"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Clash of the Titans (1981)

tn_clashofthetitans81clash“We have… we have a flying horse!”

The original CLASH OF THE TITANS has most of the things I don’t like about ’80s fantasy movies: a bland, dorky hero (Harry Hamlin), slow pacing, stiff action, lifeless settings in dusty wastelands or fake-looking soundstages, interchangeable nameless non-characters in helmets or robes. On the other hand it has the best and final pre-retirement work of stop motion monster legend Ray Harryhausen. These are really cool depictions of Greek mythological monsters and other shit – Medusa, a two-headed pooch, a giant buzzard, etc. – and that’s enough to make it stand out and be worth watching. Most fantasy movies don’t have that.

At the time stop motion animation was actually state-of-the-art for special effects. That’s how they did the snow-kangaroos in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK the same year, and the bike-over-the-moon in E.T. the year after that. It would continue to be impressive as late as ROBOCOP in 1987. It’s funny because that doesn’t seem like that long ago to me but when you see it in these movies it seems so retro and quaint. I wonder what the hell somebody’s gonna invent in 20 years that’s gonna make AVATAR look goofy and adorably fake?

mp_clashofthetitans81Loosely based on various Greek myths, the story is basically about how the gods are always fucking with each other by manipulating the mortals on earth. Zeus (Laurence Olivier, no shit) and the others stand around in white robes on one set and pretend to get along, but secretly they’re cursing people and sending them after each other and moving around little dolls of the humans on a playset to control their lives.

It all starts with this king that thinks he’s gonna die if his daughter has a son so he locks her up but Zeus impregnates her so the dad tries to be responsible about it and locks her and the baby up in a coffin and sends it off to sea. That pisses off Zeus so he tells Poseidon to open up the cage that has the giant Kraken monster underwater so it will wreck shit up.

Also Maggie Smith plays some goddess who has a son named Calibos (Neil McCarthy, WHERE EAGLES DARE), who was gonna marry Princess Andromeda (Judi Bowker) until Zeus cursed him to look like a fucked up hairy dude with a tail and horns (portrayed by makeup in closeup, stop motion when it shows his body). This is like a half hour into the movie, so the baby from the underwater coffin has somehow grown up to be Perseus (Hamlin). As a half-god he gets the very best so he has none other than Burgess Meredith as his trainer. He gives him a magic invisibility helmet, a magic shield and a magic sword, but the nitwit leaves and forgets the sword. Still, he captures and tames Pegasus, follows a giant buzzard that carries Andromeda’s soul away in a cage whenever she falls asleep, cuts off Calibos’s hand and wins Princess Andromeda in a kingdom-wide riddle sweepstakes.

This would all be fine for everybody except Calibos, but shit gets real due to an etiquette faux pas at the wedding: Andromeda’s mom says she’s as beautiful as Maggie Smith, so Maggie is offended and talks through a giant statue to demand Andromeda get chained up and sacrificed to the Kraken. You know, it seems silly to us but I know some people take all that wedding protocol real seriously, so I don’t want to be judgmental about it.

Well, we’re well into this movie, might as well have an epic quest. Perseus takes some guys (not sure if we ever hear their names) to meet the Stygian witches, find out how to kill the Kraken, this sends him to face Medusa, I think you know the drill. Also he has a robotic owl named Bubo.

Luckily all the best stuff is in the last half, so it does have some build to it. The scene where he faces Medusa is definitely the highlight. While Calibos and even Pegasus frequently switch between stop motion and human/animal actor, Medusa is the one character who is all stop motion puppet. She has a hideous scaled face and snake body and she slithers around. It doesn’t look completely real of course but it has some atmosphere to it due to the flickering fire in the room and the way she slowly moves around. She’s got the personality of an animal, not a monster that knows it’s supposed to jump out and say “BOO!”

Before that there’s also a real good fight with a two-headed dog. I mean, it’s a ridiculous scene because of the way they explain the mortals with non-magical swords having to fight the monster first: Perseus left his sword sitting on the ground and a big snake sat on top of it. What kind of a movie hero are you, Perseus? You’re only tough because of this magic sword and then you keep leaving it around everywhere. You’re like one of those people who just cannot stop losing their car keys or their cell phones. You need to get your shit together.

