A hearty, happy birthday this week to legendary animator Ray Harryhausen, who turned 91 on Wednesday and remains one of Hollywood's greatest living effects icons. His work in stop-motion animation brought believable larger-than-life effects to live-action cinema for decades before the ascendancy of CGI, and in a career spanning four decades, he brought movie magic to films like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, and Clash of the Titans. Which of his landmark sequences take the cake?
Crab attack, Mysterious Island (1961): A giant sand crab attacks and holds one of its victims aloft while fending off four men at once.
The skeleton fight from Jason and the Argonauts (1963): Looking back on this today the jerky stop-motion skeletons seem a bit dated. And the undead baddies sprouting from the ground thing has been copied plenty of times, with more sophisticated CG work to boot. But it's still terrifying as hell when those skeletons let loose with a battle cry and begin chopping at Jason and Co. with their swords, a nicely integrated blend of live-action/animation work.
The dinosaur fight from One Million Years B.C. (1966): Harryhausen would create another dino vs. dino battle for his 1969 film The Valley of Gwangi involving a Styracosaurus and the titular Allosaur, but the T-Rex throwdown in 1 Million Years B.C. comes to a particularly pointed conclusion.
Sinbad vs. the goddess Kali, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974): A statue of the six-armed goddess Kali comes alive to cross swords -- one blade vs. six -- with our hero in the second of Harryhausens's three Sinbad films.
Medusa, Clash of the Titans (1981): In his last film before retirement, Harryhausen again delivered show-stopping effects work -- especially in bringing the Gorgon Medusa to life.