Posted By Dan Greenfield on Jun 12, 2026 | 3 comments

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 Kraken! No, it’s the scene with Calibos. No, of course, it’s Perseus’s battle with the Medusa. No, no, no, it’s the conclusion with the Kraken! And that’s not even including some of the other fun characters we meet on the way, like the Stygian Witches and Charon, the skeletal ferryman for the river Styx.

Watching with 21st century eyes, Clash of the Titans does move at what sometimes is a slow pace, and feels like a film from a much earlier era. Which, essentially, it was—Harryhausen and Schneer made their names in the ’50s and ’60s, and while I think they held their own in the ’70s (the aforementioned Golden Voyage),it was going to be hard for them to keep up in a post-Star Wars world. So while some critics at the time chided this movie for feeling so old school, watching it now, that’s a feature, not a bug — Clash is one last grand volley of capital-A adventure from two creative geniuses. In short, it holds up.

Virtually all of the Ray Harryhausen films were translated into comic books, in one form or another. Clash of the Titans is no different, sort of. Instead of a three-issue series or perhaps an issue of Marvel Super Special, COTT was adapted by American Golden Press as a one-shot, square bound, magazine-size special by writer Mary Carey with art by the legendary Dan Spiegel. I was completely unaware this thing existed until I found it on eBay many decades later, where it was often mislabeled as “treasury size.”

I’m a huge fan of Spiegel’s work, and his classical style I think is a good fit for the material. The only scene that doesn’t quite have the visceral oomph of the movie is with the Kraken, who looks more like an annoyed old man in the comic than the slobbering, wild-eyed behemoth from the movie. Perhaps Spiegel didn’t have any reference material to work from (Harryhausen had to do all this stuff one frame at a time, after all). Not in any way trying to besmirch the effort here, but Clash is such a perfect big-screen type of entertainment, it’s a real shame Marvel didn’t snatch this up, give it the true treasury edition treatment, and sic someone like John Buscema or Gil Kane on the material.

But that was not the only dalliance Clash of the Titans had with the world of comics! It was also adapted into a comic strip that ran for six weeks in 2000AD, with art by Patrick Wright. The film, by design, is episodic, with Perseus going from one place to the next, either making friends or vanquishing foes. So while I didn’t have a chance to read the entire six weeks’ worth of strips, the ones I saw have a nice start-stop rhythm that works all on its own. Although, frustratingly I imagine to readers at the time, the strip concludes before the climactic fight with the Kraken, instead instructing people to go see the movie.

One piece of merchandising that I was aware of at the time, but somehow I did not take advantage of, was the line of Clash of the Titans action figures by Mattel. I guess I was still in my Star Wars All The Time phase, because I never had any of these as a kid. I see them now and think, what the hell was wrong with me? Look at these! From the gorgeous card art to the figures themselves, these toys are a thing of beauty, and a Kraken vs. Rancor Monster fight would have been one for the ages. I guess it’s fitting that I also ignored the Raiders of the Lost Ark toys, another line that I would kill to own now. I guess June 12, 1981, was just a bad time for action figures.

Despite being swamped by the cultural juggernaut that was Raiders, Clash of the Titans did well enough at the box office that Harryhausen and Schneer planned to do another film called Force of the Trojans (a title ever so slightly inspired by Star Wars?). But then in 1985, Harryhausen announced his retirement, and Schneer decided to pack it in, too. Maybe it’s good that they decided to let Clash of the Titans stand as their final effort. One last, literally handcrafted cinematic adventure that they just don’t make anymore.

Postscript: My wife and I met Harry Hamlin at a convention in 2023, and he could not have been nicer to talk to. For me, there was only ever one choice of what to get him to sign.

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MORE

— RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK AT 45: Forever One of the Grandest Adventures of Them All. Click here.

— ‘FLASH GORDON’ AT 45: Movie of the (Wonderfully) Impossible! Click here.

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ROB KELLY is a podcaster, writer, illustrator, and film commentator. You can find his work at robkellycreative.com.

You can read more of his REEL RETRO CINEMA columns here.