But seriously, parents: Is Ray Harryhausen the Boogeyman?

When I told a friend in Nashville that she ought to take her granddaughter to see the double bill of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts next week at The Belcourt, she was... well, dubious. After all, she pointed out, the little girl isn't even old enough to attend grade school yet. To be more precise: She's three years old.

So I emailed links to trailers for the films, in the hope of convincing her that both movies were relatively harmless, and certainly no scarier and/or more violent than most of what passes for kid-centric TV programming today. Well, that turned out to be a deal-breaker: My friend said even the trailers likely would be enough to give her granddaughter nightmares.

Wow.

Well, as I have said before: While I was growing up, even cheesy sci-fi flicks could give me the willies. But adventure movies featuring Ray Harryhausen special effects? WTF? I gobbled these up like fresh popcorn at the old Nola Theatre back when I was a kid. Could watching sword-fighting skeletons really be that traumatic an experience for a contemporary youngster?

Parents and grandparents, take a gander at these trailers and tell me: Would you hesitate to take your young'uns to this double feature? Did I do my own son irreparable harm by showing him nifty stuff like this on VHS back in the day?

Update: Ten minutes after posting this, I put the second question to my now-26-year-old son. His reply: "Well, not irreparable..." So maybe my Nashville buddy knows best after all.

R.I.P.: Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013)

I was tempted to begin this tribute with the standard "If you're of a certain age...," but quickly came to my senses. Because, really, movie buffs of all ages have at one time or another been excited, scared and/or downright discombobulated by the movie magic of the late, great Ray Harryhausen, who passed away Tuesday at the ripe young age of 92.

Mind you, I think you likely were even more amazed by his stop-motion handiwork if you saw it for the first time on the big screen back during the pre-CGI era, when the skeleton sword fight in Jason and the Argonauts (1963), the multi-tentacled assault on San Francisco in It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), or even the original releasing of the Kraken in the first Clash of the Titans (1981) could leave indelible impacts on impressionable moviegoers. (OK, I admit: I saw the first two of those three movies during what used to be known as "kiddie matinees" after I saw them on TV -- but never mind, they still were pretty damn astonishing.)

But I suspect Harryhausen's very special effects will always appeal to the child in all of us, with an enduringly potent capacity to ignite our sense of wonder.

Get a load of this:


And take a look at that:

Voracious jumbo squid invade California

Just in case anyone is considering a remake of It Came from Beneath the Sea, the 1955 Ray Harryhausen classic, here is a real-life story to inspire the new scenario.