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Post by foster1941 on Jan 17, 2005 4:09:13 GMT -5
This afternoon I saw a double-feature, on the big screen, of beautifully restored prints of Mysterious Island and Jason and the Argonauts. It was a packed house (including lots of parents with their kids) and in-between films there was a ~30 minute talk and Q&A session with Ray Harryhausen himself (who is still very spry and well-spoken despite being well into his 80s). It's things like this make me glad I live in LA (and that I have to try to remember when I'm stuck in freeway gridlock).
I assume everyone here's already seen Jason and the Argonauts so you don't need me to tell you how good that is, but Mysterious Island was new to me and is also a lot of fun. It's based on a Jules Verne book (a loose sequel to "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea") and thus less "fantastical" (in a D&D/magical sense) than Harryhausen's Greek Mythology and Sinbad movies, but there are still lots of giant monsters and cool 'primitive' scenery, a babe who spends half the movie in a 'cavegirl' outfit with lots of exposed thighs and cleavage, and a rousing score by Bernard Hermann. What more could you ask for in a movie? (Fun trivia: the credited director (which means he directed the actors, before Harryhausen and his puppets took over in post-production) is Cy Endfield, who also directed Zulu, which is easily one of the 2 or 3 best war movies ever made).
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Post by AxeMental on Jan 17, 2005 10:00:16 GMT -5
Yeah, M. Isl is a forgotten classic. Infact, I didn't see it until after I got out of college on some 24 hour monster movie marathon on TBS I think. Man, I would kill to see either of those movies on the big screen like that, and you saw both (though I'm not the big city sort otherwise). Back before the days of video recorders and cable it was great in that they would bring back those classic monster movies year after year to the big screen. Come to think of it, it's amazing how back in the primitive 3 channel era we still managed to have friday and sat. night horror/monster movies (hammer was a favorite as were 50-60 alien movies). Man the 70s were a great time to be a kid (monster movies were still in vauge, and no distracting computers and home video games to keep you from actually going outside. And then of course much of the 80s got gobbled up with AD&D .
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