Weirdhouse Cinema: Clash of the Titans (1981)

a very grainy and low quality. But I had a tape of the Ray Harryhausen movie Sindbad and the Eye of the Tiger, which featured battles with stop motion skeletons, a stop motion robotic minotar called the Minoton, all kinds of great monsters in it. And so that's what I was in the mood forward this week, and that led us to the selection of Clash of the Titans, another Harry Housing classic, not directed by Ray Harryhausen, but doing some excellent special effects. We got scorpions, we got an

all time say top three gorgon Medusa. We got Let's see what else is in there. We got a crack in all kinds of good stuff. Yeah, I think it's like eight different stop motion creatures in this, which is about tops for him. I think one Million Years BC, a film of his from nineteen sixty six or film that he did special effects on. I think that one also had eight different stop motion creatures. So it's quite

a it's quite an onslaugh. This is a special effects picture, certainly, and it is very interesting to think about in terms of the history of stop motion the legacy of Ray Harryhausen, because this is we'll discussed this was his last special effects picture. He retired after this, so it's it's really his swan song. And it's also very interesting to look at Clash of the Titans as kind of the the perfection of a cinematic style or technique that was also

already going out of fashion a little bit. I mean, this wouldn't be the end of stop motion effects. We have some fabulous stop motion effects that had come out in pictures after this, and a lot of that has to do with the legacy of Harry hows and how influential he was on other effects folks. But but yeah, this was this was his swan song. This is kind of this film, whatever else it happens to be, it

is kind of an important effects historical marker. I was trying to think before we started recording about why I love stop motion effects so much for the creation of monsters in particular, and I think it has something to do with actual artifacts of like how the the animation is produced, you know, adding in these still frames in sequence to create the illusion of motion, the fact that it's not capturing something that was in reality when being

filmed in continuous motion, the way that say people are when you film them, but was actually holding still in each still frame, ends up creating this kind of unnatural lack of smoothness and the motion, this kind of jerkiness that I think some people have singled out about stop motion effects you in a detrimental way and saying like, well, you know, it takes away from the realism, like there's always limitations to what you can do with stop motion

because of that kind of jerkiness. But it's exactly that quality that I love about them and why I think they make for uncanny creatures especially they're they're really great, especially for monsters and uncanny creatures. Oh, absolutely, yeah, something about the way they're articulated. It worked really well with It works really well with say giant crabs and things like that. You know, insects and aracnets that have that kind of articulation works extremely well. Like you said, with

the inhuman monsters. Reanimated the skeletons, of course, was that Jason and the Argonauts that had the army of remanimated skeletons. Yes, I think that's in Jason, but there's there are also some reanimated skeleton monsters in Sinbad in the Eye of the Tiger. I remember there's a great battle with them where I think Sinbad ends up killing them by like, um kicking over a giant pile of like timber of logs and they like roll down and crushed the skeletons. Yeah.

And at the same time, though with with Harry Howson especially, I mean there he and his crew were brave enough to go after creatures that were far different from this, things like as we'll see in this film, a pegasus, a large vulture. Things that don't adhere to these qualities and seem, at least to my eye, far more ambitious, especially especially that pegasus really ambitious effect that they went

for there, and I think they pulled it off. Well yeah, I mean so exactly the same qualit that I think makes stop motion great for monsters. I think would make it hard to do a really cute, cuddly character in stop motion. It would be might be a little off putting. But this movie manages it with Bubo, and it maybe helps that Bubo is a robot. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I want to cuddle him, but he's very cute, has a lot of personality. Yeah, you might

get some cuts and pinches that way. He might be a little hot, I mean yeah, considering where it came from too. So nineteen eighty one, Clash of the Titans. Um, why is it called Clash of the Titans? Do you know the answer to this? I don't, Um, I don't have the you know, the exact answer. A lot of times, you know, it's like, well, the producers said it should be called this, or sometimes it's the it is the

original title. It was dreampt up. But it's always been kind of a perplexing title because if you're going into this film with a pre existing, you know, head full of Greek myth facts, you're probably gonna say, WHOA hold on a minute, there are no titans in this picture. There are no tight to clash. How is it possibly going to deliver on the concept? And well, technically, I guess titans do clash in the picture, as long as you're willing to stretch the definition of titan and really

embrace everything the movie tells you. I just watched it, and I don't know what you're talking to. I only recall the one they call the Krack in a titan, But what's the other titan? They they decide that Medusa is a titan as well, oh, which is also is also incorrect, equally incorrect, even though at least Medusa's from Greek mythology while the Krack is Norse mythology. So if you if you take their word for it, Okay, technically these titans will sort of clash. But yeah, it's a

it's a strange title, but it's a dynamic title. It inspires a lot of action, and we do see a lot of action in the picture. Well, to be fair, I recall when we did our episodes on Medusa, there were different origin stories from Medusa, so some say that she was you know, the priestess who was wronged by Poseidon and then uh and then doubly wronged by Athena and cursed. Was it Athena? I think it was Athena anyway.

But then there's there's another story I think that says that she's just sort of one of the primordial monsters that was given birth to by some other combination of critters. Yeah. I mean, as it's always the case when we've discussed this,

unstuffably remind a lot with myths. I mean, there's there's there's Generally there may be famous accounts and famous attempts to sort of create a canonical version of a particular story, but generally there are lots of different stories regarding uh, these these beings and these these stories and these gods and goddesses and heroes, and then at some point somebody comes along and kind of cobbles them together, and ultimately, I mean that's what a film like Clash of the

Titans does. It cobbles them together and takes characters from other myth cycles, other traditions, and other cultures and works them into the mix, which also is exactly what has been done in mythology and folklore and religion since time out of mind. Yes, And I guess that's one of the really fun things about say Greek mythology, for instance, which is that there is no canon of Greek mythology.

You know, Greek mythology never had like a pope that could say like, okay, this is the approved version of the story, and other versions of the story are not authoritative. That didn't exist, So you've just always had different versions of the stories, different takes on these characters and themes,

and so this is another one. Yeah. Yeah, Like like we mentioned in our episodes on the Medusa several years back, and if you want a deep dive into Medusa or a deeper dive in Medusa mythology, like that's the place to go. We're not going to spend as much time with it here, but you know, in that we point out that it's you see literary traditions regarding these stories and these characters, and then it's just like whatever ends

up sticking in people's minds the most. And interestingly enough, I remember one of the authors we looked at for the Medusa episodes pointed out that class the Titans presents a version of the Perseus versus Medusa's story that has really stuck in the modern film moviegoer's mind. In some ways, it is a new authoritative version of the myth because of how popular it is. Yeah, or at least for

a certain generation. I don't know what. I don't know how people are watching or how often they're watching Clash of the Titans today, But growing up watching a lot of like TBS and TNT on cable, I feel like they showed this movie every week. It was just always on television. You could always watch some part of Clash

of the Titan. You might not ever watch it beginning to end, but you know, you spend a few years watching television, you're gonna see all of it at least two or three times, even if you're just catching little bits of it. You know, I actually never saw the whole thing until I was older. Well I say, I didn't see all of its always, or I thought I had, And then when I went to watch it with my son years back, I was like, I didn't realize there was so much nudity in this film because that was

always cut from the Turner broadcast. Oh yeah, I mean it's very tame nudity. It's like PG rated nudity, but there there is there is a little bit of nudity in there. You know. One thing I definitely would not have appreciated if I had seen this movie when I was younger, is is what what a treasure trove the cast is? I don't know if he should even say

the full cast. I mean, this movie is full of things you might call cameos where a well known actor or actress is brought in to have like I don't know, like one or two lines, or even no lines, just be on screen. Yeah, there there are actors who do get a fair amount of a screen time in this film and have some some great lines. And then there, yeah, there're others that are just kind of standing around or

they have just a just a few moments on screen. So, yeah, this is going to be one where we might not spend as much time with every member of the cast, but we'll try and mention everybody of note as we move forward towards the plot section. But before we get there, I guess we should make up dis couple of notes here. Well, first, let's go ahead and listen to the trailer so we can get just a splash of the audio from Clash

of the Titans. In an ancient age before recorded time, men were measured by their courage and women by their beauty. Mighty gods rule the universe, and fear and destruction cover the world. It was a time of darkness, when only the force of love could bring back the light. Now, Metro Goldwyn Mayer presents Clash of the Titans a sweeping legend of a golden age. Soon the motion picture epic of our time, enter into the wondrous world of Perseus

