Clash of the Titans (1981)

"...a fine addition to any DVD collection.  DVDVerdict.com
"...some of Harryhausen's most imaginative creations...  Keith Phipps, The Onion A.V. Club

Editor's Note Full of pride, Cassiopeia compares her daughter's beauty to that of Hera. Angered, the queen of the gods has Poseidon unleash the monstrous beast Craken to destroy their village unless Cassiopeia's daughter, Andromeda, is sacrificed. Perseus, the son of Zeus, becomes enchanted with the breathtaking beauty and is determined to save her from this fate. The young hero, armed with a magical shield, a winged stallion and a mechanical owl, discovers the only way to defeat the monster is with the head of Medusa. The gods watch and intervene on Perseus' quest to save his beloved. This was legendary special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen's last film before he retired from creating movie magic. L.A. LAW's Harry Hamlin stars as the Greek mythological hero Perseus who fights snake-haired Medusa and two-headed dogs to save the lovely Andromeda (Judi Bowker). Laurence Olivier, as Zeus, is one of the many screen legends in this adventure. Burgess Meredith, Claire Bloom, Maggie Smith and Ursula Andress round out the cast as the Gods of Mount Olympus. Director Desmond Davis was camera operator on TOM JONES and A TASTE OF HONEY, two influential early 1960s British films. Writer Beverly Cross was one of the writers on 1963's Ray Harryhausen film, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS.

	Claire Bloom
	Laurence Olivier
	Harry Hamlin
	Burgess Meredith
	Ursula Andress
	Maggie Smith
	Ray Harryhausen - Special Effects
	Desmond Davis - Director

Wall Street Journal
"The movie's star, of course, is Ray Harryhausen, the stop-motion maestro who created the still-endearing special effects." 04/09/2010

Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
Clash of the Titans is a grand and glorious romantic adventure, filled with grave heroes, beautiful heroines, fearsome monsters, and awe-inspiring duels to the death. It is a lot of fun. It was quite possibly intended as a sort of Greek mythological retread of Star Wars (it has a wise little mechanical owl in it who's a third cousin of R2-D2), but it's also part of an older Hollywood tradition of special-effects fantasies, and its visual wonderments are astonishing...The story, on the other hand, is robust and straightforward. Perseus (Harry Hamlin) is locked into a coffin with his mother and cast into the sea, after she has angered the gods. But Zeus (Laurence Olivier) takes pity and sees that the coffin washes ashore on a deserted island, where Perseus grows to manhood and learns of his mission in life. The mission, in a nutshell, is to return to Joppa and rescue Andromeda (Judi Bowker) from a fate worse than death: marriage to the hideously ugly Calibos, who was promised her hand in marriage before he was turned into a monster by the wrath of the gods. Calibos lives in a swamp and dispatches a gigantic, scrawny bird every night to fetch him the spirit of the sleeping Andromeda in a gilded cage. If Perseus is to marry Andromeda, he must defeat Calibos in combat and also answer a riddle posed by Cassiopeia, Andromeda's mother. Those who answer the riddle incorrectly are condemned to die. Love was more complicated in the old days...Clash of the Titans is a family film (there's nothing in it that would disturb any but the most impressionable children), and yet it's not by any means innocuous: It's got blood and thunder and lots of gory details, all presented with enormous gusto and style. It has faith in a story-telling tradition that sometimes seems almost forgotten, a tradition depending upon legends and myths, magical swords, enchanted shields, invisibility helmets, and the overwhelming power of a kiss. - Roger Ebert