p e n g u i n d e v i l

One of the two great fantasy classics of my youthful TV viewing days (along with The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad) Jason and the Argonauts is one of Harryhausen’s great masterpieces. Featuring some of Harryhausen’s classic stop-motion monsters, along with a mob of gods and some great adventuring on the high seas. Jason and the Argonauts is the story of a group of heroes (including Jason and the troublesome and bear skin clad Heracles) who set off in search of the Golden Fleece. This all happens against the background of Zeus’ game playing. As, when many years before, Zeus gives favor to a king by allowing him to conquer a rival, he also tells him that one of those rivals’ three children will one day unseat him. Jason happens to be the son of that defeated king, and one of his crew members happens to be that the deposer’s son, hoping to prevent Jason from completing his quest. Personally, I would assume that if Zeus told me that was the deal, then I would assume that he would be right. But this fellow (stupid mortal) decides that he can defeat Zeus’ set-up.





While it may seem like another grand human adventure, it is, like all other endeavors, just a game for the gods, to help them pass the time. In this case, a chess game between that good cop/bad cop team of Hera (the always delightful Honor Blackman, only a year away from becoming infamous as Pussy Galore) and Zeus.





Their voyage to find the golden fleece is fraught with dangers, but also with some convenient assistance from Hera who accompanies them in the forms of the masthead of the ship. She sends them to an island for supplies with the warning not to take anything but food and when Heracles and his pal Hylas stumble upon the treasure chamber below the great bronze form of the islands protector, Talos, Heracles just can’t help but steal a giant golden brooch pin to use as a javelin. Of course Talos, following the creed of neither a borrower nor a lender be, cranes his creaky neck their way and sets off in a vengeful pursuit.





I watched this part of the movie with my daughter who insisted on watching the scenes of Talos moving around over and over again… With frequent pausing when she got scared. I think we watched them about 5 times. But I don’t blame her as this is the first great Harryhausen monster sequence in the film, and one of the best and longest. Plus, Talos is just a bad dude and, hey, those snivelly little people did steal his brooch pin!





This movie is great. The effects are great. Even with it being nearly 50 years old, the great stop-motion effects don’t slow down the appreciation or the “buy-in” of the movie. The splashing effects, on the other hand, kind of killed my buy-in because when the Argo is dropped into the sea by Talos and when they are traveling through the treacherous straight, the water drops from the splashes make it all too obvious that the things falling in the water were really quite small. But they gain an enormous amount of credit in my book for traveling through most of the movie in an actual ship in actual water. That is pretty cool. And, of course, the monsters… Talos, The Hydra and the teeth of the hydra (Harryhausen’s famous skeletons).