and Andromeda. A world of passion and power, beauty and bravery, mystery and magic, the world that transcends fantasy into a legend. One courageous man rides between an angry heaven and the fury of hell on Earth. He rides a winged stallion across the sky. He rides to save the one who owns his heart. He rides towards wonders no man has

ever seen, and terrors no man has ever faced. Clash of the Titans starring Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Ursula andres Burgess Meredith Claire Bloom and introducing Harry Hamlin as Perseus and Judy Bauker as Andromeda. It will touch you, shock you, dazzle your senses, and sweep you to the limits of your imagination. Clash of the Titans very sweeping, very mythic, very nineteen eighty one. I think the trailer should have

had Jefferson Starship in it. It's important to note, and this is I mean, you can't approach this film without realizing that it of course comes out in the wake of Star Wars, the massive hit of the Star Wars comes a few years later. There are aspects of the picture that are clearly going after that Star Wars money,

kind of going after that Star Wars vibe. I had the same thought, and one of the things that really jumped out at me was the character of Bubo, the robotic owl created by he faced Us, modeled on the organic owl of Athena. This struck me as obviously R two D two with wings. Did you have the same thought, Oh, yeah, absolutely, It's clearly an attempt to cash in on that droid magic. It even speaks like a droid. It kind of speaks in its own kind of like droid whirls and beeps

and so forth. And we also get to the point where Perseus can understand the owl when it's speaking to him, and so we get these kind of like human droid interactions like we see in Star Wars. And I also thought Perseus in this movie seemed to be strongly influenced by Luke Skywalker. Yeah, but without that sort of I don't know, definitely some different Like it's it's kind of it's weird to go back and look at at Luke in the first Star Wars film and decide how you

feel about him, because he's more flawed and relatable. You know, he's like a kind of a grumpy He's a grumpy team and Perseus is the son of a god who gets a lot of stuff handed to him, and so Perseus spends a lot of the film not being particularly relatable, I think. But oh, we can discuss that as we move forward. I mean, I think it's kind of a problem that exists in the core myth. Like, unlike Luke Skywalker, he doesn't have that sense of lacking and yearning, you know,

he's just he's just grad at everything from the get go. Yeah, all right, before we move forward, if you're you're wanting to watch this film for yourself, well where can you find it? Well, first of all, make sure you put that nineteen eighty one in there, because otherwise you're gonna end up watching the remake. I think the remake comes up first in search, but that's a crime. I haven't even seen it. I don't know why I judge that.

I just know without watching it that it's awful. Um, all I can say for it is that you have computer animated monsters instead of stop motion monsters. You have what leam Neeson is in it, and so Is Ray Finds is in it as well. He plays Hades, who isn't in the Hades doesn't factor into this one, but he pops up in the remake, and so they're fine. You have those are two great actors. Put them in some shiny and weird armor and they're they're they're cool.

But then there's also like a scene where the new Perseus finds a robotic owl and like a trash can or something and he's like no, thank you and like shuts it, and it's like, yeah, it's clearly it has the the opinion that it doesn't need to be cute and impressive and needs just to be like it just needs to be like hard and an action packed. So I don't know I think I enjoyed it when I watched it, and it's worth watching drag Us for a couple of performances, but it's not as as fun and

touchable as this film. Love, a CGI laden remake that just gets in some digs at the old movie. Yeah that was I think that was the main dig. But it was like, yeah, I didn't. It rubbed me the wrong way for sure. Yeah, So where can you watch this film if you want to watch it? Well, if if what I know from my own experience is still true, I would say turn on TPS now, now, go ahead and flip to TNT whichever channel it's on, go ahead

and watch it there. But if it's not available to you on television right now, you can rent or buy this pretty much anywhere in any way that you get your films. This is not one of our more obscure choices. It's it's out there all right. Well, let's jump into the humans involved. I'm gonna do things a little differently here and I'm just gonna hit all the behind the

scenes folks right at the top. So the director of this is Desmond Davis, who lived nineteen twenty six through twenty and twenty one British camera operator turned rider and director. His first directorial credit was nineteen sixty four Girl with Green Eyes, starring Peter Finch and Rita Toushingham. One of his immediate follow ups was nineteen sixty six is Time Lost in Time Remembered aka I Was Happy There, and

nineteen sixty seven Smashing Time. The first two of these at least seemed to be like really well remembered you, at least within their own genre, you know. I think it's kind of maybe a snapshot of kind of like, you know, really cool sixties London type of stuff. He also directed the nineteen eighty four Donald Sutherland thriller Or Deal by Innocence, and an adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes tale The Sign of Four starring Ian Richardson in nineteen eighty three. He also did a lot of TV work.

I don't think I've seen any of that. Yeah, I certainly haven't seen the older pictures. I might have seen The Sign of Four. I'm not sure. I'd have to go back and really look at some screenshots. Who's Sherlock in that one? Is? Is that a Jeremy Brett movie? I believe it's in Ian Richardson. Oh, that's what you already said that. I'm sorry, Yeah, Jeremy Brett. All of those were for TV, and they did the Sign of

Four at one point. All right. The writer on this is Beverly Cross, who of nineteen thirty one through nineteen ninety eight English playwright and screenwriter, longtime husband of actor Maggie Smith, who is also in this picture. Until his death, his screenplays include nineteen sixty three's Jason and the Argonauts, nineteen sixty five, Gingha's Kahn starring Omar Sharif in nineteen seventy seven Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger or in the Eye of the Tiger. I can't remember what

his relationships. Yeah, I don't think they could fit him in the Eye of the Tiger. Now, yeah, it's and of the Eye of the Tiger again. That movie is incredibly dopey, some very questionable casting decisions, but also a heck of a lot of fun. It's got great monsters and all that. Creator of visual effects on this and also a producer of the film is Ray Harry Housen, who mentioned already lived nineteen twenty through twenty thirteen. You know,

I believe this is our first Harry Housen film. I know he's come up on the show before, but I don't remember what movie that was in the context of maybe we were just talking about something else that had stop motion in it. But oh man, I literally get warm feelings inside just hearing the name Ray Harry Housen, Like it sends the kind of like those jets of

warm water through my chest. Well yeah, it even kind of sounds like it, right Housing, You're at how You're at home, and Harry, it's kind of like rubbed the fur right, yes, yes, yeah. So if you have it, ever been into movie monsters and special effects, then you know the name. He was an American British Oscar winning animator and special effects creator who is a major pioneer in the industry and created the dynamation approach to stop motion.

I remember talking with Seth about this on one of the Weird Houses that he appeared on, probably the probably the one we were talking about Alice. But it seems like everybody that did stop motion they had some sort of cool name for it that wasn't stop motion. Almost like there was a rejection of the term stop motion, like it sounded too boring. Or something, or maybe they just, you know, just needed something you can copyright to call it. I don't know anyway. Harry Howsen's credits, You know, I

usually don't list everything. I'm just gonna go and list I think all the major films that he did here forty nine, Mighty Joe Young, fifty three, The Beast from twenty thousand fathoms fifty five It Came from Beneath the Sea, fifty six, The Animal World also in fifty six, Earth versus the Flying Saucers fifty seven, twenty million Years to Earth fifty eight, The Seventh Voyage of the Sinbad nineteen sixty, The Three Worlds of Gulliver nineteen sixty one, mysterious island

that has a crab in it Yea sixty three, Jason and the Argonaut sixty four first, then in the Moon one million years BC in sixty six, the Valley of Guangi and sixty nine, the Golden Voyage of Sinbad in seventy three, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger in nineteen seventy seven, and then wraps it all up in eighty one with Clash of the Titans. We may have to come back and do at least one of these other ones at some point, because I just love these monsters so much. Oh yeah, yeah, there's so many just

iconic monster designs. They have so much character to them, and you've missed that kind of thing when you're watching something like the Luferigna Hercules movie that we covered, which is a very fune, very very exciting picture, but with the stop motion in that doesn't hold a candle to this. That one did have some great visual flare, but yeah, not so much in the monsters. Yeah, who is that character who is like, oh, I don't know, some kind

of like wizard who lived down on an asteroid or something. Oh, it's what's like I'm supposed to be datalless? Right? Oh yeah is it? Maybe? Yeah? That was great? All right, real quickly. The music and this is by Lawrence Rosenthal born nineteen twenty six, prolific Oscar nominated in Any winning composer who worked in TV, film, and stage. His film scores include A Raisin in the Sun, The Miracle Worker Beckett, and the nineteen seventy seven adaptation of the Island of

Doctor Moreau. Father of noted stem cell scientist Professor Nadia Rosenthal, The music in this is very epic and sweeping, and you know it does its shot. What can you say? All right? Now? When he comes to the cast, this is going to be the story of Perseus and Medusa. So Perseus, you gotta have you a fresh hunk, right, I mean no, no old hunks will do yep. And

the fresh one they had here was Harry Hamlin. I believe the credits are the credits to the trailer if you get with chef fans say and introducing Harry Hamlin just removed from his original packaging, and you know, as is often the case, it kind of feels that way with the performance. I mean, he's good in this, but and to be fair, he's playing Perseus, a hero, a son of a god, so there are how do you

play that in a way that's relatable. I mean, I think the various shows where I've seen someone portraying Perseus and put Perseus is it's kind of a big a lift to make this feel like a real person. So Harry Hamlin does as finer job as you might expect. Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna be honest, and I'm gonna say especially because I can say good things about his later career, I don't think his acting is stellar in this movie.