But the dog is great because he’s kinda vicious and then when Perseus hacks him with the magic sword he starts yelping and it’s like oh shit, dude, why are you slicing a doggy’s throat? Calibos has the same thing when he (SPOILER) dies. He’s an asshole but we know he was originally a regular guy who got cursed and then when he gets stabbed he crumples to the ground and wails in pain and you just gotta feel sorry for the ugly motherfucker. This was the Harryhausen secret, always trying to invest some sympathy into whatever monster he was animating.

Another great moment is when Perseus and crew are camped out at night. They’re all asleep, and the wind is whistling and blowing all the plants around. Medusa’s severed head is hanging up in a bag, and Bubo wakes up to see Calibos sneaking over toward it. I wish more of the movie had atmosphere as strong as this scene.

Blu-ray is kind of a funny format for this particular movie. It looks nice, but I’m guessing it emphasizes things that were conveniently hidden by all the previous formats. Some of the compositing looks really weird now, because you can really see how the live footage and the matte painting or the animation or whatever looks grainier or clearer or lighter. You can see strings holding Bubo up a couple times when he’s flying. The aftermath of Medusa’s beheading looks like somebody spilled a big pot of baked beans. I don’t mind, but if you do you might prefer the DVD.

I hate when people say the effects in this movie are laughable. To me just being dated isn’t enough to dismiss something so soulful. But in most other areas alot of people cut the movie more slack than I can. Yes, lots of cool monsters, but you compare this to other movies that came out in the couple years before or after it – STAR WARS, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, CONAN THE BARBARIAN – it just seems so slow and dull. Does anybody care what happens to Perseus like they do Indiana Jones? I doubt it. More than anything it reminds me of TRON – a movie with astonishing (now out-of-date) technical accomplishments, but lifeless and lacking in energy, so that years later it’s more of a novelty than a movie.

I still kinda like it though.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2012 at 11:09 pm and is filed under Fantasy/Swords, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

61 Responses to “Clash of the Titans (1981)”

  1. So I guess this means you are reviewing the remake of this movie as well?

    The original is a classic and Bubo is probably an icon for those who watched this as a kid like me. The remake is not bad and certainly has more exciting sequences than the original but it can’t really top the creepiness of the entire Medusa sequence.

  2. I never thought of this as a dull movie. I really enjoyed the story and the greek mythology in this one. The remake however is one of the most boring, bland and dullest fantasymovies I´ve ever seen. I saw the remake a day before Christmas and that experience more of less ruined my holiday. Way to go Hollywood…

  3. I think modern era filmmakers are scared of their audience ever being bored and keep filling the space with more lengthy swooshy action sequences that lose their effectiveness outside the efficient short action sequences in video games. So of course some of the greek mythology stuff had to be squeezed out or mangled.

    I’m not sure I understand why Io was in the remake unless it was to give Perseus a love interest when I had thought Andromeda was supposed to be the love interest. But then, I guess she was too busy being an activist for the poor to make eyes at Perseus.

  4. I really hate this movie. It seems to be the prototype of today’s hollow blockbusters, that are only about showcasing special effects, but totally forget to be good! You know that I can watch every old movie (and I even mean MUCH older than 1981!) and can totally be invested in it, despite some maybe cheesy acting and completely unrealistic looking FX, but this movie just bored me and then made me angry.

  5. Never seen this one, but my eyes glazed over about halfway through that plot summary. It sounds almost as boring as watching the Clash of the Titans remake.

  6. “my eyes glazed over about halfway through that plot summary”

    I believe that’s usually a seizure triggered by my ugly grey on black text.

  7. I’m super-fond of this movie, mostly because the stop-motion was so amazing to me when I was a kid. This kind of animation has a weird energy that CG never does; it almost feels like witchcraft. But yeah, the Tron comparison is apt. I’m not sure the previous Harryhausen movies are any better in terms of character and plotting, but those really feel like B-movies, whereas this one pretty obviously aspired to be the next Star Wars (Bebo is a painfully blatant stab at an R2D2) and falls pretty flat.

