Reeling Backward: "Jason and the Argonauts" (1963)

Take away the then-groundbreaking special effects courtesy of Ray Harryhausen, and "Jason and the Argonauts" is a pretty darn hammy, silly fantasy film. Actually, it's pretty silly and hammy even with them, as the stop-motion creature creations haven't aged particularly well.

They've become certifiably iconic -- which is another way of saying that even though everyone agrees they represent a watershed moment in cinema, the effects look pretty antediluvian today.

Produced outside the traditional studio system, it's a cornucopia of stiff acting, nonsensical plotting and mythological bits 'n' pieces. A "B" picture by progeny but with a healthy budget of $3 million, it nonetheless got some "A" bookings in theaters at the time. Harryhausen considered it his finest work, and frequent musical score collaborator Bernard Hermann delivered a rousing, brass-heavy fanfare.

The most famous scene is the fight at the end between Jason, a couple of his men and a dozen or so skeleton warriors. It remains a rousing sequence, with the human actors blended pretty believably against the stop-motion undead. Fifty-five years after first delighting audiences, the skeletons gave my boys, ages 4 and 7, quite a thrill.

But the precursor to the fight is an utter credulity-twister. It actually wraps up the strengths and weaknesses of the film rather well: great eye candy spoiled by nigh-incompetent storytelling.

The setup: Jason and his crew have just stolen the Golden Fleece from King Aeëtes of Colchis (Jack Gwillim), killing the hydra that was guarding it, and are fleeing back to their ship. Joining them is Medea (Nancy Kovack), the king's high priestess, who betrayed him because Jason was all hunky and stuff.

Aeëtes harvested the teeth of the hydra, and after catching up with Jason's group proceeds to spread the teeth around in an elaborate ritual that must take three or four minutes for the skeletons to spawn. Jason sends Medea and most of his crew on to the ship, while he and two of his men just... stand there, waiting for the spell to be completed.

"Hecate, Queen of Darkness, revenge yourself against the Thessalians. Deliver to me the children of the hydra's teeth, the children of the night!" the king thunders.

And... he goes on.

"Rise up, you dead, slain of the hydra. Rise from your graves and avenge us. Those who steal the Golden Fleece must die!"

Still, Jason stands there, mouth agape.

I don't know about you, but if I've just ripped off an angry monarch of his most coveted treasure and he starts a foul incantation, saying he's going to summon some unkillable warriors, I'm not going to just wait for him to finish. It's skedaddlin' time.

If you think it's unmanly for a cinematic hero to run from a fight: that's exactly what he does anyway. After his fellows have been slain, Jason simply jumps off the cliff and swims to his ship, the Argo, begging the question of why they couldn't have done that right away and saved some living flesh.

(By the way, if you look closely the emblems on the shields of the skeletons are representations of previous Harryhausen creations.)

Jason is played by Todd Armstrong, who's a rather thin figure, both metaphorically and literally, for a legendary warrior out of Greek mythology. His most persistent expression is one of puzzlement/astonishment, eyebrows knitted as he reacts to Harryhausen's latest invention. He stubbornly keeps his spindly arms and chest covered even as the Argonauts toil shirtless for most of the movie. Even his voice is not his own: Armstrong's entire vocal performance was reportedly dubbed over by Tim Turner. This Jason is the pencil-necked counterpoint to Steve Reeves' Hercules of the same era.

Speaking of: the ultra-strong hero is part of Jason's team, played by Nigel Green -- a decidedly thick-waisted, back-slapping iteration of Hercules. He abandons the voyage about halfway there, overcome with grief over the disappearance of Hylas (John Cairney), the intellectual member of the crew, while battling the gigantic statue of Talos on the Isle of Bronze.

The two had awakened the titan by stealing from his treasure. Jason defeats Talos by removing the nail from his heel, causing the magical ichor that sustains him to leak out. Hylas was smushed by the falling behemoth, though Hercules doesn't know that.

If your Greek mythology is a little rusty, Jason was the son of the deposed king of Thessaly, who is foretold by Zeus to avenge himself upon his father's usurper, Pelias (Douglas Wilmer). In order to restore glory to the kingdom and claim his rightful place, Jason is tasked with retrieving the Golden Fleece, the magical hide and skull of a golden ram, from the ends of the earth.

He holds a series of games, a progenitor of the Olympics, to select the finest heroes to man the princely ship that Argus (Laurence Naismith), the wise old shipbuilder, constructs for the trip. In addition to the aforementioned crew is Acastus (Gary Raymond), conniving son of Pelias, sent along to undermine the mission. Despite using his real name, nobody seems to recognize the offspring of Jason's hated enemy.

The weakest of the Harryhausen spectacles is the battle with the harpies, who plague the oracle Phineas (Patrick Troughton), blinded by the gods for his arrogance. (He was once the king of his land, though this is not stated in the movie.) The harpies are crude-looking and nonthreatening, appearing as if they were sculpted out of Play-Doh.

Jason gets occasional help from Hera (Honor Blackman), queen of the Greek gods, who has declared Jason her champion in a battle of wits with Zeus (Niall MacGinnis), her honored but often opposed husband.  Her latest protest against Zeus, aside from his wide-ranging and morphologically diverse philandering, was that her temple was profaned when Jason's family was killed.