He's he's kind of a slab, but he like he stands there and he's handsome and oo look at his shoulders and all that. He does not really do a great job of acting, I will say, but in his later career he did lots of stuff where I thought he was great. He was great and Madman. He was great on the Veronica Mars. You know he'd oh yeah, I don't know what. I guess he was just very young here, Oh yeah, I mean on Daftley he was very young. He I think he'd only been I think

he's done some stage acting. He'd had one movie appearance before this. But yeah, I went on to be known more for again Madman. He was in La Law for the first five seasons of that. I would say that I'll come back to this, but I think there's one sequence in the film where his performance is is definitely better than the rest of the picture, and I think it's also the best sequence in the entire film, So we'll discuss in a bit. But he also has some

interesting science connections as well. I didn't know about this, but his grandfather, Chauncey Jerome Hamelin founded the Buffalo Museum of Science, and his father, Chauncey Jerome Hamlin Junior it was an aeronautical engineer who helped design the Saturn rocket with doctor Verna von Braun. And yeah, Harry himself apparently co founded the Fusion Power Company or co founded the fusion power company TAE Technologies in nineteen ninety eight. Wow, So yeah, I did not know he ha fusion Power

connections that. I had no idea either, But it's it's it's listed in more than one place, so I don't think I'm just being scammed on that. All right. Let's see other mortals of note in the picture. Well, Sean Phillips born nineteen thirty three is in it as Cassiopeia. Okay, so she's playing the queen of the City of Joppa,

the mother of Princess Andromeda right right. And Sean Phillips is notable because well, I mean she was Reverend Mother Guy as Helen Mahiam and David Lynch's Dune in nineteen eighty four, and she was also the Witch of Indoor in Ewak's The Battle for Indoor in nineteen eighty five. Terrific in both of those. She's a fun actor even if even if she doesn't, she does get to be

a little like um. She does it like a stern sort of female mild villain roll really well, you know, like she she has that definite sternness to it, because in this she's like, Okay, I will sacrifice my daughter to the krack and it's what the gods want, so

I'm going to do it. And before there's a scene where she earns the wrath of Maggie Smith by just standing in front of a statue of Maggie Smith of the goddess Thetis, and just being like, by the way, my daughter who's about to have her wedding day is more beautiful than the goddess I'm standing in front of right now. And of course then the ground begins to shake and all that. So bad call bad, call yes.

So she's a lot of fun in the picture. Judy Bachner Plays and Drama a Board nineteen fifty four English actor, probably best known for this film, but she was also in the nineteen seventy seven Louis Jordan Dracula movie and Franco Zepharelli's brother son Sister Moon in seventy two Okay, So she plays Andromeda, the princess of the city of Joppa, who in the original story she's she's rescued by Perseus.

Though I like how in this version of the story there's more of a complicated backstory with the whole uh you know, her previous betrothal to what's his name Calabass and all that. We'll get to in a bit. All right, one, Well, there are two more mortals of note, but the most important mortal to discuss here is Amon, who is h He's what's supposed to be a like a Greek dramatist turned sort of. I don't know. He's just up for adventures, right,

He's kind of a rogue, I guess. I guess, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I interpreted him as I guess a fictionalized version of Escalus or something. Yeah, yeah, I guess he's kind of he's kind of a bard, kind of the bar to the party here. And he is played by the terrific American actor of theater, film, and television, Burgess Meredith of nineteen oh seven through nineteen ninety seven. You gotta fight the go Rocky, you gotta fight out him.

That's right. Many people will know him best for his role as the coach Mickey Goldmill in the Rocky franchise, or at least the first three pictures, but he was in so many things, like he played the penguin in the nineteen sixties TV series Batman. He One of his other really iconic roles is playing the character Henry Bemis in the classic Twilight Zone episode Time Enough at Last.

This is the one about the guy who survives the apocalypse and then destroy just he survives a destruction of humanity and all lenses and and then he thinks he gets to read all the books in the library, but then he breaks his glasses and it's like, oh, the tragedy, and you know, it's great, but it's a it's a

it's a famous episode. I was just trying to remember what happens to his character at the end of his arc in the Rocky movies, and I think, unless I'm remembering wrong, that in Rocky three, mister t is so rude to him that he has a heart attack and dies. Oh my god, really something like that. Well, like I said,

he was in tons of stuff. I'm not going to try and list anywhere near all of it here, but I will say he's in nineteen eighty five Santa Claus, the movie Um on top of some other things, he's he's he's a tremendous actor, and he's terrific in this film. So this is a film that feed There's a lot of exposition, a young hunk who's very green, and then a lot of stoic hero and god speak, you know. But Meredith makes you believe virtually every line he delivers.

It's kind of a master class in breathing life into lines that could otherwise fall completely flat. I agree, Yes, this is a quality we often see in older actors and actresses, who like, once you've been doing it long enough, you kind of acquire a sort of cumulative magic that allows you to transcend the written material you're given. I

rarely notice this quality in younger actors. Yeah, I mean, this is this is exactly why you bring in an older character actor like Burgess Meredith to play a role like this and to work with the younger, more inexperienced actors and sort of bring something out of them. All right. One other mortal of note, and that is Tim Pigot Smith, who lived nineteen forty six through twenty seventeen play Thallow.

This is kind of our He's kind of like the miscellaneous guard dude that lasts the longest in the picture. You know, he's just a member of the party. Just he's like the fighter of the party. He's a soldier in a big soldier's helmet wearing a hilariously short skirt.

That's the That's the thing I was, you know, I always loved checking out the IMDb user submitted parental warnings about the picture, and one of them was that saying that the the the the star of this film, Harry Hamlin is I think believe they said mostly nude the entire picture, and it's like, he's not really most I don't know if i'd say he's mostly nude, but yes, he, like a lot of characters in the film, is you know,

often wearing a very short outfit. Anyway, Tim Pickott Smith here is the kind of actor I'd probably spend more time talking about in another picture that's not so loaded, but suffice to say, accomplished English actor with a long career on stage, screen and TV, and in the later stages of his career, he appeared in such big productions as Gangs of New York Work from two thousand and two, Alexander from two thousand and four, v for Vendetta from

two thousand and five, and The Quantum of Solace from two thousand and eight. All Right, moving on, let's get to some monsters. We mentioned Calibos already. This is the tragic beast man villain positioned as the son of Thetis instead of Achilles, who's actually her son in various Greek myths, but instead this character is actually based on Caliban from

Shakespeare's The Tempest. The Caliban connection makes sense because so while Calabos is of course one of the villains of the movie, he does a lot of evil and he lashes out for revenge, he's also a character like you feel his pain. Yeah, And I remember this from watching this movie as a kid, even like I sympathize with Calabos a lot, and part of that was like, yeah, he's the monster character in a movie full of a

lot of humanoid characters. But I think also it's just baked into the movie, like the movie stresses that, yeah, he did some terrible things, but also the gods have been potentially unfair to him and have punished him with this monstrous transformation. There's like a whole scene on Mount Olympus where the gods are talking about how oh, if he'd been the son of Zeus and he'd done all the same stuff, he wouldn't have gotten punished. Yeah, but Zeus is like, but he's not, and yeah, oh god,

we'll get to Zeus in a minute. But yeah, but yeah, it's any anyway. Calabos is played by Neil McCarthy who lived nineteen thirty two through nineteen eighty five and yet a very distinct face, so you'll recognize him from a lot of pictures. He was in sixty eight Where Eagles Dare, nineteen sixty four, Zulu, and he was in Terry Gilliam's Time Badits from nineteen eighty one. Other monsters in this picture that are played by human beings, we have the