  8. this movie has it charms, it falls into the category of movies that may not technically be good but are still strangely charming, like the Flash Gordon movie from a year later

    I saw Clash of The Titans on tv once when I was really little (circa 1995 I think) and the Medusa scared the shit out of me, I think it was also my first introduction to Greek mythology

    for years I’d assumed it was from the 60’s, like Jason and The Argonauts and was surprised to later learn that it was actually from 1981

    so Clash of The Titans also falls into the category of movies that feel like they’re from a different era than they are, like The Black Hole or Land of The Lost

  9. Bubo! I forgot about Bubo. Who doesn’t like goofy mechanical owls? Was Bubo in the remake?

  10. He was, but more as a throwaway joke, as far as I know. (They announced early that Bubo wouldn’t fit into their “dark and gritty re-imagination”, but then decided to give the fans a nod.)

  11. I think you nailed it, Vern. The original CLASH is one of those movies where you like the stuff of the movie more than you like the actual movie. (Other examples of this phenomenon: THE LIFE AQUATIC, Peter Jackson’s KING KONG, a good percentage of Robert Rodriguez’s output) The remake, however, is just as dull but without any charm or even cool special effects. A total non-event. How it managed to get a sequel is beyond me. Maybe a lot of people saw it, but does anyone know a single person who liked it?

  12. Cute robot sidekicks were all the rage at the time and Bubo was just one in a long line that included Twiki from Buck Rogers, Muffit II from Battlestar Galactica, and Enos from Dukes of Hazzard (though I guess he was more of a replicant).

  13. Jareth Cutestory

    March 29th, 2012 at 7:00 am

    Majestyk: The cute 20-something girl with dreadlocks at my local video store liked the CLASH OF THE TITANS remake. Or rather she said it wasn’t as awful as everyone claimed. She never put it in her “Staff Picks” shelf (alongside TITUS), but she said she had more fun watching it than she did watching IRON MAN.

    The same girl said, “Ugh, I’m SO OVER Joss Whedon” when I rented DOLLHOUSE. Having very little impulse control is a great quality in a video store clerk. It’s worth renting crap just to see her outsized reaction to it.

  14. I’m fond of Clash of the Titans. It’s no Jason and the Argonauts or Golden Voyage of Sinbad, but it’s got its charms. I hated the remake, though. A soulless waste of time.

  15. Jareth: Getting into conversations with the clerks is one of the main things I miss about video stores. I imagine that most customers just rent whatever piece of crap is available in the new release section, so they were probably pretty relieved when a real crate-digger like myself showed up.

    My favorite exchange went something like this:

    (MAJESTYK brings up a foot-tall stack of dusty action and horror crap)

    HIPSTER DUDE CLERK: I swear, you easily have the worst taste of anyone who comes here.
    CUTE CHICK CLERK: What are you talking about? He has the best taste of anyone who comes here!

    And that was when I knew that my whole life strategy was working out for me.

  16. Another advantage this version also has over the remake is it has Perseus’ mother topless in the first 10 minutes, and it was on a PG Rating! What have we become?

  17. In 20 years Avatar will look goofy and fake when they film the reboot on location.

  18. Jareth Cutestory

    March 29th, 2012 at 8:15 am

    And I love the little notes that independent stores put on the movies. Recently, the store I go to put the following note on the cover of INSIDIOUS: “Yes, this is Justin Bieber.”

    The note on the cover of A SERBIAN FILM reads: “I’m not judging you, but you need serious help.”

  19. Never saw such notes. The only two notes I ever read on videos were “With Leonardo DiCaprio!” on the box of THE QUICK & THE DEAD and “The opening titles are meant to look like that, please don’t return the movie because of them”, but I can’t remember what movie it was.

  20. 80’s fantasy is bad? I know that’s a generalization and a mostly true statement, and you probably didn’t mean it to include the best of the bunch, but do I have to knife fight you over CONAN THE BARBARIAN, Vern? Because that film is one of the finest damn motion pictures ever made.

    As for AVATAR looking creaky in 20 years, now that we’re all past the hype, the 3D and all the glitz, that film already is showing signs of being outdated. The central characters and the environments look terrific, but some of the CG supporting cast looks really, really goofy, as do some of the creatures. Watching it now on BluRay, I was shocked how cartoony Wes Studi’s village chief character looked for example. I guess you inevitably get uneven results when you have an army of hundreds of artists working on the shots. I still kind of like the film, but it certainly isn’t the ultimate statement on photorealistic visual effects.

