Ray Harryhausen didn't create special effect distractions, he crafted a series of feature players, imbuing them with character and presence. His work is unrivalled because his puppets don't just hit marks, they prowl and calculate. They're daunting and invincible, able to spring to life and seize control of the films they're in.
Harryhausen's work is a menagerie of creatures operating with a higher level of intelligence than your usual animated brutes. They move slowly and deliberately, calculating and assessing the situations they find themselves in. Harryhausen's puppets never read like glib obstacles or shallow grandstanding, instead they acted like alien intellects awoken into spaces they were still taking their measure of. Ray Harryhausen made arguably the most outstanding contribution to motion picture special effects, and he will be missed.
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