Stygian witches. So there are three witches we talked, we talk about these these characters that they're based on a good bit in the Medusa episode. But these are the three blind witches that Percius has to go to in order to find Medusa essentially, and they're played by Flora Robson who lived nineteen o two through nineteen eighty four. Anna Manahan who lived nineteen twenty four through two thousand and nine, and Freda Jackson who lived nineteen o seven

through nineteen ninety. Great witch performances by all three, though I do not know which one is which, because they're all they all have a lot of makeup on and they all three have very packed filmography. So maybe in the future will hit on a movie that has one of them in and will refer back to it. But suffice to say, great witch scene. Three great witches here very much agree that they are great, but they kind of act as one. They're not very individually distinctive by design. Yeah,

and you know, I think we've said this before. You know, it's like it is. There is a lot of sexism in the whole Older female actors end up playing witches in a lot of pictures, but when they do it really well, you got you gotta give them credit. And all three of these witches are great. All right, let's move on to the gods. Yeah, speaking of sexism, let's get to Zeus. Well, you know he is he is the king of the gods, so we have to start with him, and and yeah, he is pretty sexist. But yeah,

this is the great Laurence Olivier playing Zeus. Laurence Olivia, of course, lived nineteen o seven through nineteen eighty nine, one of the biggest British acting names of the twentieth century, appearing in in Clash as the Greek king of the Gods, and what I'm to understand was largely a favor to

co star Maggie Smith and her husband. Okay, so her husband wrote the movie and decided to really play up the part of the goddess Thetis and then have his wife cast in that role, and then get their friend Lawrence Olivier to play Zeus. Right, Yes, that's what I've that's what I've read. That being said though, and also taking into the fact that apparently Olivier was sick during the filming, I think he's he's really good in this.

Like it's yes, he's playing he's playing a god, he's playing Zeus, and he may just he doesn't feel like he's going through the motions. Maybe he was, and that's just how good he was as an actor. But I feel like there's some wonderful dimensions to this performance as this egotistical, calmly threatening tyrant who is also not the

villain of the piece. No, it's interesting. Yeah, you're right, he's not the villain, even though a lot of what's happening in the movie as a result of his capriciousness and hypocrisy. And there's just just it's kind of accepted, sort of as a law of nature that Zeus is just completely unfair and that's just the reality. It's like the Yeah, it's just the reality everybody has to deal with. Yeah.

I kind of like the scene. I think it's very pronounced in the scene where he asked Athena to give up her owl to Perseus and she doesn't want to, but he's like, but it's my wish, and he does it in this way where it's like, oh, it's just so good. He hits it perfectly well. Also, the backstory is hilarious because Athena already gave Perseus a helmet that would make him invisible. That's pretty good, right, That's that's a good Christmas present and a percys He's like, wow,

I lost it dry dropped it in the swamp. So Zeus is like, you will get my little boy a new present. Yes, give him your toy, give him your favorite thing, and uh and you know she has to do it, but she finds a loophole anyway. Lawrence Olivier

tons of tons of pictures that he was in. He was, of course a major Shakespearean actor of stage and screen, and his credits and compass everything from the likes of nineteen forties Rebecca directed by Alfred Hitchcock, forty eight's Hamlet, and also such later day largely, I guess genre hits, such as nineteen seventy eight's The Boys from Brazil nineteen seventy six is Marathon Man in nineteen seventy two Sleuth.

He is the diabolical Nazi dentist in Marathon Man, right, and he's a Nazi hunter and the Boys from Brazil, so I guess you know they bounce out Boys from Brazil of course, is the they Tried to clone Hitler movie. Oh, I've never seen that one. Yeah, it's oh, it's it's uh. I haven't seen it in a while, but I remember thinking it was good. It has Gregory Peck in it.

Gregory Peck plays doctor Mangela on the run. Yeah, all right, other gods and try and run through some of these quickly because okay, we have hair up played by Claire Bloom born nineteen thirty one, known for such films as fifty twos, Limelight, sixty three is The Haunting in two Thousand Tents, the King's Speech still active, still going at it. Doesn't do much in this picture. She's got like three lines maybe, yeah, But then we have Maggie Smith again

playing thetus born nineteen thirty four. Yeah. Legendary Maggie Smith, known probably more to modern fans for her roles in Gosford Park, Dalton Abbey and the Harry Potter franchise, but she's had a very long career and is also still active. She still has she has upcoming pictures coming down the pipe, and she's been active on TV and screen since nineteen fifty five. Maggie Smith is great in this She's great

in everything I've ever seen her in. She's always excellent, and her character is really interesting because you see her from two completely different sides to the human characters. She's basically a villain like she imposes the need to sacrifice Princess Andromeda to the Kraken as she speaks out of a statue to lay a curse upon the city. But then you also see the other side, which is that on Mount Olympus she's the underdog. You feel for her,

and you see that Zeus mistreats her. So she appears both as a kind of sympathetic hero and as end as a cruel, overbearing villain, depending on whether your point of view is earthly or heavenly. Yeah, yeah, so she definitely gets a lot of screen time and has a ultimately a really well defined character. And then on the other end of the spectrum we have Ursula Andres has

Aphrodite born nineteen thirty six. She only has like one line in this film, but the Swiss model turned actor was a major sex symbol of her time, with a breakout role in nineteen sixty two's Doctor No Bond film. Her other at its are kind of all over the place, like, for instance, she's in Sergio Martino's Slave of the Cannibal God from nineteen seventy eight. I was not prepared for this. On rewatching, I was like Ursula Andress Oh, I guess

it was excited to see her in this movie. She says, well, like one thing, yeah, yeah, just one line, and I think she was pretty highly built in the picture too. Yeah, all right, other gods we still got multiple guns to go here. God packed this movie, but we have Poseidon, a severely I think depowered Poseidon played by Jack Gwillam who lived nineteen o nine through two thousand and one. He had parts in sixty two Lawrence of Arabia, seventies Patent.

He played Van Helsing in nineteen eighty seven's The Monster Squad, and he was also in such films as nineteen seventies Cromwell, nineteen sixty six is A Man for All Seasons in nineteen sixty four is the Curse of the Mummies Tomb A Man for All Seasons? Is that the one that that has Robert Shaw as Henry the Eighth? I believe that's right. I've seen this film before, but it's been a while yet. Robert Shaw and a pretty stacked cast. I mean, you've got people like John hurd In at

Orson Wells, etc. A really good cast. Okay, so they brought in another heavy hitter to play Poseidon. And does Poseidon even have one line? I don't remember. Ah, yeah, I think he speaks, but yeah, he's a very meek Poseidon like. Basically, his role is to go down in the water and call up the Kraken once, Zeus has said released the Kraken, so's he's the one who actually does the releasing. So especially given how powerful Poseidon is in many of the traditions of Greek mythology, really he

really feels depowered here. But I would say in this film, Maggie Smith as Thetis fills the role that would have been played by Poseidon. M Yeah, I think I think you're right that rolands up absorbing a lot of the power from various other figures in it in the film. Oh yeah, because another one another made your character from mythology. Athena, the goddess Athena is in this played by Susan Fleetwood,

who lived nineteen forty four through nineteen ninety five. Her other credits include nineteen nineties The Craze, This is the one about the Underworld, London, Underworld Twins, nineteen eighty five's young Shirlock Holmes, and she's in apparently in Tarkovsky's nineteen eighty six film The Sacrifice, which as I remember, is very haunting and heavy and also very long. I love Tarkovsky, but I haven't seen that one. It's uh, it's it's it's kind of a it's it's good. It's a deep picture.

I saw it in college. Ye, go to see it on the big screen. But judging by this movie, Okay, Athena, what's she got us of you know, like wisdom, crafts wore any of that stuff. No, I think she's got us of owls in this movie. Yeah, Goddess of pet ownership basically, that's all she does. Goddess of veterinary practice. Oh but we also have one more god. We have a Festus in this played by Pat Roach. Big Pat Roach who lived nineteen thirty seven through two thousand and four.

