destiny. The picture quality is rather grainy but it might got to do with the age of this movie. There are not many extras. just a few facts and how the monsters are made in the movie. it is rather interesting. for a movie that is quite old, i think the special effects r quite well done. the story is rather exciting. overall, i give a 3 stars for dvd due to a lack of extras. rent it instead.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Warners/MGM are the cheapest DVD makers...
Review: It's really quite amazing that there are great movies made at MGM and they wind up at Warners where they come out with cheap DVDs of these movies. In the process they ruin both the film and the lack of bonus features do not help. This was a good movie, but the DVD transfer is terrible and the bonus features are really laughable. The cheap snap open case does not help either. I refuse to buy anymore DVDs from Warners.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hamliscious
Review: This is my favorite Harry Hamlin movie. I like when he plays Perseus and has the sword. I get mad when he loses things, like when he loses his helmet and when he looses his shield. Just because he kills Medusa doesn't mean he can be careless. I like when he solves Andromeda's riddle and gets to marry her. He beats the Kraken like I beat Sephiroth in Final Fantasy 7. Harry Hamiln should have had a bigger career: this could have been his "Conan." Then he could be governor, too. If you like Marc Singer in Beastmaster, you'll love Harry Hamlin in this movie. Also, this movie is on TV sometimes. If you don't want to buy it right now, you can watch it on TV. It's probably on right now. I think you should buy this movie though and pretend that it's on TV. You can say, "I think I'll watch some TV, I wonder if Clash of the Titans is on." Then you can put it in the DVD player and watch it pretending that you're watching TBN.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Those who cringe at nudity must seek psychological help now
Review: First of all, this film is just fine, a great relic of it's era in special effects and fantasy films.

Second, do the people claiming this film has gratuitious and extensive 'nudity' understand what a PG film means?? PG means PARENTAL GUIDANCE - which means there may be stuff that your kids may need you around for, or you may want to edit. How could you possibly be surprised by a little very tame very innocent nudity? Do you not read the ratings info, if you are that obsessed with the human body?? That said, I cannot stress enough how completely innocent and barely there the 'nudity' is. You'd have to be a total pervert to even notice or have a reaction to it. I pity the poor 9 year old who was supposedly 'shocked' by this film - the child's parents have probably warped that poor child's mind to abhor his or her own body.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Take a Bow, Harryhausen
Review: As an unabashed Ray Harryhausen fan, I rate this movie three stars with a heavy heart. All his early classics, in my book, rate four or five stars. That's why I personally find it quite sad that this, his last effort, just doesn't quite measure up to his earlier works.

Oh, the stop-motion effects are still first-rate. The winged horse Pegasus, the snake-haired Medusa, the incredibly huge Krakken, all come to life in true rousin' Harryhausen fashion. And as before, they are matted on to the live action scenes with seamless perfection.

So what went wrong this time around? For one thing, the film is too long, almost two hours. Note the lengths of Harryhausen's films over the years: It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), 80 mins. 20,000,000 Miles to Earth (1957), 84 mins. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), 87 mins. Mysterious Island (1961), 101 mins. Jason and the Argonauts (1963), 103 mins. The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974), 105 mins. Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), 107 mins. Clash of the Titans (1981), 118 mins. See the pattern? It worked fine right up to Golden Voyage. After that, they simply went too far.

Two hours is actually pretty much the norm nowadays, but in this case, it proves to be too much to handle. Overall, the story plods along at a lazy pace, and as a result, we're left waiting too long for the good stuff: the creature scenes.

The cast doesn't help much either. I imagine that Laurence Olivier didn't much care to include his Zeus role in his resume. He seems to be sleepwalking through his scenes. The same goes for Ursula Andress, Burgess Meredith, and Maggie Smith. It was almost as if they were thinking, hey, Ray Harryhausen is doing the special effects, we don't have to act.

Well of course, it's been said a million times before, Harryhausen's creations are the real stars of his movies. But that's really no excuse for half-hearted acting.

Still and all, Clash of the Titans holds a special place in my heart, if only because it was Harryhausen's swan song. Besides, it's not his fault that the movie didn't turn out that enjoyable. As he always did before, he did an outstanding job.

