JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS **

Once upon a time special effects really were special and CGI was the stuff of science fiction. I still hanker after epics were the extras are real people and the sets, real sets and gods and monsters were things conjured up by men who were geniuses with a camera. The first "King Kong" may look clumsy now but who can deny its charm. However, it was in the fifties and early sixties that movies with 'special effects' really took off thanks largely to men like Ray Harryhausen. Today the names of the directors of many of these films are largely forgotten but the effects and images conjured up by men like Harryhausen are as fresh in the memory as if newly minted. Indeed, Harryhausen may be the only special effects creator who is as well known as some directors and actors.

Don Chaffey's "Jason and the Argonauts" has become something of a classic despite being a bit of a clinker as a movie and it's all down to Harryhausen. For the most part this is a conventional sword-and-sandal epic with an Ancient Greece that is part myth and part studio kitsch but the effects that Harryhausen came up with lifted the movie onto an altogether higher and dafter plain. This is a Boys Own Adventure of the old school and it has stood the test of time surprisingly well.

Jason is Todd Armstrong who was blessed with good looks and cursed with a singular lack of talent in every other department. Nancy Kovack is the gorgeous and equally vacant heroine while the supporting cast consists largely of British character actors and brawny men in loin-cloths. The Grecian isles, however, certainly look good thanks to Wilkie Cooper's excellent colour photography but it is Harryhausen's stop-motion creations that make this film memorable. Even to this day Jason's battle with the skeletons still gives me a buzz. The great score is by none other than the great Bernard Herrmann.