Heroic Fantasy in the Films

Excerpted from...
Jason and His Electric Argonauts,
by Erwin Stevenson

Excerpted from...
A Foreword,
by Roy Thomas

... with this issue, Savage Tales begins a new series which will deal with the greatest heroic-fantasy films of all time - specializing in those which come closest to the swashbuckling spirit of the Conan tales themselves.

... an even more difficult challenge to producer Charles Schneer and special photographic-effects ace Ray Harryhausen.

The two had worked together before, on projects such as The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958), The Three World of Gulliver (1960), and The Mysterious Island (1961). After Jason, they would team up again on The First Men in the Moon (1964), The Valley of Gwangi (1968), and the current The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.

Harryhausen, the inventor of the Dynamation process, specializes in the art of stop-motion. Roughly the equivilant of animation, stop-motion is accomplished with articulated, three-dimensional miniatures instead of drawings. Fitted with jointed steel skeletons, these models are photographed, moved, and photographed again ... each time on only a single frame of motion-picture film.

Take the scene of the Harpy flying at Jason. Footage of the actor must first be filmed, showing him reacting to the monster. Usually, Harryhausen himself will direct this sort of filming, so he can make sure the actor is looking in the right direction and reacting the correct way. The films of the actor and the Harpy now have to be combined onto one piece of film...