Ray Harryhausen’s reputation still looms large with the recent release of two new books and a DVD collection. © Sparkhill, Llc.

Ray Harryhausen, a professional stop-motion animator since the 1940s, has hooked at least two generations of fans at Saturday matinees with his mythological and zoological creations. Baby Boomers know him from Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts; a generation later young Gen-Xers blew their minds on Clash of the Titans. Over the years, Harryhausen has had his hand in over a dozen family-friendly adventures and atomic-age disaster potboilers — dropping spinning UFOs on Washington in Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers, mixing grumpy dinosaurs and lighthouses in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, putting Baghdad’s finest on the edge of disaster in a trio of Sinbad movies, and dropping a T-Rex into the Old West in The Valley of Gwangi.

All of Harryhausen’s movie credits, while not strictly kiddie fare, never push content that would exclude children. Fantasy was Harryhausen’s genre, and youth was his target audience. Let’s face it, only the credulous and/or testosterone-fueled youth could ever fully appreciate One Million Years B.C. It’s the Pleistocene, it’s Raquel Welch with her legs shaved, and it’s a flying Pteranodon. Not exactly an A-1 science primer for the young ones. But who cares when you’re eight years old, sitting in the dark watching a cyclops wrestling a dragon, or three men swordfighting with seven skeletons?

To really geek out on what earned Harryhausen his reputation — his legacy of stop-motion Dynamation —look no further than the 2004 coffeetable book Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life. Written by Harryhausen with Tony Dalton, this is a chronology in the artist’s own words of the what, how, and why of frame-by-frame creature effects from his childhood exercises to his last feature film and beyond.

Harryhausen provides complete production histories for all his features in Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life.

All the details are here, with tales of “monster sticks” in live-action sets used to give the actors a place to look, his early experiments with front projection and why he eventually went with rear projection instead, secrets of budget restrictions and recycled model armatures, and reproductions of original storyboards and rare inspirational art in the style of Gustave Dore. The text is overflowing with photos, including behind-the-scenes stills and original posters for all his films.

Harryhausen provides complete production histories for all his features, from early box office disappointments like Mighty Joe Young to runaway hits like Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Though he doesn’t dwell as much on acting as he has a right to, he offers many insights for readers inside and outside the trade, and is frank in his admiration and love for all his characters. If the actor doesn’t like the villain, after all, neither will the audience, and Harryhausen loved his creatures to pieces.

Practical showbiz perspective abounds, as Harryhausen takes note of box office earnings and critical reviews of each picture. Although he does rely too much on quotes from Variety and Hollywood Reporter — then, as now, the trades only reviewed a movie’s moneymaking potential — it’s worthwhile to consider that, for gross receipts, only eight films in 1953 out-performed The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

Heads all over the industry will no doubt be spurred to revisit Harryhausen’s filmography on home video. Of the 16 feature-length films for which Ray created stop-motion creature effects, all but three are available on DVD. (The holdouts are Mighty Joe Young, Animal World and 3 Worlds of Gulliver). For completists, though, that still leaves a big hole to be filled, a hole that can be plugged nicely with the double-DVD Ray Harryhausen: The Early Years Collection.