Combining stories and characters from several Greek myths, this classic fantasy film revolves around Perseus (Harry Hamlin, sporting Jim Morrison hair), son of Zeus (Laurence Olivier) the supreme ruler of Mount Olympus and the pantheon of gods who reside there. Transported far from home by the jealous goddess Thetis (Maggie Smith), Perseus receives three gifts from Zeus to help him find his destiny: a powerful sword, a shield that will one day save his life, and a helmet that renders him invisible.

Perseus arrives in the city of Joppa, which is under the curse of Thetis, whose son Calibos was set to marry the blue-eyed princess Andromeda, until Zeus transformed him into a hideous creature for killing his herd of winged horses. Andromeda’s suitors must answer a riddle of Calibos’ choosing in order to win her hand in marriage.

After seeing her spirit carried into the night by a giant vulture, Perseus tames the last of the winged horses – Pegasus – and purses the vulture. It leads him to Calibos’ lair in the swamp and under cloak of invisibility, he overhears the riddle. Calibos follows Perseus’ footprints and the two struggle. Perseus cuts off Calibos’ hand, correctly answers the riddle and wins Andromeda.

But when the Queen compares her daughter’s beauty to that of Thetis, the goddess appears in the face of her statue and demands that Andromeda be offered as a sacrifice to the Kraken, a mighty sea creature. The only way for Perseus to save her is to seek out and slay an equally formidable beast; Medusa, a half-woman, half-snake whose gaze dead or alive can turn any creature into stone.

Clash of the Titans was the final film of retiring stop motion effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen. With Star Wars a box office behemoth, MGM budgeted the film at $15 million, five times the amount of Harryhausen’s previous picture, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.

Additional animators were hired to assist Harryhausen in the creation of his visual effects – which took eighteen months to complete – and thespians such as Olivier, Maggie Smith, Claire Bloom (as Hera) and Burgess Meredith were employed to give the flick more prestige than his previous productions.

I tend to mumble if Harry Hamlin’s name is mentioned. Yeah, he sticks out like a bad perm, but he does a better job than anybody else in the era was doing in these Dudley Do Right roles, starting with Mark Hamill. The acting is better than it has to be, with Judi Bowker an appropriately innocent damsel in distress as Andromeda.

What gets discussed with this movie is how relatively hokey it is. No, the visual effects are not cutting edge. There’s not a drop of contemporary cynicism or “hip” in the entire production, giving it a bygone look and feel before it was even released. That’s why I love it. It takes balls to be Buddy Holly in an era of punk. Even if Clash of the Titans is square, it’s never fake.

I like Pegasus (Harryhausen had an affinity for animating equines). I like the petty insecurities of the gods. I like Laurence Olivier hamming it up as Zeus. I like the clay figurines of the mortals, which Zeus molds or destroys at will. The bit where we watch the silhouette of Calibos’ figurine transform from a man into a beast is simple hand drawn animation, but the effect is far more textured and disturbing than anything that could’ve been rendered inside a computer at ILM.

The sequence where Perseus confronts Medusa is among the best in fantasy film. The gorgon slithers past torches, fires arrows, turns a centurion into stone and when her head is chopped off, claws a stone column with her fingernails. She doesn’t look real and doesn’t need to. Instead, the way Harryhausen lights the scene and put handmade texture into the way Medusa moves makes her seem real. This is something CGI routinely fails to do for me.

Directed by Desmond Davis, written by Beverly Cross, the film’s rousing music was by Laurence Rosenthal, a composer recommended by John Williams after he had to turn the job down. Performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, the terrific music outclasses any fantasy film that Williams himself does not score. Highly recommended.