How outstanding was that? Try naming a movie between 1981 (the year Clash of the Titans was released) and 1992 that featured a gigantic creature brought to life with vivid, jaw-dropping realism. You can't, can you? That's because there were none. That is, until 1993, when Steven Spielberg gave us Jurrasic Park.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Classic Special Effects
Review: I love this movie to death. One of my favorite. The speical effects, compared to what we can do today, look like crap, but they still tried to make it look as real as possible. I give it 4 stars, for the lack of little extras I would have liked to see on the DVD.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Great film, lousy DVD
Review: I love "Clash of the Titans," but I'm terribly disappointed by the quality of this DVD. The "all-new digital transfer" that the manufacturer promises is quite possibly the worst transfer I've ever seen, enhancing the film's visual flaws while disguising its merits. In composite shots, live-action elements are so washed-out as to appear almost black-and-white at times, while stop-motion elements are garishly bright and crisp, looking more like cartoons than dimensional objects. This is particularly pronounced in shots of the flying Pegasus; the digital transfer so exaggerates the matte lines around the figure that it appears to be a paper cut-out plastered against the sky. Even the glorious Medusa segment suffers from these defects: what was, in the original (and on VHS), an atmospheric balance of rich darks and flickering red lights, becomes a clash of nearly impenetrable spots of shadow against grainy, pale-brown relief. I'm no authority on digital transfers, but my guess is that this one was done as quickly and cheaply as possible, the manufacturer's reasoning being (probably) that fans of Harryhausen will be so thrilled to have his films on DVD that they could care less what the films look like. Well, I was thrilled to have "Clash of the Titans" on DVD--but when the abysmal quality of the transfer interferes with the very effects that make the film great, my enthusiasm wanes considerably. I'd advise fans of Harryhausen to buy the video version, and to write angry letters to the manufacturer protesting their callous desecration of one of the master's greatest films.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: '80s FXtravaganza
Review: It's the last and very probably the weakest of all the Harryhausen 'mythy' monster movies, but even a poor Harryhausen film is more entertaining than most. It's amazing how many more people seem to remember this movie above his others, probably because it's more recent and used to be played to death on the cable networks. I was in the RISD museum the other day and mounted next to a painting of Perseus and Andromeda, in way that seemed more than just a little coincidental, was an owl made out of a coconut and covered with metal feathers.

The myth of Perseus has been altered quite a bit, to the point where Perseus isn't so much a hero that earns his way to glory as a 'Daddy's Little Favorite'. Harry Hamlin does as well as...well...Harry Hamlin can be expected and Maggie Smith is unusually unmemorable. Princess Andromeda, while not necessarily the best actress, can be appreciated for the unexpected glimpses of strength and will she brings to the role of what could have been just a weepy damsel in distress. It's hard to maintain your dignity when, at every moment, you're in serious danger of being sucked into the cleft in Harry Hamlin's chin, but she manages quite well.

In comparison to his other features, the special effects here are ratty around the edges and some are obviously on a different type of filmstock. Pegasus looks beautiful in stop-motion, but when it cuts back to the live horse the two look nothing alike. Medusa is spectacular in all her fire-lit, animated glory and is quite possibly the best Harryhausen creature of all time. Bubo the owl is cute in his own way, but he might be too quirky for some.

The score is beautiful, and at times overshadows the movie itself. It's my least favorite Harryhausen film but the soaring music is the only soundtrack that stays with me.

I've read a few complaints about gratuitous nudity, which I assumed to be dancing girls and the like that had been cut from the cable versions I'd seen, but there is actually precious little. There's one shot of a woman breast-feeding, a brief one of a sillouetted mother and child walking nude down the beach, filmed from behind, and one of Andromeda emerging from her bath where there's a tiny three-quarter glimpse of her body that shows relatively nothing before a servant robes her. It's not soft-core porn by any means and the only audience that you should be worried about is the 11-13 set who would find it more juveniley funny than anything. If you don't want your kids seeing it get them 7th Voyage of Sinbad instead, it's actually a better movie and you aren't shown so much as a belly button.

