Before CGI animation, there was Ray Harryhausen

The fighting skeleton sequence from "Jason" is iconic movie magic.

It wasn’t that his stuff looked real, but that it looked awesome. Beautiful art. Better than real.

I’m 38 and I still vividly remember nightmares I had as a kid about those skeletons. I absolutely love stop motion.

I think the stop motion jerkiness makes the monster more scary. It's an unnatural surreal visual that conveys something other worldly. The "fake" to me was an element that haunting mysterious creatures from another place unknown to mankind possessed. A magical element.

I had the honour of meeting Ray Harryhausen back in 2002, when he received an honorary doctorate the same year I graduated from art college where I’d been studying theatre & film design. It was probably one of the most incredible moments of my life. Once I’d got my nerves under control, I told him that his work had had a huge impact upon myself & countless others on the course. A few years later in 2005, after I’d moved to London, I got to meet another of my idols...the imposing & utterly awesome Sir Christopher Lee (he was making an appearance to promote one of his heavy metal albums). He signed my copy of The Wicker Man & was more than happy to talk about that & his roles with Hammer Films.

I dearly loved Mr Harryhausen's great films as a kid. At the age of 70 now, I still do. His like will never come again. ❤

That scene with Medusa in Clash of the Titans haunted me as a child! One of the creepiest and dread-filled sequences in film to this day. There's something magical about stop-motion that cannot be duplicated by CGI technology.

Holy crap..the narrator is also a legend..Tom Baker (Dr. Who) who also stared in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. I met Mr. Harryhausen at a convention. Got to sit down at the lobby and chat with him for a little bit. Nicest man you would ever meet. He signed some stuff for me also. Such a great memory.

You know what's incredible is that according to the video he animated that skeleton after 20 years and look at how believable and smooth it turned out at the end! Harryhausen was a master at his craft. May he rest in peace.

The man was an absolute genius!🤗👌👍

Back in the day when special effects really were 'special'. As an impressionable little kid, I was mesmerised by Harryhausen's effects and even now, nigh on 4 decades later, I'm still thrilled watching these old movies.

I'm very glad my first movie-going experience was 1987's "Honey, I Shrunk The Kids", because watching stop-motion ants and scorpions fighting tiny humans next to giant Lego blocks on the big screen was like seeing magic for the first time. Inspired me to make my own stop-motion Lego movies as a teenager.

I had the absolute privilege of sitting in on a lecture given by Mr. Harryhausen a few years ago in Vancouver. A truly amazing man. I could hype up how interesting his insight and commentaries were, but I think I'll share a rather weird detail instead: The man had the hands of a titan. Absolutely enormous. That always stuck with me, because you might think such beefy mittens might make it harder to produce such finely detailed and lifelike animation. Obviously this was not the case.

Thank you, Youtube algorithm, for suggesting this to us 8 years later! : )

Never spent much time with my father but we always used to enjoy watching Jason and the Argonauts together, my father is an old fashioned sort of guy and we both had an appreciation for the artform, Thanks Ray

Watching any of the Harryhausen movies as a kid took me to another place that was magical.....kids today will never understand what seeing these creatures back in the days did to us and our imaginations!!!

He will forever live in our minds and our hearts, long live Jason and the Argonauts!!!!!!

Rip Ray I grew up watching and loving your stop motion :)

I remember I was just a young boy when my father was watching Jason and the Argonauts on TV. When I saw that statue turn his head, that creeped me out for years. I still got a chill when I saw it here. Thank God for Ray Harryhausen. Without him, even today's films would be much less interesting.

2:09 I forgot how the first Terminator was bordering on being a damn horror movie lol