He plays the robot owl repairman of the gods. Yeah, yeah, I mean he is the one you would, I guess, go to for this sort of thing if if you can't get ahold of data lists, you know, if you want to keep it in Mount Olympus, then yeah, he's the one to go to. Well, he didn't he train data lists given some of the traditions. Oh maybe anyway. Pat Roach British wrestler turned actor who's really in tons

of nostalgic flicks from the eighties and nineties. I think one of the big ones that most people were familiar with is he of course, plays that German mechanic that Indiana Jones fistfights underneath the propeller driven airplane in Raiders of the Last Lost Arc in nineteen eighty one. Oh yeah,

it gets turned into Nazi soup by the propeller. He's I think he's actually in all three of the original Indie movies playing smaller roles, and I think he plays another role in Raiders of the the Lost Art, but this is the big one. He plays the wizard that turns into a monster in nineteen eighty four is Conan the Destroyer. So he's one of many big, meaty men in a movie that has like a whole cast of big meeting men.

I like that you'd make even your wizard big in meady. Yeah, I mean that's that's that's a very very meaty picture, that one. It's weird. It's like I think if I were to talk about a Conan film on Weird House, I think it would need to be Knan the Destroyer. That's the goofire one. Anyway. Pat Roach also played General Kale or Kale I can't remember how it's pronounced in nineteen eighty eight's Willow. This is the dude with a

big like guerrilla skull on his mask. And oh and he also played the titan Atlas and Jim Hinson's The Storyteller the Greek Myths. So even though he's not a Titan in this and there are very questionable titan classifications in this film, he has played a Titan before. That series of Jim Hinson Storyteller, by the way, I'd say, is probably my other favorite adaptation of this story of like the Perseus and Medusa arc and has a I

would say, has a Medusa design to rival this one. Yeah, yeah, I remember that one did the wings, which you do see in a number of the accounts of old All right, we'll show we get into the plot of Clash of the Titans. These Titans got a clash, baby, so let's let's find out how they do it. Okay, Well, one thing I wanted to denote is it is amazing how much plot they are able to cram into two hours in this movie. We may focus in more granular detail on the earlier parts of the movie and then hop

around for some of the later adventures. But it has a great opening as howling wind dust blowing in the foreground and then through a haze. We see a procession of Greek soldiers escorting like a coffin or a litter. It's a it's a box. And then we get the opening lines spoken by the wicked king, a crazy Us, who says, bear witness Zeus and all you gods on high Olympus, I condemn my daughter Danae and her son Perseus to the sea. Her guilt and sin have brought

shame to Argus. I A crazy Us, the king. Now purge her crime and restore my honor. Their blood is not on my hands. And then he has them put into the box. Danny is clutching her baby boy and they put him in the box, cast him into the ocean, and we see the box being tossed cruelly by the waves. Now we know in the story that a Crazius does this to avert a prophecy that Perseus will bring about his doom. Does the movie tell us this? I don't

think it does, or if it does, I missed it. No. What I got from it was just the basic like something's wrong. Zeus demands this, so I'm going to do it. That's all there is to it. Zeus said it. I believe it. There you go. But it turns out Zeus does not want this, because we're going to go to Mount Olympus in a minute, and Zeus is going to be like, why did you do that? So what I wanted to ask first, I couldn't tell where a lot of the location shots in this movie were coming from.

There are parts right here at the opening on this coastline, which I assume is supposed to be in Greece, but they looked like Scotland. Yeah. I read that they filmed at Pinewood Studios, I guess for you know, the interiors, and then they also shot in various places in the Mediterranean, So I mean that's ultimately I'm not sure where that

they are in this particular scene though. Well, from here we go to the opening credits and we zoom over beautiful landscapes and you see the mountain peaks, the spires, glacier pockets and the crevices of the rocks. And this is the kind of landscape stuff that always works on me, you know, it puts me in the right mood for an epic. I recall thinking that Krull also got a lot of mileage out of just beautiful landscape shots that

weren't strictly related to the story. Just put a camera up on top of the mountains and you know it works. They do it for a reason. Well, Krol is the planet, so you got to see a lot of her. Yet, right, ladies and gentlemen meet Kroll. But from here we go to Mount Olympus, which this is not on a mountain, it's an indoor studio set, and the you know, bunch of gods in white robes are standing around on marble

floors with big columns in the background. I'd love Clash of the Titans, but I feel like the Olympus set, I don't know, it feels kind of boring to me. I feel like they could have made the gods look more interesting. Yeah, it's like it basically looks like a bunch of older people are about to be adult baptized. You know, they have like baphysmal gowns on, and they're standing around in like the standing around a big mall somewhere with a lot of white marble. Though I do

love the Throne, The Throne. When we switched the scenes of the Throne, it's pretty pretty great because there is Laurence Olivier in his big sterling white robe with a gold lion on one side, a gold snake wrapped around an egg on the other. He is on a throne of white marble, and behind his head is like a blue laser show. Yes, I do like the laser show. And I guess that's to show the power emanating from the throne of Zeus. And he clearly he's more powerful

than all the other gods. They're not going to do anything without his approval. So one of the gods brings the report of what he just saw, which is King of crazis, Hey, he threw his daughter and her baby son into the ocean in a box. And some of the gods here, I think maybe this is this is Thetis or Hera, maybe Thetis. They try to defend a crazy Us. They say, hey, look, Zeus, he built a lot of really solid temples. He dedicated them to you. Who really cares if you throw a woman and a

child in the ocean. But Zeus is incensed by this. He says, a hundred good deeds cannot atone for murder. I don't care how many temples he dedicated to me. You can't. You can't do this to people. And in this scene, we go around, he kind of like addresses each of the gods. We see Athena holding her owl.

We see Aphrodite, and again this is Ursula andres here and she It's interesting, you know, Aphrodite is supposed to be the goddess of love, but she is making a face like she has just handed someone a goblet full of poisoned wine and is watching them drink it, like she just found out that all of her dialogue got cut from the Yeah. So Zeus is demand he demands justice. He says, nothing can erase this horrible crime. And so he says that King Acrazius must be punished, but not

just him, him and his people too. By the way, let's let's just do his whole city. Let's throw them in there. So he calls up Poseidon. He says, I command you to raise the wind and the sea and then let loose the kraken. Oh, and also protected Danny and her son. He's like, make sure they get some

worse safe. Yeah, because they I don't know if it's revealed yet, but they revealed shortly after this that, of course, as we know from from the mythology, Perseus is Zeus's son, So of course he's invested in this particular individual and his mom because it's for Zeus. It's all about him, like that's and I guess he is the king of the universe in this narrative, so maybe he has a reason to feel So I feel that way, But that's

how he approaches everything, right, that is what happened. And they go back to sort of like all the god's gossiping about it. They're all like, oh, you know what really happened. He Zeus quote loved that girl, Danny, and then he got her pregnant with Perseus, and so that's his own son. So that's why he's protecting them, and

that's why he's mad. Now, Rob, did you have any thoughts about the fact that in this movie Zeus appears to have a miniatures hobby, As I know you sometimes mess around with some miniatures yourself, so so yeah, what are your thoughts. Well, I mean, I think this is one of the great set pieces in the picture because he has this room with this these wonderful shelves. Each one has a mini on it, a mini representing a different mortal in the world. Um. On one level, I've

always liked this because this is just prime. Uh, this is a prime way to display your miniature collection. But also it's a it's a great set and it it really nicely displays this idea that the mortals are, in this case literally the playthings of the gods. Like they're like, that's that's literally, Like he'll we see this time and time again. You know, they'll pick one of these up and they'll do something to it. They'll break it or they'll repair it. And it has real world ramifications for

the individual it represents. But to the gods, it's it's solid game. It's all ultimately about them, or at least that's what the movie is saying. So Greek Pantheon, if you're listening, I'm just interpreting what the film is saying. It's not me, don't turn me into a spider. We see Zeus kind of pulled it does he pull down the craziest mini fig here and he's like, ooh, I'm

done with you and just crushes it it. Yeah, and then we see like basically then we see the real life King just have a heart attack in the middle of the street while the winds and are rolling in and the earthquakes are beginning. Yeah, he just goes and blood starts coming out of his mouth, and and also yes, argos the city is doomed. So we see Poseidon. He's underwater and he raises up the waters and causes like a tidal wave to wash over the city, destroy all

the buildings, kill all the people, and then the cracking attacks. Yeah. So the effects here, you know, by modern standards, are maybe a little a little rougher around the edges, but there's no denying the cracking when he shows up. This is our first glimpse at the big stop motion beast here. I've always loved this design. It's you know, there's a certain amount of creature from the Black Lagoon wound up in him. But you know, he also has these these

four long arms that are kind of squid like. He's also very reminiscent of some sort of great gigantic mirbast. Yeah. I was gonna say a cross between creature from the Black Lagoon and kind of a Capuchin monkey. Yeah. All right, So we get a report about that in ment Olympus. That city's been destroyed and Danny and her child have been brought to safety on the island of Sara Foss, where they will be allowed to live in peace and security.

