REEL RETRO CINEMA: New looks at old flicks — and their comics connections… By ROB KELLY June 12, 1981 – My Dad is taking my sister and me to the movies, where I am about to experience an adventure, set in the distant past, featuring an indefatigable, lantern-jawed hero who faces one dire threat after another. But enough about Raiders of the Lost Ark, let’s talk Clash of the Titans! Yes, both films hit American movie screens that day, and while Indiana Jones won my Dad’s hard-earned dollars first, it didn’t take long until we took in the other film I had wanted to see. Clash of the Titans is the swan song for special effects legend Ray Harryhausen and producer Charles H. Schneer. I had seen their previous effort, 1977’s Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, in the theater, and other films of theirs like Jason and the Argonauts, Mysterious Island, and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad were staples on my local UHF station, Channel 48 in Philadelphia. The film follows Perseus (Harry Hamlin) on a mission to save the Princess Andromeda (Judi Bowker), who has been betrothed to the monstrous Calibos. To win her hand, Perseus sets out on a perilous adventure, where he meets friends and foes alike. Watching all this—and occasionally interfering—are the Gods themselves, like Zeus (Laurence Olivier), Thetis (Maggie Smith), and Athena (Susan Fleetwood). Zeus in particular often regards these mere mortals as playthings, pitting them against one another for his own amusement. The major knock (and a fair one it is) on these Harryhausen-Schneer films is that they have paper-thin-yet-also-stiff-as-a-board characters. Occasionally, the right bit of casting and a particularly committed performance from an actor managed to break through to elevate the material. A good example of that is 1974’s The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, which I think remains the gold standard for these run of films. But for the most part, that stuff doesn’t matter too much, because what these movies were selling—and what audience members like myself were showing up for—are the startlingly imaginative action set pieces, painstakingly executed by Harryhausen. And in that regard, Clash of the Titans delivers. In fact, every time I watch the film, I come away with the belief that it’s a different Harryhausen scene that is the best. It’s the opening with the...