Want to know the best Ray Harryhausen movies? How about the worst Ray Harryhausen movies? Curious about Ray Harryhausen box office grosses or which Ray Harryhausen movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Ray Harryhausen movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which one got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013) was an American-British visual effects creator who created a form of stop-motion model animation known as Dynamation. His IMDb page shows 17 visual effect credits from 1949-1981. This page will rank 15 Ray Harryhausen movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. His short film, Tulips Shall Grow (1942) and his documentary, The Animal World (1956) were not included in the rankings.
Drivel page: We have a ton of actor pages, a decent amount of actress pages, many great director pages, a couple of writer pages, one costume designer page and one music composer page…but not a single page on a visual effects person. We think that fact has always bugged Steve Lensman….well we are not ignoring that group of movie makers anymore…as we have done a page on one of Steve’s childhood heroes…Mr. Ray Harryhausen. Highly recommend Steve’s Harryhausen page which is loaded…and we mean loaded with awesome photos. Ray Harryhausen – On The Screen.
Ray Harryhausen Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort by Ray Harryhausen movies by the stars of the movies.
- Sort Ray Harryhausen movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Ray Harryhausen movies by their yearly box office rank
- Sort Ray Harryhausen movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Ray Harryhausen movie received.
- Sort Ray Harryhausen movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Ray Harryhausen Table
- Three Ray Harryhausen movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 20.00% of his movies listed. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) was his biggest box office hit.
- An average Ray Harryhausen movie earned $66.50 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 14 Ray Harryhausen movies are rated as good movies…or 93.33% of his movies. Jason and the Argonauts (1963) was his highest rated movie while One Million Years B.C. (1966) was his lowest rated movie.
- One Ray Harryhausen movie received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 6.66% of his movies.
- One Ray Harryhausen movie won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 6.66% of his movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 40.00. 9 Ray Harryhausen movies scored higher that average….or 60.00% of his movies. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) got the the highest UMR Score while One Million Years B.C. (1966) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Ray Harryhausen
1. Raymond Frederick Harryhausen was born in Los Angles, California in 1920.
2. 1933’s King Kong was a huge influence on a very young Ray Harryhausen. His fascination with King Kong got he to experiment with animated shorts….which got him started on the path to Hollywood greatness.
3. The grand piano in 2005’s Corpse Bride has a gold name plate with “Harryhausen” engraved on it.
4. The restaurant in 2001’s Monsters, Inc. (2001) is named after Ray Harryhausen.
5. Ray Harryhausen thought 1963’s Jason and the Argonauts was his best movie.
6. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Peter Jackson all hail Ray Harryhausen’s film work as indispensable foundations for their own.
7. Ray Harryhausen was married one time and one child.
8. Ray Harryhausen received an Honorary Oscar® in 1992. You can see Tom Hanks give him the award at this You Tube video.
9. Unrealized Ray Harryhausen projects for which test footage was shot include 1953’s H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1953) and 1988’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
10. Check out Ray Harryhausen‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
How about George Pal, he won 5 Oscars for pics like War of the Worlds, When Worlds Collide, Seven Faces of Doctor Lao, Forbidden Planet and the Time Machine.
Sorry he has nothing to do with Forbidden Planet. He’s a producer and Dr. Lao won for makeup. When Worlds Collide, War of the Worlds and Time Machine won for special effects. His films Destination Moon and Tom Thumb also won best special effects. Plus he made Puppetoons for which he was nominated 7 consecutive years for best short subject, cartoon. Forbidden Planet was nominated for best special effects but lost.
Hey Dan…thanks for the clarification. Looks like he has a very successful career. Thanks for sharing all of this information….it is greatly appreciated.
Hey Dan…. I will add George Pal to the request list. I am sure there are lots of great special effects experts that would make great movie subjects.
Hi
I remember going to see The Seven Voyage of Sinbad and I thought the cyclops in it was fantastic. I seen it last year on T.V. and it holds up really well. I always liked 1 Million Years B.C. Surprised it got such a low rating. Some of his early black and white movies from the 50’s were terrific. He clearly was a very gifted technician. It was amazing as a young boy at 13 that he was so touched by King Kong that it changed his life.
I think had he of stayed in Hollywood rather than going back to England, he might have had even greater success. Nevertheless his influence was enormous. So glad he got an honorary Oscar.
