Weirdhouse Cinema: Clash of the Titans (1981)

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1981 Ray Harryhausen stop-motion epic “Clash of the Titans,” which also happens to star a bunch of notable human actors as well.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob
Lamb and this is Joe McCormack. And today, oh oh,
I got an itch for some stop motion animation. That
was what I was craving this week, I Rob. I

(00:25):
don't know if you're the same way I am. I
think stop motion monsters are one of my most nostalgic
film elements. They remind me of when I was a kid.
I had a VHS tape I think recorded in EP modes,
a very grainy and low quality. But I had a
tape of the Ray Harryhausen movie Sindbad and the Eye

(00:47):
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

(01:08):
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

(01:29):
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,

(01:52):
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,

(02:15):
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

(02:38):
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

(03:00):
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

(03:20):
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

(03:41):
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

(04:04):
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

(04:27):
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,

(04:50):
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.

(05:10):
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

(05:32):
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

(05:56):
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,

(06:17):
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

(06:40):
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

(07:00):
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.

(07:21):
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

(07:44):
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

(08:04):
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.

(08:24):
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

(08:45):
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

(09:06):
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

(09:29):
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

(09:49):
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

(10:11):
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,

(10:32):
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,

(10:53):
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,

(11:16):
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

(11:41):
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.

(12:01):
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

(12:26):
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,

(12:55):
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,

(13:18):
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,

(13:38):
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

(14:00):
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,

(14:22):
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,

(14:42):
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

(15:05):
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

(15:27):
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

(15:51):
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

(16:14):
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

(16:36):
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

(16:56):
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

(17:20):
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

(17:43):
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

(18:05):
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

(18:29):
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

(18:50):
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,

(19:14):
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

(19:36):
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.

(20:01):
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,

(20:22):
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

(20:44):
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

(21:05):
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

(21:28):
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

(21:50):
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

(22:12):
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?

(22:33):
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

(22:57):
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

(23:17):
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

(23:37):
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

(23:58):
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

(24:21):
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

(24:41):
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

(25:03):
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

(25:25):
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,

(25:50):
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,

(26:13):
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

(26:33):
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

(26:53):
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,

(27:14):
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

(27:36):
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

(27:59):
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

(28:22):
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,

(28:44):
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

(29:05):
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,

(29:27):
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

(29:49):
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

(30:12):
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

(30:33):
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

(30:54):
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

(31:14):
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

(31:36):
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

(31:57):
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

(32:19):
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

(32:42):
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

(33:04):
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

(33:26):
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

(33:48):
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,

(34:13):
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

(34:36):
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

(34:56):
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

(35:19):
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

(35:39):
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

(36:00):
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,

(36:22):
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.

(36:42):
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.

(37:04):
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

(37:26):
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,

(37:47):
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

(38:09):
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

(38:33):
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

(38:54):
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

(39:16):
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.

(39:38):
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

(39:59):
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

(40:20):
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,

(40:43):
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,

(41:05):
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,

(41:29):
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

(41:51):
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,

(42:11):
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

(42:33):
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

(42:56):
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,

(43:19):
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

(43:42):
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

(44:05):
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

(44:25):
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

(44:47):
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

(45:11):
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.

(45:31):
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.

(45:52):
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,

(46:14):
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

(46:34):
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

(46:56):
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

(47:19):
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.

(47:41):
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

(48:01):
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

(48:22):
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

(48:43):
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

(49:05):
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

(49:25):
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

(49:48):
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,

(50:09):
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

(50:31):
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

(50:51):
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

(51:12):
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

(51:33):
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

(51:54):
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,

(52:16):
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

(52:36):
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.

(52:59):
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

(53:20):
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

(53:40):
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.

(54:01):
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

(54:24):
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

(54:44):
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,

(55:06):
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.

(55:29):
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

(55:51):
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

(56:14):
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

(56:35):
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,

(56:56):
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

(57:17):
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

(57:41):
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

(58:02):
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

(58:25):
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

(58:46):
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

(59:06):
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

(59:26):
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

(59:48):
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

(01:00:10):
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

(01:00:31):
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

(01:00:52):
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

(01:01:12):
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

(01:01:33):
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

(01:01:53):
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,

(01:02:17):
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?

(01:02:40):
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

(01:03:02):
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.

(01:03:24):
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

(01:03:44):
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

(01:04:09):
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

(01:04:32):
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,

(01:04:55):
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

(01:05:17):
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

(01:05:37):
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

(01:05:58):
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

(01:06:21):
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

(01:06:42):
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

(01:07:05):
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?

(01:07:27):
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,

(01:07:48):
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

(01:08:09):
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,

(01:08:31):
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

(01:08:54):
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

(01:09:15):
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

(01:09:38):
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,

(01:10:00):
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

(01:10:21):
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

(01:10:43):
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,

(01:11:04):
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

(01:11:25):
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,

(01:11:47):
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

(01:12:10):
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

(01:12:32):
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

(01:12:54):
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

(01:13:14):
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

(01:13:36):
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,

(01:13:56):
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

(01:14:19):
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

(01:14:44):
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

(01:15:05):
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

(01:15:25):
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.

(01:15:47):
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.

(01:16:10):
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

(01:16:33):
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,

(01:16:54):
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

(01:17:15):
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,

(01:17:36):
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

(01:17:58):
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

(01:18:18):
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

(01:18:41):
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,

(01:19:01):
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

(01:19:23):
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

(01:19:44):
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

(01:20:05):
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

(01:20:28):
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

(01:20:51):
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

(01:21:14):
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

(01:21:35):
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

(01:21:57):
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.

(01:22:20):
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

(01:22:42):
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

(01:23:04):
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

(01:23:24):
Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.