Ray Harryhausen's Proposed "War Of The Worlds"
As spooky season steadily approaches, one can’t help to think about all the costumes, candy, and horror movies that will usher in Halloween. I’m sure that I am not the only one with an extensive watch list on the rise. Apart from all the slasher and paranormal films that we are all anticipating, we must never forget the ones that started it all, I’m talking about monster films. Not just any monster films, Ray Harryhausen monster films. In His early days, Ray Harryhausen aspired to create an iconic science-fiction film adaptation of one of pop culture’s greatest authors. Before we dive into this forgotten piece of history , for anyone who has never heard of Ray Harryhausen, here is a quick bio on this Hollywood legend;
Harryhausen was widely known as one of the if not thee juggernaut of special effects artistry during the mid-century Hollywood era. In a time long before the use of computer-generated imagery, Ray Harryhausen captured the imagination of millions with his skillful techniques for creature design and stop-motion animation. If you can imagine it, he did it. Form giant gorillas, talking baboons, sword-wielding skeletons, alien robots, monsters, and dinosaurs.
He and partner/ producer Charles Shneer created and named this new form of cinematic artistic style as "Dynamation" that allowed his armature creatures to come to life. Charles Shneer got the inspiration for the name while driving his Buick when he noticed the name "Dynoflow" on the dash, "GM is going after their audience called Dynoflow, and I thought that was magic, so I dropped the flow kept the Dyno and put motion" - Charles H Shneer.
Long before 1953's The War of the Worlds directed by Byron Haskin, Ray Harryhausen had created test footage for a possible film based on H.G Well's classic science fiction novel of the same name. Staying true to Well's description of the hostel extraterrestrials named "Martians", Ray Harryhausen designed his aliens to resemble octopi that stood taller than a human, could breathe on land, and boast a bird-like beak. Furthermore, in the footage, the aliens met their demise due to life-threatening viruses the Earth was harboring (ahead of its time if you ask me). Even at an early stage of his creature-creating career, he managed to keep his trademark in his designs. If you've seen any of his films, you would have noticed his creatures with great " acting abilities". Like the films that followed, the Martin in the test footage displayed fatigue and panting heavily as it died from the viral infection.
Ray Harryhausen never managed to create the actual film, for the most part, it remained purposed test footage that never got picked up by any of the major Hollywood Studios at the time. But in an ironic twist of faith, he later went on making his first sci-fi feature First Men In The Moon, which also happens to be based on another H.G Well's classic science fiction novel.
Even though the use of stop-motion and armatures has diminished in the big-budget Hollywood atmosphere, you can still find "echoes" of Ray Harryhausen's contributions to pop culture. The inspirational impact left behind is evident with special effects artists and filmmakers, like Tim Burton, George Lucas, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, and Stan Winston, just to name a few.
What are your thoughts on this? Would you have loved to see a Ray Harryhausen War Of The Worlds feature film? Are you a fan of his films? If so what is your favorite ? We'd like to hear about it.
