Directed by Don Chaffey / Screenplay by Beverley Cross and Jan Read

In 1933 a twelve-year-old Californian boy called Ray Harryhausen saw King Kong. Entranced by its use of the stop-motion technique, whereby articulated models are painstakingly moved in tiny increments between individual frames to create the illusion of movement, young Ray set about making short films of his own. As a teenager he received advice and encouragement from his hero Willis O’Brien, creator of King Kong’s effects, and after studying art and anatomy at college, he secured a job as O’Brien’s assistant on another giant gorilla feature, Mighty Joe Young (1949). The effects won an Oscar, and from this auspicious beginning Ray Harryhausen rose through the profession to become the king of stop-motion cinema. From creature-features like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), his repertoire expanded to include science fiction (Earth vs the Flying Saucers, 1956), dinosaur movies (One Million Years BC, 1966), and swashbuckling adventures inspired by myth and legend, including three Sinbad pictures and two ancient Greek spectaculars. Jason and the Argonauts features some of Harryhausen’s best-remembered creations: the gigantic bronze statue Talos; the Harpies who torment the blind Phineus; the many-headed Hydra who guards the Golden Fleece; and best of all, springing to life from the Hydra’s teeth in a seven-minute battle scene which took more than four months to animate, an army of skeleton warriors who bring the film to a magnificent climax. In 2005, aged 84, Ray Harryhausen attended a special screening of Jason and the Argonauts right here at Exeter Picturehouse - and he even brought along one of his original skeleton models to illustrate the talk he gave afterwards. A night to remember!

Framed Dimensions: 330mm x 410mm

Acrylic on 300gsm Arches oil paper
Glazed, mounted and framed

Supplied with signed letter of authenticity from Barnaby.