And then we get some scenes indicating that Perseus has really grown up fast, because we see him do like trick riding on ponies on the beach. Yeah. Yeah, he's a strapping young lad. And Zeus is commenting on this. He's like, the advantage of a strong body and a handsome face. What could any mortal desire or deserve more? He puts him up there on the shelf iget it's great because he's like, he's like, it's a all these these mortals are to him, are just like fancy beautiful playthings. Yeah,

this one he's personally invested in. Yeah, He's like Herah, tell me my son is handsome. Oh. But then so Maggie Smith comes in and she you know, he's talking about his son, and she goes, what of my son Calibos. This is the first we've heard of him. But Zeus essentially is like, well, it sucks to be him. We get the impression that Calibos was sort of a Taz like figure, just sort of like going around destroying everything

he touched. He even killed all of Zeus's flying horses except for the one Pegasus, and for his crimes Calibos has been sent to live in a soggy marsh where he is transformed into a monster, a mockery of the human form. And we don't see Calibos yet, but we

do see a mini fig of him. Yeah, is that I think this is kind of the transformation sequence right where he puts He puts the figurine of human Calabos in the middle of this arena they have there, and then we cut to the shadow of the mini and we see it twist and mutate into this beast man. And so I always love this scene because, yeah, we don't actually see a man turn into a monster. We just see the shadow of a mini figure of that man turn into a monster. And it's still highly effective,

I agree. But then, of course Maggie Smith, she's she's suffering. She's like, how could you do this to my son. He's to marry the princess Andromeda, and Zeus says, let the princess look upon him. Now. Now, of course, Thetis points out Zeus's hypocrisy here. She's like, you know, if if that were your son, you wouldn't do this to him. So eventually, when Zeus is gone, she's like, I'm going

to get revenge. If my son is not to marry Princess Andromeda, then no man will I will speak to the priests of Joppa in dreams and omens, and as my son Calibas suffers so well Andromeda. So she's gonna send send some people some revelations that will interfere with Andromeda's ability to live a happy life and and with the general well being of the city of Joppa. But what of Perseus. Oh yeah, she's got to get revenge

against Zeus's son as well. So here's where she I didn't quite get this, as like, why is this vengeance? But her vengeance is Perseus. Now he's grown up. Now he's Harry Hamlin. And he's just laying out on the beach one night, you know, just laying there and saying, looking at the stars, I guess, And she says, time to know the terrors of the dark and look on death.

Time your eyes were open to grim reality. And she picks up the mini fig of him and moves it to an amphitheater setting, and somehow Harry Hamlin is transported from the island of sarah Foss to the Amphitheater of Joppa, and there he wakes up. Yep, did you understand why this was revenge? You just see, Well, I'm going to take you to a random different place. I yeah. I mean, you know, she has the forethought of a goddess, so

maybe she knows more about it. But at the very least, I guess it's like, I'm going to take you away from your secluded beach home and I'm going to drop you into the middle of a very complex and dangerous city and we'll see, we'll see how fancy you are. But when he wakes up here, he meets a mysterious figure wearing a grotesque theater mask and shouting at him,

who are you walking among all the smoke? But it turns out to be Burgess Meredith, who is perfectly friendly as this character am on once they get to know each other, and he explains, oh yeah, yeah, I see. I pretend that this amphitheater is haunted to keep people away. This is the Amphitheater of Joppa. Here's where you are now, and you must have made the gods angry somehow to get transported here. I'm not sure what the business model for this amphitheaters. Yeah, I wonder about that, but they

share some backstory. It turns out Amon already knows Perseus's backstory because he even wrote a poem about it. It turns out Perseus is famous and he didn't even know it. Yeah, but every every moment with Amon, it's just a lot of fun because again it's it's a lighthearted character and Bertie's Meritith just brings so much to this performance. It just breathes life into every little line. I like how

he's got a lot of kitty cats around his house. Yeah, yeah, a whole bunch of like you just can't even get to important paperwork because they're just kitty cats everywhere. He gives Perseus a prince costume, so he's like, you know, welcome to Joppa. You know, this is more befitting of your role as a prince because you are the son of Zeus. And then Zeus finds out that Thetis transported Perseus from Sara Fas to Joppa and he's mad about this. So what's he going to do about it? He's like, well,

Perseus is naked. That's no good. We've got to equip some items with him. He says, we need weapons of divine temper, So what are the weapons he gets, it seems like only two of the three things are actually weapons, but let's describe them all. So he gets a magical helmet from Athena, he gets a sword from Aphroda and a shield from Hera. And what's the deal with all three of these things. Well, let's see what. The magical helmet makes him invisible. The sword is just really good.

And the shield Zeus can talk to him through the shield. I think that's the main power. I think he only does one time though. Well. The shield is reflective, that's what it is. It has a nice mirror on one side. It's a mirrord shield, which will come in with Medusa. But the sword from Aphrodite, I don't know why Aphrodite has the strongest sword in the world, but it's a sword that can cut through stone. Oh yes, yeah, we see a scene where it cuts through the stone. That's right.

But all of it's really shiny. All of it looks really good. And this is also really It also kind of feels at this point in the picture it's kind of like lazy dungeon mastering because our character has just been moved by the gods, dropped into a new location and instantly given three legendary strength magical items, which he doesn't have to do anything in order to get them. They're just laying around when he comes to But I'm imagining Perseus here having to do wisdom saving throws, and

I don't know about that. Yeah, I'm gonna have a disadvantage there because I don't you know, he hasn't done any real adventuring. He's done some horse tricks on a beach somewhere, but we have nothing to indicate that he's He's ready from an experienced standpoint, to do a lot of adventuring. But again, he is the son of a god, though ideally, I guess there's a lot of this. It's

just sort of built into his godlike DNA, I guess. So. But as soon as Perseus figures out that the helmet makes him invisible, he puts it on and runs off to Joppa. So in Joppa, Perseus is amazed by the culture. He's a small town boy, after all, he's from the sleepy island of Sara Fa, so I think he's never seen the big city before. And he goes around marveling at all the sights and sounds in the marketplace. The most impressive of which, in my opinion, is the man

with the iron mustache. A guy who is lifting up this like it's got this lady getting into a harness and this dude uses it to lift her entire body off the ground with his mustache. It is most impressive. Yeah, and this though, I love this whole sequence here because it's like lepers, strong men, you know, fancy ladies, seductive ladies, people selling things. It's just it's it's it's a neat scene. But then Perseus comes across a horrible site, a body burning on a steak, and he meets a guard. Is

this Thalo? Is that this would be him? Okay, yeah, he meets Thalo and he gets some expositions. So we learned that this guy burning over here, this was a suitor to the beautiful Princess Andromeda and Robina's mother, Cassie Appia originally pledged Andromeda's hand in marriage to Calabos. But Calibos was cruel and he did some bad stuff. He was kind of a taz and then he got transformed into a horrible monster, so now he's very ugly. And Andromeda refused to marry him, and as a result, the

city is cursed, it's swarmed with stinging marsh flies. And also, now any man can propose to Andromeda. I guess they've lowered their standards. But he's got to answer a riddle first, and those who fail the riddle die. Perseus, however, is up for a challenge. He seems interested in this. He's like, well, maybe this is this is where I should apply myself. Right, So he puts on the invisible helmet sneaks up to Andromeda's room at night. And I was thinking, what's the

plan here? Does he be like, Hi, you don't know me, but I can turn invisible. What do you say we get married? And I skip the riddle? Yeah? Like what? Denny just sort of like he just looks at her while she's sleeping like a creek for a little bit. Yeah, come on, Perseus, but I guess the ideas he confirms like he's loved at first sight. He realizes I am now in love with her. I will do whatever it takes to get a shot at this riddle and answer

it right. And he sees that every night to her room comes lies a giant vulture like that settles on her balcony and brings a cage, and I think her soul leaves her body and it gets into the cage, and then the vulture carries it off. Yeah, and this is another great hairy house in effect, this giant vulture. The vulture takes it to the swampy stronghold of Calabos every night to receive the new riddle for her suitors.

