Yesterday evening, I heard the sad news that Ray had died.
As a young kid in the 1970s, I was in thrall to stop-motion animation. Like Ray, I was bowled over by the original King Kong – I can still clearly remember sitting and watching it, having been guided to it by my parents – and I never missed a chance to see any of Ray’s own films when they were on telly. The fantastic creatures of The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad and, of course, Jason And The Argonauts just seemed magical. I was also a dinosaur nut, and the likes of One Million Years BC and The Valley Of Gwangi wowed me in exactly the same way that Jurassic Park would 20 years later.
Continuing my in-depth look at various giant-ape movies, which began last month with Yeti – The Giant Of The 20th Century, I’m now going to take a peek through my fingers at A*P*E, another mid-1970s production that seemingly hoped to ride the slipstream of the first King Kong remake. Before I begin, though, be warned: hulking great spoilers lie ahead. If this doesn’t bother you, then let’s head straight back to 1976.
A captured giant gorilla is being transported by sea to Disneyland when it shakes off its sedation and escapes, blowing up the ship in the process. After tussling with and killing an oversized shark, the ape dries off on the coast of South Korea, where, in the excitement of its freedom, it destroys buildings, igniting both flames and panic and accidentally alerting the Korean and US militaries to its presence.
Warning: major plot spoilers ahead.
High-flying entrepreneur Morgan Hunnicut (Eddie Faye) visits a palaeontologist friend, Professor Henry Waterman (John Stacy), to ask for his help with a “humane expedition” in northern Canada. Though Waterman has been taken for a ride by his friend in the past, he reluctantly agrees. Hunnicut’s mute grandson, Herbie (Jim Sullivan), has discovered a large creature preserved in ice, which Hunnicut Sr wants to thaw and use as publicity for his business. On inspection of the animal, Waterman decides that it must be a yeti that was trapped in an avalanche millions of years ago.
In an attempt to revive the yeti, he’s put in a transparent cage, winched under a helicopter and flown to 10,000 feet, the height of his prehistoric, Himalayan habitat. He eventually awakes and, after almost causing the ‘copter to crash, is given a sedative gas and brought back to earth. The effects of the gas quickly wear off, and he breaks free from his cage, causing panic – until he befriends Herbie and his older sister, Jane (Phoenix Grant), whom he sees as his kin. With the yeti calmed, Hunnicut puts him on display in Toronto, but he quickly breaks loose, his reputation – and fate – now in the hands of Jane and Herbie.
I’ve sometimes wondered whether I’m part of the last generation to experience stop-motion as a contemporary weapon in fantasy cinema’s special-effects arsenal.
As a kid in the 1970s, I was wowed by television showings of the likes of Jason And The Argonauts, One Million Years BC and The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad – films that, at the time, were relatively recent releases, though I must admit, I didn’t discern any real difference between these ’60s/’70s epics and much older films such as King Kong. To me, stop-motion monsters were always eye-popping and wonderful, in the purest sense of the term – the pinnacle of special-effects artistry.
In 1981, my parents took me to the cinema to watch Clash Of The Titans, the last film I can recall seeing that was built entirely around stop-motion set-pieces. Sure, later movies had their moments – eg, Return Of The Jedi in 1983, and The Terminator in 1984 – but Clash still feels like a last ‘hurrah’ for the kind of film that defined my childhood experience of monsters and magic.
Well, he did it again. Darrell Bath’s ability to pop up in my favourite places never fails to amaze. Ian Hunter, Dan Baird, Dogs D’Amour, Quireboys – he’s cranked it out with ’em all down the years, each new collaboration adding weight both to my enjoyment of these artists, and to my theory that Mr Bath is sneaking round my flat when I’m tucked up in bed, rifling through my fave records, and systematically hooking up with the people who made ’em. Either that or he just has impeccable taste in music.
Get this: a few days ago, I was standing downstairs in the Mean Fiddler watching Big Star (a great gig, by the way), when, out of the corner of my eye, I spied a guy wearing a groovy cap, looking, from that angle at least, like a young John Lennon. My interest piqued, I turned round and had a proper gawp. And, yep, you’ve guessed it, it was Darrell, can of Red Stripe in one hand, cigarette in the other. More proof that the guy knows a good band when he hears one. Oh, and he dances just like he plays guitar (a good thing, obviously).