Clash of the Titans

A fantasy adventure telling the Perseus story from Greek myth. Perseus is the son of Zeus. He sets out to save Andromeda from being sacrificed to a sea monster, and the only way is to take the head of Medusa. Along the way there are Pegasus, three witches and giant scorpions, while the gods look down from Olympus and intervene. The film's real value is in the effects. The creatures were made with Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion method, moved by hand a frame at a time. The Medusa sequence is among the most cited passages of the technique. It was Harryhausen's last film. Bubo, the mechanical owl who helps Perseus, was both criticised and loved as an open nod to the science-fiction fashion of the moment. Laurence Olivier plays Zeus, Harry Hamlin plays Perseus and Burgess Meredith plays the poet Ammon. Maggie Smith and Ursula Andress are among the gods. A classic of its kind for anyone who likes handmade effects, adaptations of myth and 1980s adventure cinema. To a viewer used to today's smooth imagery the movement looks deliberately halting; that halt is the technique itself.