And so Perseus figures, hey, I could follow her to the enemy encampment and there I could learn the riddle in advance, so I can cheat the moral of the story. Real heroes cheat. I mean, I guess he realizes as a rig system. So he's gonna try and get than Tally needs. But in order to follow the flying vulture, he has to be able to fly himself. So first there's a scene where he has to capture Pegasus, the winged horse. You know, I liked Pegasus, but I don't

really love the sequence. It feels kind of nasty when he's catching the horse by throwing a rope around its neck. It's like, oh, the poor Pegasus. Oh yeah, I didn't think about that. So much is so blown away by how good this, uh, this effect looks. He kept thinking about, how like you're having to animate a realistic horse, which is a very dynamic animal. I mean this is ben like an articulated crab or a scorpion, like this is

a horse. There's a lot, there's a lot of animal, and then on top of that you've added these beautiful wings to it and so um. Yeah, it seems like quite a challenge, but yeah, Harry house and pulls it off. But the taming process works. He tames and rides the pegasus. So now he's got one, and the next night he's got one. Like there's multiple pegasus, there's just one pegasus. I guess he'll last one, right, Yeah, he grilled up

the other ones. I turned him into barbecue and so yeah, he rides pegasus to the swamp, follows the the vulture at the night and they go to the swamp of Kelabos, you know where the bull gators beller and the panthers squall, and they landed there. And I love this set. It's a you know, a classic misty indoor for outdoor swamp that's got skeletons hanging from trees and a little alligators and all that stuff. General thoughts about the Calibos sequence,

Rob Well, I think if memory serves. The part of the situation of the Calibos character is that originally it was going to be entirely stop motion, and then at some point in creating the script, they realized they wanted they were going to need a human to play the

character as well. So we do a lot of cutting back and forth between stop motion Calibus and the actually actual human actor and makeup and and so I guess it can still be a little jarring even in a picture like this that kind of that has a lot of cutting back and forth between an integration between live action and stop motion. But of course that being said, like the stop motion Calibos looks amazing. You get that

tail sweeping around and so forth looks really good. And then, like I said earlier, the character of Calibos is we get to know him here. You know, he's he's a tragic villain. Uh, he's he's seated on this throne of sadness in his swamp um. It's so there's a this is a this is a fun sequence. Yeah. So Andromeda is there and and she begs him, you know, lift the curse from Joppa, release my soul. He's like, no, I'm going to give you a new riddle, so you know,

use this to to doom. He had another suitor, another would be hero and uh you can see also but there's like a scene where she she touches his face, I think when she's asking him to lift the curse, and I don't know, it is very sad, like you see him, you know, like wishing he could have had a better life. Yeah, but oh she walks away and then Caliboss he looks in the sand and sees what is that is that invisible? The footsteps of an invisible

Harry Hamlin And then he's mad, So Harry Hamlin. We see him walking off into the uh, into the swamp, and then Calibos ambushes him and they fight for a bit. The helmet of invisibility gets knocked off of Perseus's belt and falls into the swamp waters. Bye bye. Yeah, one legendary magical item completely gone, just lost it. Yeah, And we don't know exactly how the fight resolves. We see Perseus like land some kind of blow with his sword, and then it just cuts to the next day where

Andromeda is. They are gathered I guess in the Temple of Thetis in Joppa, and you know they're like, hey, is anybody gonna step up and propose marriage to her? Perseus does, and so they ask him the riddle, and I was like, this is not a riddle. She just describes a strange image and then says, what can it be? And the answer does not really rely on any cleverness. The answer is the ring on Caliboss's hand, which Harry Hamlin has because he cut Caliboss's hand off. Oh yeah,

so he fills us in. He says, hey, yeah, I defeated Caliboss in battle. I cut off his hand and a spared his life on the condition that he lift the curse from the city. So he correctly answered the riddle, and the curse it seems at least has been lifted. So are we happily ever after now? But that wouldn't make sense. We're only like forty five minutes into the movie. I know, it seems like things are going well. The

labyrinth is a piece of cake. But so while they're off partying and you know, Perseus and Andromeda are kind of getting to know each other, they're like, oh, yes, I guess we are in love now. Calibos comes into the temple. He kneels before the statue of Thetus, and he prays for a way to get revenge on Perseus. He says, show me how to punish Perseus for this blasphemy, and they just says, damn, well, can't hurt Perseus because

Zeus protects him. So Calibos instead is like, well, then let me get revenge on the people Perseus loves Andromeda and the people of Joppa. He begs her to send the kraken. So I think it's the next day there's the marriage ceremony, They're about to be joined together forever.

And then it's at the marriage ceremony that the Queen Cassiopeia is like, good thing, my daughter is even more beautiful than the goddess in this statue here, and then the statue is like and its head falls off, and then we get that scene where suddenly it's Maggie Smith's face like superimposed onto the statue speaking to them. I'm gonna say this effect looks funny, and I don't think it was supposed to. Most of the effects in this movie I think are beautiful, but this one is a

bit comic. I like that. I mean one level. I like the effect of it. It's like you really nest up. You you went too far. You mocked the gods. And so now the goddess is appearing to you through this crumpled statue and pronouncing doom. That's what she does, lay out some doom. Yes for the insults to me and my son, I demand the sacrifice of Andromeda in thirty days. We're going to feed her to the kraken. So now Perseus has a new riddle to solve, and that is,

what are we gonna do about this cracking? Yeah, how do you kill a kraken? Ammon originally says, no man knows how to kill a kraken, and so Perseus says, oh, that's no good. But Ammon says, but there may be a woman who does, actually three women. We must consult the Stigian witches. They may know a way, but there's a problem. They tend to eat people. But the heroes are not deterred. So all of our all of our

friends now get together. Harry Hamlin, Burgess, Meredith, Andromeda, what's his name, the soldier that Thallo or whatever it is, and then a bunch of other unnamed soldiers who are might as well be wearing in a red star fleet shirts, right, Yeah, they're they're damn do you know that? They're just pure monster fodder. So they're going to head off to find the witches. Now I think they don't initially know how to find the witches, but Zeus has a way to

help with this. We go back to the gods and Zeus is like, this is the part where he goes up to Athena. He's like, hey, that helmet you gave my son, well he dropped it in a swamp. He needs a new gift. Give him your owl, your friend the bubo here. You know it is all seeing, all knowing. You shouldn't be a problem for you to give it a give it to my son. And she's like, oh, let a mortal have my owl. That's gross. So she's

not going to do that. Instead, she gets pat Roach to make him a robot owl, and we briefly see a scene in the Forge of effaced Us where he's kneeling over a table and like a watchmaker, he's messing with all little gears and stuff. Yeah, it's a fun Sepence. I don't know, it's a different type of role for pat Roach here. And also it's kind of like we've talked about the tactile nature of the stop motion effects, and Boobo really has that tactile feel. And it really

begins here watching him physically assembled by a vestus. Now he flies up to our heroes and settles down on a tree branch. But Boobo was also played for comic relief, much like the Droids and Star Wars. He kind of like beepee boop, and then he falls off the branch and land's head first on the ground and goes whoo whoo. You know, yeah, this is again. Every time Boobo does something, there are a lot of movements to it, like a lot.