The DVD features are great for the most part; there's a nice interview with Ray featuring all kinds of background info on the filming. The Talent Files are completely lackluster, with only Hamlin, Olivier, and Harryhausen's filmographies featured. Granted, some of the actors in the movie didn't do too much before or after this but leaving out Maggie Smith and Burgess Meredith is perplexing. The Monsters' Gallery is the best bonus by far; more than just a twiddly map of where each monster resides, selecting any creature leads to a lead in, a personalized animated title sequence, and then another Harryhausen interview focusing on the myth of that creature and some neat tidbits about why they were in the film and how they were animated.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Worthy Climax To An Era Of Movie Magic!
Review: I remember renting this quite a while back, and being totally swept away in the adventure, the excitement, the MAGIC! So, as I began building my Ray Haryhausen DVD collection, I gladly picked this up off the shelf.

While it is nowhere near as great as I remember, it's still magnificent fun in many aspects. And since I always like hearing bad news first, I'll start with those.

Cons: The lead actors are "pure squaresville", to quote John Stanley. Harry Hamlin as Persues looks bored, and is hardly the stuff of mythological adventure. You never really feel the need to cheer the hero on, unlike the two previous Harryhausen-Schneer masterpieces "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad", and "Jason and the Argonauts". Judi Bowker (Andromeda), as good-lookin' as she is, is just plain ANNOYING!! One really does wonder why the hell Perseus would risk his butt to save this spoiled, whiny bratt! Also, the story tends to plod, oh, shall we say, A LOT!! There are countless shots of people riding on horses (reeeaaaallly ssllloooooowwwly), and so on so forth. There is very little humor (very surprising for a Harryhausen-Schneer film), and what jokes there are usually fall flat. Ray Harryhausen, though good (see other section), was getting a bit unoriginal...the giant vulture is very remiscent of the two-headed Rok in "The Seventh Voyage". And same goes for the Kraken, which is a carbon copy of Ymir in "20 Million Miles to Earth".

Pros: Ray Harryhausen was never better. Though his creations here overall lack in originallity, he is at the top of his form here. Take the movements of the three-headed Dioskilos wolf, for example; the improvements over those of the saber-tooth tiger in "Sinbad & the Eye of the Tiger" are almost infinite. And there's only four years difference between the two films! The Pegasus is perhaps his greatest creation ever; never before has Harryhausen captured such beauty and elegance in any of his countless achievements. And Medusa is by far his most frightening creation. That one scene in Medusa's temple still easily sends shivers up-n-down your spine! Moving on....Laurence Olivier gives a very subdued performance as Zeus, but his mere prescense comands power and authority. Heck, he's Laurence Olivier, for cryin' out loud! Unfortunately, the rest of the gods don't fare as well; Maggie Smith is pretty good as Thetis, but no more. And despite its slow parts, the film has an undeniable sense of an epic. And a fantasitc score by Laurence Rosenthal helps considerably!

Overall: the pros far outmatch the cons, to create a spectacular viweing experience time and time again!

The DVD is great, though it leaves something to be desired. The sound quality is fine, but the picture is plaqued by grain often. That said, it is definitely the best the film has looked since its release, if not ever. The special features include an approx. 12 minute conversation with the master, Ray Harryhausen himself, on the film's production. It ain't great, but it's definitely worthwhile. The "Map of Myths & Monsters" Gallery is better, with each section including more footage of Harryhausen giving wonderful insights on each creature (rather than just showing production notes on the monster's origin, as I feared).

Alas, this was the last film that Ray Harryhausen and producer Charles Schneer worked on. Together, they made a total of fifteen films, each with their own unique attributes to modern cinema. Whether it's a giant ape saving children from an orphanage fire, a fierce battle between a one-eyed cyclops and a dragon, a nightmare-enducing duel of the skeletons, cowboys lassoing a Tyrannosaur, or a beautiful Pegasus flying on the wings of the wind, Ray Harryhausen proved himself to be the single greatest effects wizard in cinematic history. Never again will any form, computer or not, of special effects capture the sheer sense of the magic of a dreamworld like that of Dynamantion. And he proved to the world far more than once that anything imaginable, is possible.

Conclusion: If you're a either a fantasy, adventure, mythology, or Harryhausen fan (or all four, like me), than go out and buy this movie. You won't regret it!


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