The Dinosaur Films of Ray Harryhausen: Features, Early 16mm Experiments and Unrealized Projects

By Roy P. Webber

Book Overview

Ray Harryhausen's animated creatures sparkled with predatory alertness and subtle quirks of behavior that stamped each with a distinct and memorable personality. His films are famous for being among the very best of the genre.

The first chapter of this book chronicles Harryhausen's formative years and work on numerous 16mm experiments, beginning with his viewing of King Kong in 1933. The next four chapters cover his four feature-length dinosaur films, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The Animal World, One Million Years B.C. and The Valley of Gwangi, providing extensive information about all aspects of the staging of their stop-motion content and many additional facets of the overall production process. The paleontological accuracy of his saurians from a modern perspective is also examined. A chapter on his work and experiences in the 1970s and beyond discusses potential dinosaur projects, as well as The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786469366
• ISBN13: 9780786469369
• Release Date: April 2012
• Publisher: McFarland & Company
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.9" x 9.8"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Great book, tons of info.

This book is awesome from all the aspects of each of Harryhausen's dinosaur projects. Things are discussed that never have really surfaced in any other Harryhausen books. The only down sides are that it's not a better quality paper and lack of any color photos. Some photos appear blurry also. Overall, a great book if you want more than just pictures.

A "must" read for all Ray Harryhausen fans

Ray Harryhausen was a pioneer of the cinema. He was the man whose expanded and advanced the utilization of "stop-motion" animation. This was the labor intensive and painstaking practice of making models and puppets seem to come alive through moving slightly moving them and taking a photograph of each movement, then position them again, taking another photograph, repeating the process again and again. Running those still photographs through a film projector gave the fascinating illusion of movement that was a popular breakthrough in "special effects" for early fantasy movies featuring all manner of monsters and dinosaurs. In particular, Harryhausen was essential to bringing to life the dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures that were integral to his four classic Hollywood films: "One Million Years B.C.", "The Beasts from 20,000 Fathoms", "The Animal World", and "The Valley of Gwangi". Harryhausen developed stop-motion animation techniques that were to influence subsequent generations of film makers and special effects professionals down to this very day. In The Dinosaur Films Of Ray Harryhausen: Features, Early 16mm Experiments And Unrealized Projects, Roy P. Webber provides a complete history of Harryhausen's cinematic work that rises to the level of archetypal scholarship, including an informative perspective on the pale ontological accuracy of the saurians from a contemporary perspective given the advances of paleontology over the past few decades. Of special note is the exhaustive appendix regarding dinosaur-related films that Harryhausen had a hand in. Nicely illustrated throughout with vintage photos and a "must" read for all Ray Harryhausen fans, The Dinosaur Films Of Ray Harryhausen is a core addition to professional and academic library Cinematic Studies and Film History reference collections.