Ray Harryhausen Collection (Sony Blu-ray Set with 7th Voyage Of Sinbad/20 Million Miles To Earth/Earth
Vs. The Flying Saucers/It Came From
Beneath The Sea)
Picture: B
(D colorized) Sound: B Extras: B Films: B-
As Sony
issues The 7th Voyage Of
Sinbad (1958) on DVD, they are issuing it and the three previous deluxe
edition DVD titles we have previously covered featuring the amazing stop motion
animation work of Ray Harryhausen (dubbed Dynamation) and issued it on
Blu-ray. For starters, here is our
coverage of the previous three titles as follows with links:
Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers (1956) /It Came From Beneath The Sea (1955)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/6546/Earth+Vs.+The+Flying+Saucers/It
20 Million Miles To Earth (1957)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5766/20+Million+Miles+To+Earth
That
leaves us looking at The 7th
Voyage Of Sinbad (1958), the first and best of the three Columbia
Pictures-produced films, with Kerwin Mathews in the title role, Kathryn Grant,
Richard Eyer and Torin Thatcher. Mathews
is up there with Douglas Fairbank’s Jr., Lon Chaney Jr., Guy Williams and John
Phillip Law as the most successful actors in the role, though none of them ever
returned to the reprise the role and maybe ethnicity is a factor, but that is
another story.
For
memorable moments and overall impact, the film remains the most kinetic, lively
and entertaining incarnation, ever after a half-century of new attempts. In a nutshell, an evil magician has demonic
possession of a princess and Sinbad must fight deadly creatures of all kinds to
save her and the world at large from evil.
The Kenneth Kolb/Ray Harryhausen screenplay has great sequence after
great sequence and just when the film starts to go astray, another great
sequence kicks in and before you know it, you are really enjoying yourself.
This was
Harryhausen’s first full color feature film and his use of color turns out to
be as creative and ingenious as the animation that accompanies it. Before the Lucas and Spielberg films upped
the ante for visual effects with stop & go animation, Harryhausen’s work
was stare of the art and seeing it on Blu-ray for the first time is like
nothing since seeing the 35mm 1970s Sinbad film sequels Columbia issued because
unlike the decent but limited, recent DVD editions. Hen watching ion 35mm or on Blu-ray, you can
see the full range of detail, personality and character Harryhausen was able to
put into his work, the designs, their movement and on the screen and after all
of the usually awful, soulless digital character work we have suffered through,
seeing this work again in restored copies is a revelation and a breath of fresh
air that reminds us why special effects were once special to begin with.
In the
case of 20 Million Miles To Earth
(1957), the rendering of the Ymir is far superior to the new DVD because the
Blu-ray can show shadow detail, depth and nuance DVD never could and you can
not just see, but fully experience why the create has had the international
impact in the fantasy genre it has had for half a century. Earth
Vs. The Flying Saucers (1956) is amazing in its impressive model work from
the saucers (you can sometimes see the strings, but even they have bizarre
character from the stop motion process) and the footage in Washington, D.C. as
effective as similar excellent work in films like Independence Day (1996) but has Harryhausen’s touch to boot. It
Came From Beneath The Sea (1955) may be the oldest film here, but it
manages to create it own world of water and waterbound terror as the giant
radioactive octopus pulls itself up to land to attack.
Best of
all, the heart and soul that goes into all four films (along with the money
that they did have to spend) makes these more than B-movie classics, but
all-time genre classics in Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction and Adventure. We hope Sony pulls out more of these films
for Blu-ray soon.
The 1080p
1.66 X 1 image on Sinbad often looks
impressive, but more than a few shots can be grainy and soft, but the film was
originally issued in three-strip dye-transfer Technicolor prints and many of
the better shots look just like that and can even reach demo quality. The film was shot by the great Wilkie Cooper,
B.S.C, who continued to shoot many of the Technicolor Columbia/Harryhausen
films including The Three Worlds of
Gulliver, Mysterious Island, Jason & The Argonauts and First Men In The Moon, with a distinct
character that when crossed with Harryhausen’s landmark animation, created some
of the most important moments in world genre filmmaking history. It is a highly unsung combination, but this
Blu-ray will begin to change that.
Unfortunately,
the 1080p 1.85 X 1 colorized versions of the earlier three films are some of
the ugliest, lamest footage I have ever seen in any HD or video format in my
life, proving how horrid the practice is.
Mr. Harryhausen has said he was happy with it, but the plastering of the
dark, powdery pseudo-color actually wrecks havoc with the detail and realism of
his work and I could have done a better job with a box of Crayola crayons, so
it is fortunate that the far superior black and white 1080p 1.85 X 1 original image
for the films has been included (you get the choice once you hit the play
button on the menu) and despite some grain here and there, the Video Black is
so good, you too will despise colorization now that you have a format that can
finally play “glorious black & white” with range and proper fidelity. That is the only reason I am glad the
colorized versions are here so everyone can see how dumb they are.
The Dolby
TrueHD 5.1 mixes are not bad in all four cases, trying to spread the original
theatrical monophonic sound around.
Benefiting from this especially are the music scores. Various composer/conductors worked on the
black & white films, while no less than Barnard Herrmann scores Sinbad, but the other music turned out
to be iconic for genre filmmaking and a supplement on Sea does a great job of
explaining the details. The mono mixes
are also here in Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono of purists, but they should know that
the sound steams were not overly tampered with for the TrueHD mixes.
Other extras
include audio commentary tracks with Harryhausen, fans and experts on all four
films, BD Live functions on all four Blu-rays, new comic books for the black
& white classics and stills on all four releases. The Blu-rays of the black & white retain
all the extras from the DVD sets already reviewed, leaving Sinbad, which also offers a Remembering
The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad
featurette, Harryhausen Legacy
featurette, The Music of Bernard Herrmann
featurette, This is Dynamation
special effects featurette, A Look Behind The Voyage featurette, vintage John
Landis interview with Harryhausen and even an odd Music Video. These extras are as impressive as the
predecessor releases and we can only hope for more rich extras in the next
Harryhausen reissue.
There are
shots where you get grain because of optical processing and matte work, which
was the way it was at the time and would remain for such work all the way to
Phil Tippett and his work on Robocop 2
(1990) with its battle scenes before digital took over and often fort the
worse. I would love to see restoration
teams see if in any cases, they could find al the film materials to redo the
matte work with new optical printing methods and show the same footage with
better fidelity and layering. In the
case of dye-transfer films like Sinbad,
this would only be feasible if Technicolor revived their classic process, but
like Tippett, the work of Harryhausen is exceptional and brings back an
excitement in genre filmmaking that has been lost for too long. This Ray
Harryhausen Collection Blu-ray set is instantly one of the hottest back
catalog releases in the format!
- Nicholas Sheffo