  21. I’m not automatically anti-CGI, but I do think there’s a tactile sense to practical special effects that you just can’t replicate. Also, one of the few kinds of films where 3D truly shines are claymation, mostly because it seems more tangible than something like Toy Story.

  22. Oh come on! Pegasus is foppish, not “dark and gritty”. If you want a dark and gritty remake, screw the flying horse and just have the Avatar dude fly around on a giant steampunk Bubo with ion cannons or whatever is appropriate for mechanical owls of the classical era.

  23. One of Perseus’ nameless henchmen actually has a personality if you pay attention. He’s constantly bitching throughout the whole movie, complains about going on the quest, but still decided going on the quest and potentially dying would be better than sitting around in Greece. I missed it the first few times I saw the movie, but once I got the DVD I noticed the dude and all the remarks he makes throughout the movie.

  24. Yeah I’m one of those people from my generation (early 80’s babies) who never got into CLASH. I loved the effects and that was it. I have more fond memories of KRULL and KRULL fucking sucked. That’s why I never even saw the remake.

    I will admit though that I may catch the new one at the matinee because the trailers make it at least look a lot more inventive than either of the other 2 and because it seems to finally actually have the fucking TITANS of the title involved this time. But I’m still not 100% sure cause I loathed BATTLE L.A. I guess I’ll just flip a coin come this weekend.

  25. I loved this movie as a kid, and despite its flaws it still holds a special place in my heart. However, I do agree with Majestyk that it is one of those films that somehow as a whole never lives up to the quality of its parts.

    I saw the remake and it was OK, but pretty forgettable. However, the remake suffers from some serious studio tampering. There are entire plot lines missing from the theatrical release, and because of this characters seem underused or make choices that seem out of place with little to no explanation helping to give the film a disjointed and jumbled feel to its narrative. This is because the film features extensive reshoots to try and flush out a narrative that was crippled when substantial amounts of the plot were left on the cutting room floor. This is also the reason that Danny Huston who was cast as Poseidon is barley in the movie and only has one line.

  26. Jareth Cutestory

    March 29th, 2012 at 12:12 pm

    I remember even the toys associated with the original CLASH OF THE TITANS were considered inferior to the other toys of the era. Kids at my school always subject the Harry Hamlin toy to unspeakable horrors at the hands of the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA robots.

  27. You clearly didn’t get a Kraken for Christmas 1981, did you? The action figures might have been weak (Calibos excluded. Dude looked like a Dominican werewolf demon. How is that not awesome?) but you can’t front on a two-foot-tall shit-brown monster with flippers. Me and my friend used to have rumbles between the Kraken and his Rancor. Good times.

  28. As a Dominican who has seen what I could only explain as supernatural shit in the DR I still haven’t a fucking clue what a Dominican werewolf demon even looks like. Time to Google “Calibos action figure”.

  29. Jareth Cutestory

    March 29th, 2012 at 1:18 pm

    The truth is I only toy I had that could contribute to the schoolyard was a Hulk with a missing leg, so I was mostly assigned the role of Easy Obstacle for Spiderman and Greedo to Kill. The kid with the Han Solo made the rules (as it should be). I didn’t even know there was a Kraken. I’m sure it would have blown the minds of my buddies if they knew about it.

    I seem to remember that the rubber wings on Harry Hamlin’s horse kept falling off. In every story Harry Hamlin would almost escape but would be foiled by his horse falling apart. Resulting in more humilation and torture. In the end I think Harry left this mortal coil strapped to a bottle rocket.

    All the kids I knew aspired to own a giant plastic Godzilla with fists that shot off like missiles. Not sure if anyone actually bought one in whatever brief time we had left before we discovered girls.

  30. Man the torture of that poor plastic Harry Hamlin reminds me of when we used to take those GI JOE REAL AMERICAN HERO toys that had the separating torsos connected by a rubber band and shove firecrackers into them back in the day.

  31. Yeah, fuck that Pegasus toy! Why did the wings even come off at all? Did Pegasus ever take his wings off in the movie? Did he have a deleted backstory in which he had a secret identity as a lowly plow horse who would have to sneak off to the stable to put his wings on when he saw the Pegasus symbol in the sky?

    I preferred lining up my old G.I. Joes firing squad style and executing them with my BB gun. If you hit ’em in the crotch just right, the release of tension from the rubber band basically made them explode.

