So here’s the next and in many ways the toughest essay in this darned series. Why is this one so bloody tough? Because there really are no notable SF films, from around the freaking world, that was produced during the 1940s.
For most of these essays my task has been to chose, from a number of influential SF movies, just two and name these as the most influential of their decade. Certainly the next decade up, the 1950s, will prove a challenge. What a treasure of rich, interesting, and diverse films to selection from, but the 1940s? There isn’t anything here, sister.
I am not going to leave this entry empty handed. I am going to find at least one genre movie that had a lasting impact on films far beyond the scope of the picture or its box-office.
My selection is 1949’s Might Joe Young. It has been called, and rightly so in my opinion, a King Kong knock-off. It is the story of a young woman and her pet 12 foot tall gorilla. They are brought out of the wilds of Africa to the wilds of Hollywood as entertainment for a nightclub. The ape goes mad, there is destruction and terror in the streets of Los Angeles. All in all not a terribly original story line, it features one of the stars of the original King Kong, a truly influential film, and the special effects were headed up by Willis O’Brien, the technical wizard who did the effects for Kong.
None of this makes this film particularly important or memorable, the O’Brien supervised the effects work, which were primarily performed by Ray Harryhousen .
Harryhousen’s influence on special effects and film reverberates to this day. In the Final Episode of season 4 for Game of Thrones, when the skeletal wraiths attack from the ice, that scene is pure Harryhousen. Brendan Fraiser fighting the mummies in 1999’s The Mummy is a direct homage to Harryhousen work in the Sinbad movies. Clash of the Titans, 2010, is a remake of Harryhousen’s Clash of the Titans 1981. It is nearly impossible to over state the impact on film and special-effect that this one man had, and his first big break was on this fairly forgettable film, Mighty Joe Young.
