Martine Beswick: Creative.
An artist. He was many, many things.
Caroline Munro: An extraordinary clever, humble - very, very humble man.
Marshall Julius: You see Ray's influence everywhere.
Mark Millar: Harryhausen was Neil Armstrong, you know, he was the first man on the moon with this stuff.
Barry Purves: I would say Ray was one of the most influential people of cinema.
Vanessa Harryhausen: How dad got interested in films early on was - Grandma took him to see King Kong.
Ray Harryhausen: And when I came out I haven't been the same since.
So you can see what an influence a film can be on a young mind.
VH: And I think that was when the light came on and he said, 'that's what I want to do'.
BP: Can you imagine just coming out of the Depression when everything was so tough.
How could you not be inspired if you saw that as a kid for the first time?
There's a scene where Kong fights the t-rex.
[Music, Kong roaring, and Ann screaming]
The music is screaming away and suddenly these two confront each other,
and the music stops
and these two characters are weighing each other up looking at each other.
They're thinking.
When I first saw that, I thought, 'my God, I know that those are rubber skeletons, but they're thinking'.
MJ: It just all seemed very real, and Ray was inspired by that and talked a lot about how that film changed his life.
BP: To have seen film itself and then to have seen King Kong must have blown your mind,
and of course Ray saw that and said, 'yeah I want to be part of that'.
VH: And his parents said, 'okay fine', which is amazing in those days, you know?
RH: When I found out about the glories of stop-motion animation I started to experiment in my garage.
VH: And Grandma and Grandpa would would help him.
Grandpa was very technical - he could do all the engineering and and all the metal stuff,
and Grandma did a lot of the costumes and other things, so they were both hands on and very, very supportive to Dad.
I think it would [have] been so much harder for him if he didn't have that support.
Ray Harryhausen: Well after King Kong of course, Willis O'Brien was my hero.
I called him up at MGM one time and he invited me over to the studio.
So I loaded some of my dinosaurs into a suitcase and he gave me some wonderful advice.
He said, ' your stegosaurus' legs look like sausages'.
VH: And Dad didn't take it as an insult. He studied, and he did night school, he went to art school,
And later on he got to do all sorts of different things.
[Theme tune to 'Mighty Joe Young']
MJ: Ray's first film, 'Mighty Joe Young', that he made with Willis O'Brien - I loved that movie,
because Joe was a little bit smaller than King Kong, so he was like - he was like friend sized.
[man screaming]
Jill: 'Don't shoot! Joe, drop it! Drop it! Don't hurt him!
MJ: You really relate to Joe, he wasn't just a special effect. You really kind of care about him
When I watched it, and still when I watch it today, you actually forget pretty early on that he's not real.
Jill: 'Alright Joe'.
[soaring music]
BP: To be able to give a thought process to an inanimate object that's what we try to do.
And Ray succeeded brilliantly in all his characters
JW: His creatures have a unique place, not just because of their design and look
because of course that's the first thing that strikes you, but the performance as well.
[wind whistling]
Hercules: 'It must have been the wind'.
[metal creaking, ominous music starts]
JW: When you stop and look at the creatures, and they're actually acting in those scenes
that's what gives it believability.
[ominous music continues]
BP: What makes his characters convincing is these little details.
He had dynamics in his action. He was not afraid of slow movements, and quick movements, and quirky movements.
He was acting those characters.
NG: I mean if you think about Ray Harryhausen, and him acting out all these creatures
he was [laughs], he was all those creatures a little bit!
DJ: He has a very individual style of animating. It's actually very elegant.
He really puts himself and his soul into his work.
VH: All of the creatures, like the baboon, and the Trog.
[Trog roaring]
VH: They all had these wonderful personalities. I felt sorry for a lot of them
because some of them would be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Dad would dispatch them
and it was like, 'oh God, why did you kill that one?!'
MM: There's a total humanity to the Harryhausen characters
and even something like the Troglodyte in Sinbad, like every now and then it'll do this sad motion with its eyes
Dione: 'We are friends'.
MM: You know it just likes the girl. It's just quite a basic character you know but it's kind of weirdly lovable.
And then when he sacrifices himself for everybody at the end it's quite sad.
[Troglodyte roaring and Saber Toothed Tiger snarling]
MM: And it's a piece of clay, you know, but it works. It's acting.
NG: Although they're used in a kind of scary way, I think they all had a very human side to them in some ways.
[Homunculus moaning]
NG: I think there was a lot of emotion in them, which you didn't really see much in those old films.
BP: Even flying saucers, he managed to get a character. They weren't cold there was a feeling about them.
[flying saucer whirring before crashing into tower]
BP: I think one of the joys of stop-motion is you always know it's a puppet.
And you think, 'yeah I know that's a puppet, but wow!
Look at the movement of that tail!'
Dr Leonardo: 'Gloves, where are my gloves?'
VH: With a lot of his creatures he had specific movements, and to this day they're iconic
You know, a swish of a tail, or a tentacle moving, or a look or a posture.
BP: The way he's shifting his weight, or he's looking at a character
or he does something with his hands, and his elbows that distinctly Ray.
So he is in his characters. He'll be forever in those characters.
[music, Harpies' wings flapping, and Phineus yelling]
BP: In a way it's a shame we don't have lots of video from the onset footage
to have seen these actors fighting... nothing.