  32. Majestyk, I think you’ve hit upon the story for WAR HORSE 2: PEGASUS RISING (optional subtitle: PORT OF CALL THE HIPPOCRENE).

    Hey, did you know that Pegasus was the offspring of Poseidon and Medusa? I would have thought he’d end up looking more like an eel than a horse, but I guess not.

  33. Where’d the horse and bird DNA come from? I think Poseidon might want to do a paternity test on that shit. Your baby mama gives birth to a horse, you gotta wonder.

  34. Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Broddie just said that he saw some supernatural shit in the Dominican Republic, and we’re still talking about action figures. What the hell did you see, Broddie?

  35. Rehydrated Dehydrated Pirate Paul

    March 29th, 2012 at 5:57 pm

    I watched this as a kid and can’t remember much about it. Not a good sign when I could recite the lines of films like “Jurassic Park”, “The Goonies”, “The Thing” and “Total Recall” verbatim by the time I was a teenager. (And yeah, I did have a really great but kinda fucked-up childhood movie-wise. Thanks for asking.) I couldn’t tell you if it was good or bad today, I just… didn’t care, I guess. Of course, this was in the era where I still judged films on how many explosions they had in them.

    I only ever had He-Man toys. Plus She-Ra, of course. Together with winged unicorn or whatever the hell Swift Wind was supposed to be. (And yeah, I did have a really great but kinda fucked-up childhood toy-wise. Thanks again for asking.) Had the business of obscene amounts of branded toys linked to movie releases even started yet? The first big craze I remember was the ninja turtles, but that was more off the back of the TV show than the movie I think…

  36. Mr. Majestyk, for someone who has recently claimed to have had it with all this fantasy bullshit I am surprised to see you getting so much mileage out of Clash. You old softy, you.

    JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, all the way.

  37. you guys’ stories of your toys and actions figures are hilarious, especially the one about Harry Hamlin meeting his end on a bottle rocket

  38. Too many “too cool for school” types running around here. When I saw this one on HBO Medusa scared the hell out of me. This was a great movie back then. Burgess was great as eh mentor. The gods were great. The horse. All of it. Harry was so so but at age ten who the fuck knows about such things?

  39. Jareth Cutestory

    March 30th, 2012 at 7:10 am

    Your baby mama gives birth to a horse? What happens in Enumclaw doesn’t always stay in Enumclaw.

  40. RBatty – A few years ago I was out in DR on vaca. It was tradition for me to leave NYC and spend my summers there. I visited some family in one of the mountains out there and bro it was some of the craziest shit ever. The first day I was there the youngest kid in the house told me that he has a friend that “disappears” and protects him. I’m like “oh how cute he’s got an imaginary friend”. This friend ended up being a FUCKING ghost. I shit you not and TBH I rarely talk about this at all since it’s so damn unbelievable but I believe my eyes and what I saw was really wild.

    One day I was going to go to the living room and the kid was there playing some Playstation and I couldn’t make it past the door frame. I felt something pushing me back and no matter how much I tried I couldn’t budge. It was like a goddamn force field and I felt a cold ass draft that I’ll never forget. Next thing you know I see this apparation next to the kid; it looked like an older guy but his face was so damn blurry and actually flickering so I truly couldn’t tell and I just completely shat my pants (not literally but I did turn pale white and my skin is brown so that says alot) and kept wondering if I was dreaming.

    I ran the hell out of there and just jibber jabbered like a lunatic to my mom who looked at me like if I was tripping on acid or something. A couple of days after that the kid’s brother was gasping for air in a corner and gesturing like he was being choked. I tried to help him and again I couldn’t do anything to help him cause that resistance came back. It felt like people holding me back from a fight. All I heard was a weird faint high pitched noise that sounded like a shriek saying “VAYENSE” which is spanish for “Go” or “leave” and the poor kid started levitating. My aunt walked in dropped the coffee cup she had in her hand and yelled in horror.

    The ghost was visible to her but I couldn’t see shit I just felt it. After that we got the hell out of dodge and left the mountains. It turns out that a few days went by and they got this medium to come in. That medium said that there was something that kept the ghost there and away from resting in piece. It turns out the ghost was a man who died of a heart attack in those premises years earlier according to the seance the medium performed but didn’t realize that he was a ghost and thought that my family was “invading” his home. He left my youngest cousin alone cause he got along with the damn kid.

