Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

(On Cable TV, August 2020) It took a remarkably long time for Jason and the Argonauts to deliver what I was expecting from it. Renowned for its Ray Harryhausen stop-motion animation, I was expecting a fantasy adventure with wall-to-wall special effects, or at least a continuous string of them. I was not prepared for a first half-hour of tedious Greek mythological babble, almost entirely absent any fantastic element. It starts building midway through, first with disappointing special effects (that bronze statue… ugh), but then with increasing confidence. It culminates in a captivating skeleton battle sequence that is easily worth the bother of watching the film. I probably overdosed on Greek mythology a while back and couldn’t appreciate much of Jason and the Argonauts, but the film gets better and better as it goes on, and has the good sense of culminating on a classic special effects sequence that’s still worth a look today.