A lot of love went into creating this effect. I do love Bubo, and I bet little kids especially love Bubo. Oh yeah. I remember showing this to my son a couple of years, but he loved He wasn't up for rewatching it. He wasn't interest in rewatching it with me for this episode, but he's watched it a couple of times in the past and loved all the monsters in a Dicurse and loved Boobo. The ancient Greek astromechdroid yeah which does it does serve a navigational function guides them

to the three witches. That's exactly right. Bobo can lead them to the shrine of the Stigione witches, and so they go there. They have to climb a mountain to get up to the shrine. The three witches, just as in the myth. The three of them share one eye between them, though it's not an eye here really, it's like a crystal ball. They hold it up to their forehead into their like fleshed over eye sockets, and there's a certain amount of squabbling among them about who gets

to use it next. And oh but yeah, this sequence is a lot of fun because there's a lot of cackling, there's a lot of I oh, of course, I'll tell you about the about way you can find I guess they revealed that they're not even looking for Medusa at this point, right, but they revealed that Medusa's a way. But well, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Like, in order to get the advantage, of course, of Perseus has Bubo flying and steal the eye, so now he has

something to bargain with. Yeah, so they're like, give us back the eye, and he says, no, first, you got to tell me how I can defeat a krack in and they do tell him an idea, yeah, and it's you should go get the head of the Meduce. It works even if she's been slain. Of course. The only problem is she's more dangerous than the krack in, so you're you're going to have a really hard time pulling this off. And in the midst there's all sorts of fun stuff going on in here. They have a big

cannibal stew going. They have to like push a squirming hand back into it. And I really love the one which who's she's like talking about how, yes, you'll be able to use the Medusa's head against against the kraken, a titan against a titan, and she's all excited about it. It really excited to deliver on the film's title, Oh yes. And I do love that they're disgusting cauldron of slop.

There is very funny sound effects and when like a human hand reaches out of it, going like ah, and they just kind of like tuck it back in the quiet get down in there, all right. So next thing is they got to get the head of the Gorgon Medusa. So they crossed the river sticks to get to the island of the Gorgon. There is, of course a big battle. I'm not going to go into detail about everything about this bottle. You you just need to watch it for yourself.

But it is wonderfully atmospheric. It's very well paced. Like the lead up to it, a little things they see approaching her layer, the human shaped stone statues that kind of crumble. Oh, and that, of course, we find out the Medusa has been working in the Kremlin with the two headed dog. Oh yeah. The two headed dog I think may have been cut from the Turner broadcast. They've probably cut it got the movie for length, So I don't remember ever seeing the two headed dog when I

watched it. Maybe I'm wrong on that, But and the two it's a two headed dog instead of a three headed dog. It's not cebrous. It's not cerbrous. But I think it's because it was too much work to do a three headed dog. That's what I've always read, so they went with two. They scaled it back a bit. I don't love the two headed dog fight because I don't know. I just always seeing somebody fight a dog, even a vicious one with the sword, always just makes

me feeling. Oh yeah, Like the movie doesn't lose anything to have that whole sequence cut in my opinion. But setting aside the battle with the two Headed Dog, I would say the Island of the Dead sequence here where they find Medusa's layer, go in fight Medusa. Multiple soldiers get killed by Medusa. We have this fabulous stop motion Medusa.

This whole sequence is just absolutely perfect. No matter what problems you know you might have with the rest of the picture and its tone and the lazy d m ing and Harry Hamlin's performance and being a bit green, I feel like every things firing on all cylinders in this sequence. Even Harry Hamlin, I think is really good because he's he's he embodies this like hero's fear rather well. I think in this sequence like it feels like there are actual stakes, even for the son of a God.

Completely agreed. Pretty much everything in this scene is pitch perfect. There are so many little details I love. I like

how quiet it is. Actually you would have expected the whole thing to be, you know, ramping up with like loud, intense music, but there are parts of it that are actually very quiet, and I love that it contributes to the creepy atmosphere, like the part before you see the gorgon when they're looking for her and they're walking between the columns, and then suddenly you see her shadow go move into the move onto the wall, and there's this soft,

almost silent slithering sound, just the sound of a snake, you know, moving over a stone and not even hissing yet, just just that little gliding and you see the shadow with the snakes writhing in her hair, and oh, it's so good. Oh yeah. The lighting is brilliant in all of this as well, so so many Harry Hamlin, not Harry Hamlet, Harry Housing scenes. You often have things going on in very like stark lighting U, but in this sequence it's you know, it's just a dark cavern with

with fires lighting everything, deep shadows and so forth. It's so good. Also, the moment when you see Medusa kind of activate her powers to turn one of the other soldiers to stone, where we zoom in on her face, which is horrifying, and her eyes glow green and the power emanates from her and then's he's calcified. That is just it's a scene for the ages. Absolutely. I've also read I don't know if this is true or not, but I've read that Harry Hamlin himself had to argue

for the traditional beheading of the monster. I think there I had read read that like some version in the script or the way they were going to shoot it was him throwing the shield and using it as a weapon. Supposedly it's like to have it be a little less gory for censors. And I don't know if this is true, but it said that Harry Hamlin was one of the ones was like, no, we should stick to the myth

on this. I don't know, but at any rate, and if that is the case, I'm glad they did because it Yeah, I can't imagine this, this sequence playing out any other way. Yeah. And then he and you can feel the danger in the scene. Even after he has beheaded her, he's afraid. He's being very cautious, like because her blood is running out and her blood, her blood is like it's like the blood of the xenomorphin Alien. It's just this burning acid that melts his shield and

he takes her head, but he's afraid. He's like careful not to accidentally even look at it. He's like holding it out of his view. I'm glad you mentioned Alien because Alien came out a few years earlier, and I feel like this sequence has some similarities to that final showdown on the Life that Soul between Ripley and the Xenomorph, you know, the sense of intense danger, like the monster is so dangerous that the wrong move will just be

absolutely lethal. I can see exactly what you mean. Yeah, that similarity is there, And they also both prey take it, yes, both fairly dressed, yes, and the posture with which the hero is oriented to the monster with like with the back to it, but against you know, hiding behind an obstruction. And so when we finally finish up the Medusa secrets,

it almost feels like we've done it. This is the end of the movie, right, Like it's just so satisfying, but we still have like a large chunk of the film to go at that point, because they have to. This is just a side quest to get something to defeat the ultimate threat in the picture. Though I do think it is the highlight. But we yeah, we do get several other battles. There's a great battle Caliboss shows back up and attacks Perseus and his friends with scorpions,

a giant scorpions. This is your you know, this is about as classic Harry housing as you get you know, stop, most scorpions come into your heroes and they have a big fight. And then Calibos comes in himself and they fight him, and Calibos is good. He's bringing a whip, which is that's great. Yeah, he has the whip, and he also he's replaced his hand with like a stabby tool which he used to like stab the medusa head, get it bleeding and the blood turned into scorpions on

the ground. Yeah, But Calibos is defeated in the end. And then finally, how is Percy is going to defeat the krack in? While we see Andromeda, you know, they take her down to the shore. It's like, yep, too bad, We're gonna have to give you to the ce monster and he pops up. Perseus at the last minute is able to unveil that gorgon head to show it right to the monster and just stone him up. Yeah, and then he crumbles, which is something I always liked, and

I remember it as a kid. I was thinking about this. It's kind of like, Okay, the creature its body can physically hold itself together while it's flesh, but once it becomes stone like it like it just begins to crumble, like it can no longer stand. I don't know, is like that that detail? Yeah, but it introduces the brittleness. Yeah, and it's very dramatic too. It's like, not only is the monster petrified, but now it crumbles into pieces. It's

completely destroyed. And then we get like we do get a little sort of outro with the gods, which felt kind of weird because we've we've seen how how petty and cruel they are, and they just have this kind of bit where the other gods are like, well, you know, these humans, these mortals really showed how heroic and brave they can be. It's I hope there aren't too many brave ones otherwise we're going to be out of a job.

And they're just they kind of have like a bemused laugh at all of this, but are also kind of like, yeah, humans are all right after all, and they all live happily ever after. Yeah. So I love Clash of the Titans. Oh absolutely, Yeah. This is a This one's near and dear to me. So it's great to finally discuss it here on Weird House Cinema. And like you say, maybe in the future will come back and look at another Hairy Housing picture. There are a number of good ones

to choose for them there. All right, we're gonna go ahead and wrap this one up. But yeah, we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Do you have memories of seeing Clash of the Titans on Turner Networks growing up like I do? Or did you see it in the theater? What was that like back in eighty one? Let us know. We'd love to hear from you. If you have suggestions for other films to cover in the future. Do you have favorite Harry House and Effects or monsters

or favorite Harry House in movies? Yeah, right in we'll discuss it on listener Mails, which published on Mondays. We're primarily a science podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do a short form artifact or monster fact, and then on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema. And if you want to see a list of the films we've covered in the past, you can

go to a couple of different places. I blog about these episodes at Samutamusic dot com, and also if you go to letterbox that's l tt r boxd dot com. Well that we have a user account there weird House, and we have a list of all the films we've covered and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming up in the week to follow. Huge thanks to our audio

producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hi, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.