SIFF honors special-effects wiz Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen used his special-effects expertise to wreck the Golden Gate Bridge in "It Came From Beneath the Sea" (1955), destroy the Washington Monument in "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" (1956) and make even more a ruin of Rome's ruined Colosseum in "20 Million Miles to Earth" (1957).

When witnesses to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks said the experience was like watching a movie, they were probably thinking of a Harryhausen movie — or such late-1990s tributes/spinoffs as "Armageddon" and "Independence Day."

"I knocked down the Washington Monument long before 'Mars Attacks!' did the same thing," said Harryhausen during a Seattle visit yesterday. "I see they rebuilt it, thank heavens."

Born in 1920, Harryhausen hasn't made a feature film since 1981's "Clash of the Titans" (he left the business for personal and other reasons, he says), but he will show his latest short, "The Tortoise and the Hare," at 6:30 tonight at the Egyptian.

It's part of a Seattle International Film Festival tribute to Harryhausen that will also include an on-stage interview and a full-length screening of what he calls the "most complete" of his movies: "Jason and the Argonauts" (1963).

"Sometimes the fickle finger of fate interferes, and you don't have the right cast or you fall behind because of weather, but I like Greek mythology, and everything came together on 'Jason.' When they redid it for television, they took four hours to do what we did in an hour and a half."

Billed as "50 years in the making," the 11-minute "Tortoise" was begun in 1952, as part of a series of stop-motion puppet films designed for children. But Harryhausen's monster movies took off with "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" (1953), becoming so popular and lucrative that he had no time to finish "Tortoise."

He came out of retirement to complete it last year, using about 3-1/2 minutes of footage he had done in the 1950s. It will have its television premiere June 27 on Turner Classic Movies, as part of a marathon of Harryhausen classics that will include all three of his highly profitable "Sinbad" movies.

"I'm not just a special-effects person," he insists. "I direct my own scenes, to get the most out of the action, and many times I bring the original story to the producer.

"I did a 20-page outline for 'The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad,' and shopped it around for quite awhile before Charles Schneer decided to produce it. I was told that costume stories were dead, and we had to cut the budget to about $650,000."

The 1958 movie turned out to be a box-office hit for Columbia Pictures, spawning two sequels.

Although Harryhausen was not nominated for a special-effects Academy Award for any of these films, he did receive a 1992 honorary Oscar, and he worked with his idol, Willis O'Brien, on the Oscar-winning effects for 1949's "Mighty Joe Young."

O'Brien created the original 1933 "King Kong," which inspired Harryhausen to pursue a career in stop-motion animation.

"That started me off," said Harryhausen, who still seems dazzled by the memory of seeing it for the first time. "I think my lower jaw dropped down to my navel."

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com