Hera drops hints about his quest, bestow gifts, etc. Other gods make occasional appearances, including Hermes (Michael Gwynn), who doubles as an impressively coiffed earthly priest, and Triton (William Gudgeon), who holds open the Clashing Rocks so the Argo can pass through.

This is one of those movies where the gods are depicted as white-robed sentinels parading about a cloudy Olympus realm, pushing men and monsters around like pieces on a mystical chess board. It was quite a common storytelling device through the 1950s and '60s, straight up through "Clash of the Titans" in 1981.

Nowadays, though, gods are the flawed doers in movies rather than just the beneficent (or not) observers/manipulators.

Directed by journeyman filmmaker Don Chaffey, who bounced around between TV and film for 40 years, from a script by Beverly Cross and Jan Read, "Jason and the Argonauts" exists now mostly as a fine piece of nostalgia. Viewed clearly, it's a poorly-made collection of fantastical tropes. Through rose-colored glasses, though, it's a vibrant, colorful masterpiece of cheese.

Reeling Backward: "Cromwell" (1970)

Take a look at the photo that accompanies this column. You will note Richard Harris playing Oliver Cromwell in the movie that bears his surname, and Alec Guinness as King Charles I of England. Those two powerful actors are the best thing about the movie, and the way their characters are depicted are the worst.

Like most period dramas, "Cromwell" takes many liberties with the historical record. It cast two of the finest actors of their day as important figures, but fundamentally stirs up the pot of known facts until we're left with tasteless mishmash gumbo of truth and fiction.

Cromwell was a very controversial figure in British history. He was part of revolutionary movement led by Parliament that overthrew King Charles and, eventually, beheaded him. For a little more than a decade England operated as a commonwealth, and for the last few years led by Cromwell as Lord Protectorate. After Cromwell's death they tried to turn this position into an inherited one by giving it to his son, Richard, who served just a few months before the monarchy was restored and Charles II installed on the throne.

So despised was Cromwell by the Royalists that upon returning to power they dug up Cromwell's body, gave him a posthumous hanging and put his head on a spike, where it was displayed for a quarter-century. The head, still impaled by a chunk of wood, moved around among private collectors for centuries, eventually being buried in 1960. This is not the sort of behavior people display toward someone with whom they are mildly irked.
The film was written and directed by Ken Hughes, whose previous film was "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and who would later go on to make the little-remembered sequel to "Alfie" and the slasher flick "Night School." He makes the obvious but regrettable choice to position a movie about Cromwell as largely an antagonism between him and King Charles.

In actuality, Cromwell was a relatively minor figure until late in the British civil war of the 1640s, and the two men only met once during Charles' imprisonment. But the movie shows them exchanging  speeches, having public face-offs, engaging each other on the field of battle, and a bunch of other hooey. I'm not exactly sure where the image above came from, since it does not even occur in the movie -- possibly it's a production still.

Other similar "movie bullshit" invades the narrative, particularly with regard to military matters. "Cromwell" shows him playing a key role in the Battle of Edgehill, a key early defeat for the Parliament forces, but in fact Cromwell was not even present. It also depicts his decisiveness victory at Naseby as a prototypical victory of the outnumbered-but-righteous, but really the king's forces had a severe disadvantage in numbers.

Heck, they can't even get the famous moles on Cromwell's face right. The filmmakers place two large, very fake-looking (vaguely greenish) prosthetics on Harris' chin (correct) and above his left eye (wrong side). This was an easily avoidable error, since portraits of Cromwell and his death mask very clearly showed his benign growths.

Harris' lean, aquiline face doesn't exactly match Cromwell's lumpy one, though Guinness in makeup and beard is pretty spot-on for the deposed monarch. Other well-regarded actors of the day turn up in various roles -- Charles Gray, Nigel Stock, Michael Jayston, Douglas Wilmer, Geoffrey Keen -- including a very young Timothy Dalton as Prince Rupert of the Rhone, Charles' rash nephew.

Hughes earns points for trying to capture the warts-and-all aspects of Cromwell, portraying him as a powerful man with very lofty ideals who was also prone to being very judgmental, particularly when it comes to Catholics. A devout Protestant, his harsh treatment of the faithful in Ireland caused his name to be cursed aplenty there even today, and undeniably helped set the path toward the conflicts the Emerald Isle would later have with London.

The movie skips over this part, however, declining even to depict any of his tenure as Lord Protectorate, ending with his dismissal of Parliament in much the same fashion King Charles did years later, setting off the very conflict that brought Cromwell to power. Instead, we get one of those standard "great man" screen roll epitaphs.

The two lead actors are to be lauded for their convincing but very disparate performances. Harris burns with smoldering anger and righteous fury, his placid exterior often giving way to fiery declarations. Guinness, contrastingly, is restrained almost to the point of immobility.

His Charles is not an evil man, just someone raised to believe he and the land are one through God-given rights. He's actually something of a weakling, prone to taking bad advice from his counselors and his Catholic wife. Guinness even lends him a barely detectable stutter, almost more of a speed bump in his speech, to underline his reticence as a leader.

The battle scenes are staged well enough, though no one ever seems to swing their sword hard enough to do any real damage. The outfits and set design are marvelous, however, enough to earn an Oscar nomination for costumes (plus another for musical score).

"Cromwell" isn't a poor film, and the lead performances are certainly engaging. But in trying to shoehorn the messy, muddy reality of life into a neat storyline, the movie sacrifices too much of its authority.

)