And it takes a very special sort of acting.
I think also what it takes is Ray being on set when they're doing those rehearsals.
VH: It was great watching him because he was really hands-on
and he did all sorts of things so that the actors could get a visual and react in the right way.
[music and swords fighting]
CM: It was an amazing experience, and I think Ray would agree it had a magical feel to it.
I remember speaking to him, I said, 'what is it about your films that that you love?'
He said, 'for me it's like a fairy tale'.
MB: He actually, there was a, there was an encouragement to come into his world.
There was an invitation into his world. And we just jumped right in.
CM: Our director was Gordon Hessler, but when it came to doing the special effects scenes
then Ray stepped in and he stepped in with such aplomb.
VH: I think the storyboards really helped, because the director and and other people could:
'oh okay, I''m supposed to be looking at this', and they'd get a clearer idea of these creatures.
BP: This is what the character is going to look like, this is how he's going to move...
CM: It's going to be loud, and it's going to be heavy, and you kind of get the sense of what he wanted.
MB: When we had to attack a dinosaur, or a pterodactyl, he would be on a flatbed truck with this stick
and we would be following him, in our bits you know, all sort of bedraggled with our spears
and we're going, 'ha! Ha! Ha!' and it was just hysterical.
[pterodactyl squawking, water splashing, and people screaming]
CM: For my eye line, when I was with the centaur, he'd painted this great big wooden eye and nailed on
so I had this eye to follow!
And he'd talk you through what he wanted because obviously he he put his creatures to your acting
[noise of a crowd jostling and Centaur roaring]
CM: He was great to work with, he'd know exactly, and if it wasn't quite right he'd say:
'could we do it again? Could we try it a slightly different way?'
and because you wanted to make it work for the film, then you did, and it all just came together.
When you saw it you couldn't believe what had been put on!
MB: I was utterly amazed at what he had created, you know, what we were had been fighting.
Little teeny things that turned out to be these monsters on screen.
[people screaming and T-Rex roaring]
DJ: I think the interesting thing about him is how he combines them, in that he links the style.
They really fit together. It's not just, 'oh here's some animation, here's some live action.
They really speak to each other.
CM: It's genius! I mean that was Ray.
BP: Dinosaurs and skeletons attract lots of fans and very enthusiastic students
and he always had time for everybody, and I think that's what he'll be remembered for as well
for his kindness of always talking to students.
His house in London, he always invited people in which, I mean, it's wonderful.
VH: Why he didn't know that his name was in the the telephone directory, I do not know
but he was the only Harryhausen, and sure enough, yes - people did call...
JW: And he answered the phone, and it really grew from there.
Ray Harryhausen: Well, model animation is basically the same principle as the animated cartoon,
only instead of using flat drawings, you have a model such as this.
JW: I contacted Ray because I was making a documentary, and I thought this would make a terrific subject.
So when he answered the phone himself I was quite taken aback,
and when he invited me to the house I was surprised
and he spent lots of time with me, and he didn't need to.
He was very much a giver of his time, and although he wasn't making films at this point
he didn't really need to entertain a film student.
VH: I think because he had that encouragement, which was so important he just wanted them to have that passion and love.
So he took the time.
Perseus: Pegasus.
VH: You know, at the end of Clash I think he just knew that things were moving on
and there was a younger generation with different, faster ideas.
JW: I think there was a sadness about not animating any more, but there's a lot of pressure when you're making a film
So I think it was tinged with relief as well, not having the burden of a very large project.
VH: In those days it was so jolly hard, and he did it single-handedly, and people believed in him and took inspiration, you know?
MJ: To me there's a little bit of Ray in virtually everything, in one way or another.
I mean his impact and reach is absolutely immeasurable.
[Star Wars theme song]
I see that obviously in the works of George Lucas.
Princess Leia: For luck.
His sense of adventure and fantasy in the films of Steven Spielberg.
In the works of James Cameron.
Peter Jackson.
Come on, I mean Lord of the Rings wouldn't have happened without Ray Harryhausen.
In the same way that Ray was inspired by King Kong, generations of filmmakers
and not just filmmakers -
Wallace: 'No cheese, Gromit'.
MJ: Writers, comic book artists.
I mean, every kind of creative person.
MM: Harryhausen's an immeasurable influence, you know?
I see Sinbad as as important to my career as Spy Who Loved Me, Spider-man, Superman, Star Wars.
Sinbad: 'Hold tight Princess'.
He carried the torch through to the Spielbergs, and the Lucases, and Marvel, and all the modern stuff, you know?
The movies are still with us because they're brilliant, and they're unlike anything else.
BP: I think it's a shared adventure. You go on a journey wanting to be told a story.
CM: As he would say, just wonderful fairy tales that he brought to life and made his creatures live for that time.
MJ: It was like he was making the best toys in the world
and playing with them better than any of us could have ever played with them.
MM: Seeing that as a kid, it was impossible not to be swept up in the magic of it
because he was feeling it, and it was beaming out the screen at us
even in a house in Coatbridge watching on television.
VH: It's mind-blowing really. It's very humbling.
I don't think dad could get over that, that he made such a big impact on all these wonderful animators and directors.
They got so inspired by dad, because he got inspired by a black and white film
and now they're inspired by all his films and his techniques.
So it's sort of like passing the baton on.
It's, it's wonderful