    The medium told my uncle (the new owner of that house and father to the Hayley Joel Osment like kid) that he brought awareness to the ghost about his state of being; well a ghost during the seance he performed on the grounds. He said the ghost had a request; to dig in the backyard.

    My uncled did. He found a box and in it there were rosary beads a bunch of santeria spells on different types of papers and some cross like looking gold heirloom. There was also an envelope. The paper inside the envelope actually had directions in it saying that if this box was found to take the heirloom to a certain house in that very vicinity. The owner of THAT house ended up being a relative of the person who lived and died in my uncle’s house and after that was done there was no more ghost in that place.

    It was that experience that made me go from being an atheist to becoming agnostic because I realized that there truly are fucking things out there far beyond human comprehension. The way I saw it if supernatural forces clearly exist then there probably is a “god” out there somewhere.

    It happened like 10 years ago and that shit still shakes me up to this very day. I never did build the courage to go back there again even after hearing that the spirit was exorcised. I had thought the urban legends I heard of were-people and headless corpses that walked around the nearby cemetary were just tall tales spun for campfire fun but after that experience I don’t doubt a damn thing. At all.

    Paul – I don’t know; movie toy licensing seems to be something that had been around for a while by the 80’s. Shit recently I helped one of my best friends move some stuff from his mom’s brownstone to his new apartment and in a box we found a fucking John Matrix figure. I couldn’t believe that shit.

    He told he he’s had it since he was around 3 and keep in mind that like me was born in ’83 and I think COMMANDO came out in ’85 if I’m not mistaken so when he got the toy as a toddler it was still pretty recent. I was just tripping off the fact that such a toy even existed. I seriously would’ve never guessed that a COMMANDO action figure line was ever a reality if I hadn’t seen that figure and I’ve been watching that movie since ’87 but toys based on it was complete news to me.

    Your movie watching childhood was not weird BTW it was awesome. I honestly think shit like that makes kids grow to be better men since they could distinguish fact from fiction at such a young age.

    Granted I grew up in the inner city during the last of the Ed Koch years and into the Dinkins era. These were days were I would see shootouts outside my damn window cause in my neighborhood there was no precinct and a ruthless drug gang called the wild cowboys ran shit around there with an iron grip.

    So I guess my parents figured that I witnessed worst shit just walking home from school everyday (junkies shooting up, crack viles on the sidewalk, hookers trying to get johns etc.) and thus they had no reservations about me being 4 years old and watching horror movies and ROBOCOP and SCARFACE and not just saturday morning cartoons and disney movies.

  41. Please include PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS in your CLASH OF THE CLASH OF THE TITANSES.

  42. Broddie – you’ll forgive me if I find that story hard to believe, I’m not calling you a liar, that’s just some crazy, crazy shit man

    I mean if what you say is true…..well shit

  43. Call me weird, but I would love to witness such a haunting by myself. I’m sure I would totally regret my wish, once I’m in the middle of something like that, but until then I look forward to that.

  44. I guess I’m one of the bigger TITANS fans around here; I liked it a lot when I was 10 (of course it helped a lot that we were watching it as an end of year treat at school) and I enjoyed it when I saw it on DVD when the remake came out. I find more consistently engaging than JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS and THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD. I certainly find CONAN a lot duller.

  45. Griff – Completely understandable; I still have a hard time believing it myself and I witnessed the shit lol but seriously this is why I never really talk about that to anybody at all except those that were also there. It really is one of those things you have to be there and see to believe.

  46. Broddie – I hear you. I lived in a house for 18 years that was off the scale haunted. I have literally dozens of stories about the weird shit that occured on almost a daily basis.

    Two families who lived next door practially fled away in the night.

    Like you, I rarely mention it because people, for whatever reason, don’t believe.