Hey Chris.
1. Thanks for checking out our latest page.
2. I imagine his creatures have influenced lots of current filmmakers.
3. Seems One Million B.C. has lots fans…but when I was calculating it’s critic audience rating….it got really poor marks.
4. I think his England days really limited his output….17 projects in almost 40 years is not that many.
5. A good comment as always.
Nice I have seen his work but had no idea the same man was behind it all. Nice look at a part of Hollywood I know little about.
Hey Helakoski…. Glad this page helped you realized that Ray Harryhausen was the man behind all of those special effects….thanks for stopping by.
Thanks Bruce! A page devoted to one of my childhood heroes! When I was young I would buy any book or magazine that featured articles on Harryhausen, I even owned Super 8 film on some of his best films – The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, each film was edited down to about 30mins.
The 7th Voyage tops all the charts, it was a surprise hit in 1958 and the critics were kind to it. According to one of Ray’s books when Jason and the Argonauts was released it got lost among all the Italian sword and sandal epics that were coming out at the time and failed to get the recognition it deserved. It is Rays favorite of the films he made and mine too, I think Jason is his masterpiece.
Let’s see I’ve seen 1,2,3… 15 of the 15 films you’ve listed, and I own them all too. Glad you included Mighty Joe Young, King Kong effects legend Willis O’Brien was head of special effects on that classic but it was Harryhausen who did most of the animation.
When Joe Young won an Oscar for it’s effects O’Brien picked it up. Harryhausen had to wait a few more decades for a special Oscar presented to him by long time fan Tom Hanks in 1992. I see Bruce includes a youtube link to that event on the page, nice!
Sad to see One Million Years BC at the bottom of the UMR chart, it contains some of his best work and it was produced by the Hammer Studios, it was their biggest success. It’s just come out on blu-ray too!
The Valley of Gwangi is near the bottom of the chart as well, an underrated western fantasy with excellent stop-motion effects by the master. I’d love to see that get a blu-ray release too.
Here’s a link to my fact-packed image-heavy Ray Harryhausen tribute at hubpages if anyone’s interested –
http://hubpages.com/entertainment/Ray-Harryhausen-on-the-Screen
Excellent work Bruce, a great tribute to one of the old visual effects masters. Vote Up!
Hey Steve…..part 1
1. Not sure how I missed this comment, especially since this was a Lensman page…..sorry for the delay.
2. I can easily see little Steve devouring those magazines…..wow Super 8 Ray movies….now that is going way back.
Due to time issues I will finish this comment later and then put them all into one comment later today.
Part 2
3. I agree Jason is his masterpiece ….though I have not seen as many of his movies as you….my tally is 6.
4. I read that about his work on Mighty Joe Young too. That had to be a dream come true for him, especially since King Kong was such a big influence on him.
5. I thought that was a very cool You Tube video……glad the Oscar people are allowing those moments to be seen.
6. I was surprised that 100 milllion got such low ratings according to critics.
7. I bet it looks impressive on BluRay.
8. Valley of Gwangi is a movie that I am not too aware of…but it sounds interesting.
9. Thanks for the visit and the comment…..and once again sorry for the delay in my response.
10. Thanks for the link to your Ray page.
Hello Bruce,
I’ve seen 4 movies of the list. Jason and the Argonauts is one of my best childhood memories cinematographic. The battle with the skeleton impressed me.
I saw again Mysterious Island last year, and I thought he had aged well. It was a good movie. Unlike Clash Of The Titans, has not aged. However, I had loved it when I was a teenager.
Hey Laurent….glad this page brought back memories of yesteryear for you. As I was researching stats for Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger I remembered I had actually seen that one in theaters…oh so many years ago. My tally is 6…or 40%. I thought Mysterious Island was pretty good too. As for Clash of the Titans…it has been years since I have seen it…but I have some fond moments of watching that movie many many times on HBO when I was teenager. At the time I did not realize who Laurence Olivier was….lol. Thanks for the visit and the comment.
P.S. I have not forgotten about the Warner Brothers Index cards….I was actually working on that tonight….one card done…49 movies….some will be duplicates…two more cards to transfer…sorry for the delay.
Take your time Bruce, there’s no problem.
Just wanted you to know I had not forgotten.