It is fun to browse at Reckless

Reckless Video does have standard genre sections for Comedy, Action, Drama, etc, but one of the things that makes the store special (and a lot of fun to browse through) is our array of nooks, crannies, and subsections... sometimes small and sometimes not-so-small sections of movies among the more normal categories that might be just what you're looking for (even if you didn't know you were looking for it). Finding the right section-- the one that really captures your imagination-- might keep your movie-watching schedule booked for a month, so feel free to wander around and see if anything catches your eye.

This page will always be highlighting one of Reckless Video's spotlight sections. Right now, it's...

(located in Adventure)

Ray Harryhausen was the special effects master of the 50's and 60's, best known for his creatures in the classic Sinbad movies. Inspired by the 1932 King Kong, Harryhausen dedicated his career to making fantastic and larger-than-life creatures interact with live actors on the screen. In split screen process he called "Dynamation," he could create swashbuckling action scenes between Jason's Argonauts and a multitude of animated skeletons, One Million Years B.C's rampaging dinosaurs, or clockwork golems. While his work on the Sinbad movies gave the hero magical and mysterious adversaries, Jason and the Argonauts is widely argued to be an effects masterpiece still held in great esteem today-- these adventures were created by talented men without the aid of computers.

A memorable picture from my childhood, Clash of the Titans was one of my youthful favorites, long before I'd ever heard of Ray Harryhausen. It was a wild adventure based on Greek mythology (with Sir Lawrence Olivier and Burgess Meridith, no less), and... with no concept of special effects... all I knew is that the movie had quests and adventures with giant birds carrying gilded cages, clockwork owls, a giant Kraken, and the serpentine Medusa. My mother assures me that it was my absolute favorite movie for a decent amount of time.

Ray Harryhausen's influences are still felt today, from the naming of Monsters Inc's premier sushi restaurant "Harry Hausen's" to the stop-motion skeletons in Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness. Nothing is more telling, though, than the Harryhausen-inspired Equinox, full of stop-motion monsters, made for $6500 by Dan Murren, the man who made the bicycles fly in E.T, head of George Lucas' special effects house Industrial Light and Magic, and the only special effects man to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

If pick up our copy of Equinox, there will be no doubt as to where ILM's top man got his inspiration... and those films are in the Family Room at Reckless Video, in the Ray Harryhausen section.