  47. the closest I’ve ever had to a run in with the paranormal didn’t happen to me personally, but did happen to members of my family

    ok, story time, back in the early 90’s when I was just a little kid my aunt and uncle (and their children) lived in a really old house farmhouse in the middle of the woods dating back to the early 1800’s I think

    and….it was haunted, my aunt, uncle and cousins all saw and heard weird shit all the time, my uncle once saw a woman clear as day standing in the kitchen through the window and when he went inside there was no one, at night sometimes my aunt and uncle would hear footsteps running down the upstairs hallway and assume it was one of my cousins, but when they would get up my cousins would be fast asleep, stuff like that

    now, my aunt and uncle are not the kind of people to make bullshit up, especially my uncle

    but here’s where it gets really interesting, once when me and my mom were spending the night there, at night while I was asleep my mom was woken up by the sound of someone knocking on the front door to the tune of “shave and a haircut, two bits”

    so first thing she does is look out the windows and see if there’s a car parked anywhere, keep in mind this house is way in the middle of the woods, so it’s mighty unusual for someone to be knocking in the middle of the night

    so she goes downstairs to the front door only to find the front door, which she SWEARS that she locked personally, is wide open and the dogs and cats that my aunt and uncle had are inside, running around freaked out

    and of course, there was no one to be seen

    so it may not be as scary as Broddie’s story, but still, how do you explain that? for that reason I’ve always been relatively open minded to the possibly of ghosts, I don’t know if it’s literally the spirits of dead people or what, but there’s something to it

  48. Honestly, I sometimes expect my apartment building to be haunted too, just because of all the weird noises I sometimes hear at night. Most of the time I guess it’s just noisy neighbours, but sometimes there are so weird bumps and screeches deep in the night, that I wonder what’s going on in the apartments around me.
    (Several people have died in here over the last few years, so I wouldn’t be surprised.)

  49. Broddie – That story is insane! You should write it up in long form and publish that shit. I have never encountered the supernatural, and I’m usually on the skeptical side, but I love ghost stories. That’s one of the more interesting encounters with the supernatural that I’ve ever heard.

  50. The original Clash has something that the remake doesn’t: charm and a personality of it’s own. and a sense of adventure. And Judi Bowker.

  51. Mike V., the pegasus being he son of Poseidon makes sense since in greek mythology, horses were animals consacrated to Poseidon. Basically, Poseidon was the patron saint of horses. The horse itself was one of the animal symbols for Poseidon.

    Fun fact: earthquakes were considered to be the work of poseidon. this is because the ancient greks believed that landmass floated on an neverending sea. the earthquakes were caused by Poseidon’s horses trampling the earth. so, whenever there was an earthquake, it was to poseidon the ancioent greeks turned their prayers to. funny, aint it?

  52. I’m just surprised that you cut that movie some slack for being charming, when it’s in fact the prototype of the modern just-FX-and-no-script blockbuster, that you hate so much.

  53. CJ Holden, beg your pardon?

    If anything, CLASH OF THE TITANS original was the last hurrah of a certain type of adventure movie filmmaking that no longer exists and was suplanted in the early 1980s by the modern day blockbuster. Part of the charm of the original CLASH OF THE TITANS movie is that it’s the last of it’s kind. How can anybody mistake it for a modern blockbuster is beyond me. Hell, Zeus’ last monologue in the movie could very well be seen as a final bow from this type of filmmaking and an acknowledge that an era is over and suplanted by another, more modern one.

  54. I think what CJ is saying is that it’s a series of spectacular special effects sequences loosely tied together by dull long, dull scenes with a slumming all star cast. Like Wrath of the Titans.

  55. that could describe all movies we dislike made since 1914. it’s too vague.

    my point is that the first LASH OF THE TITANS is not at all close to the blockbusters of today, but a hark back to more older type of adventure movies. in which they also were sequences of special effects liked by lng stretches of average to bad acting and dull exposition and hot babes in revealing dresses (nothing wrong with that).

  56. LASH OF THE TITANS- the S&M fetish parody?

  57. This brings me back to my theory, that in 20-25 years someone will watch TRANSFORMERS (Bay version) and say: “Damn, those were the times, when movies were really good. Not like the crap they do today. It had charme, heart, humor, for that time pretty good looking FX and an epic adventure story. But today everything sucks.”

  58. CJ – That’s a depressing theory.

  59. CJ Holden, yes, there will be people saying stuff like that…. the fucking retards!

  60. LASH OF THE TITANS???? Hillarious!!! Typos can be so much fun!

    Well, i wold rather call the remake as Lash becaus eoi felt lashed while watching it… and sinc e have no S&M kinks, it means it was not a pleasant experience for me.

Leave a Reply





XHTML: You can use: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>