Review: 'Planet Wax: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Soundtracks on Vinyl'

There have been a lot of compilations of album cover art, and they’re usually good for a flip-through but lack focus and insight. Planet Wax: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Soundtracks on Vinyl is in a whole other universe. Collecting the covers of sci-fi and fantasy soundtracks, Aaron Lupton and Jeff Szpirglas’s new book has a specific focus and is atypically enlightening.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 129

The Date: February 6

The Movie: Clash of the Titans (1981)

What Is It?: Ray Harryhausen’s final film mangles Greek mythology and has a hero and heroine who both go through the movie as if they’ve shared a sack of Quaaludes, but the master’s monsters may be his greatest ever. If nothing else, the Kraken, Calibos (sometimes stop-motion; sometimes actor Neil McCarthy), and Medusa all rank up there with the skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts.

Why Today?: On this day in 1959, the first successful firing of the Titan intercontinental ballistic missile takes place at Cape Canaveral. They can’t all be happy anniversaries.

Farewell, Ray Harryhausen

He was the father of some of cinema's most memorable monsters: Mighty Joe Young, the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the Ymir, the Cyclops, the Harpies, the Hydra,  the Kraken, Medusa, and an army of sword-swinging skeletons. The great Ray Harryhausen brought these creatures to life through the painstaking process of stop-motion animation and the more refined variation he invented called "Dynamation." The incredible detail of his models and their slightly jerky yet incredibly expressive movements were Harryhausen hallmarks. He is that ulta-rare special effects wizard who is more famous than the directors behind his films. I'm sure few people went to see Jason and the Argonauts because they're die-hard Don Chaffey fans. Director Desmond Davis certainly didn't create as big a buzz for Clash of the Titans as the man who made its mythical monsters shudder to life. Ray Harryhausen ended his feature film career with that 1981 movie (his only animation work since then was on a 2003 animated short based on "The Tortoise and the Hare"). Sadly, more than thirty years later, he too has passed at the age of 92.

The special effects world has changed a lot since Ray Harryhausen made the giant ape Mighty Joe Young move--move physically, and move audiences emotionally. Computer generated effects have all but replaced the kind of practical, "primitive" effects he pioneered. But as futuristic sophistication has overtaken fantasy films, the soul has gone out of so many of them. Ray Harryhausen put his soul into the films he made, and that made them soulful. He will be missed.

August 8, 2009: Psychobabble recommends ‘20 Million Miles to Earth’

Like Svengali, which I only so for the first time a month ago, 20 Million Miles to Earth is another movie I can’t believe I’ve never seen before. Obviously it doesn’t hold the same slot in the cultural lexicon that Svengali does; it’s just that 20 Million Miles to Earth represents so many of the things I personally love about classic monster movies. Unlike every single other “giant monster” picture of the ‘50s, Ray Harryhausen’s Ymir actually has a personality. The beast is part King Kong, part Creature from the Black Lagoon, yet it’s even more sympathetic than either of those far more famous fiends. The Ymir does not indulge in the kind of wanton destruction that Kong did during his trip to New York City, nor does he play the kinds of head games the Gill Man so enjoyed (no underwater shenanigans with bathing beauties; no attempts at trapping sailors in his abode with driftwood). Like both monsters, he is abducted from his home world by men who would exploit him (the world: Venus; the exploitation: to figure out how he’s able to survive in the harsh Venusian atmosphere so that men might do the same). While on Earth, the poor guy is attacked by a rabid dog, a territorial zoo elephant, and a bunch of military assholes, yet he never strikes first. The final showdown atop the Acropolis may be even more heartbreaking than Kong’s last waltz on the Empire State Building (an obvious inspiration). Harryhausen’s creation is one of his most remarkably articulated, and it’s clear the Ymir was a blueprint for his considerably less sympathetic Kraken in Clash of the Titans.

July 9, 2009: Things That Scare Me: Case Study #6

In spite of (or, perhaps, because of) my adult infatuation with all things horrifying and horrific, I was scared of absolutely everything when I was a kid. A television commercial for a horror movie was enough to send me racing from the den in a sweaty palm panic. As an ongoing series here on Psychobabble, I've been reviewing some of the things that most traumatized me as a child and evaluating whether or not I was rightfully frightened or just a wiener.

Case Study #6: Medusa in Clash of the Titans


Word around the playground is that along with a gazillion other oldies currently being remade (Bride of Frankenstein! Say it ain’t so…), a rejiggering of the Ray Harryhausen-masterminded semi-classic Clash of the Titans is on the roster for 2010. Try as new director Louis Leterrier might, there is no way his remake will affect me the way the original did. That’s because (A) he will not be able to craft a Medusa one-tenth as terrifying as Harryhausen’s and (B) I am no longer seven-years old.

For those not in the know, Medusa was the legendary gorgon of Greek mythology who had snakes instead of hair and could turn motherfuckers into stone with a single stony gaze. She pursued her nasty life’s work until Perseus, toga-wearing hero and son-of-Zeus, sneaked into her apartment and sliced off her head for future use.

My first traumatic exposure to Medusa came via a still photograph in an issue of Dynamite magazine that I was perusing in my school library.

While the face of Medusa certainly was gruesome, I had no idea how deeply it affected me until drifting off to sleep that very night. While reposing in that twilighty period between wakefulness and sleepfulness, I saw a face appear over my bed. My initial thought was that the face belonged to my sister, Tina, who adored tormenting me by whispering my name in ghostly fashion from her bedroom down the hall or crawling into my room on her belly only to leap up and roar as soon as she was right beside my bed. After I grumbled “Get out, Tina,” the face floated closer— only the hideous visage was not the hideous visage of my sister. It was Medusa. No shit. I screamed as if I’d been stabbed in the scrotum with a pair of pinking shears as the face wafted toward the floor and dissipated. As my parents rushed into my room to find out what their idiot son’s latest problem was, I realized I had hallucinated/dreamed the whole fucking thing. Now, I wasn’t prone to hallucinations or dementia or anything like that; I just had an over-fueled imagination running on some high-octane Medusa gas.

When I finally saw Clash of the Titans after it premiered on HBO, I was surprised and mildly disappointed that Medusa was not as scary as I remembered her from that Dynamite magazine. In fact, I quickly forgot that I’d been frightened at all and just marveled at how awesomely awesome all of those stop-motion Harryhausen creations were. 

The Verdict: OK, on the one hand, Medusa sure was ugly, and the mere sight of her could turn you to stone, so who’s to say a photograph wouldn’t be just as effective as an in-person tête-à-tête? On the other hand, I think we can all agree that hallucinating she was in my room was taking things a bit too far. So considering these specific circumstances, I’m going to call myself out as a wiener. However, if I’d just been a bit freaked out, I would have deemed it righteous fear.