The Seventh Voyage
A Journey into the imagination and world of Ray Harryhausen.
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More on the Children
"The sequence is one of my favorites, although I would never want to do it again. It was painful to the extreme. Hours and hours of the same movements can wear a man down. But it was worth it. It is there on film for all to see, an no matter what technology in invented, it can never be reproduced."
Children of the Hydra's Teeth
Creator: Ray Harryhausen
Film: Jason and the Argonauts 1963
*Click on the images to see a larger version*
The Children of The Hydra's teeth video clip
After Jason fights with the Hydra and kills it, Aeetes prays to the Goddess Hecate to deliver to him the children of the hydra's teeth, soon flames come down from the sky and burn the Hydra's body. Aeetes commands his soldiers to collect the teeth of the mouth of the Hydra. They follow Jason to the top of the hill and so the children are born.
One
by one they arise from the ground with sword and shield in hand (err bones) as
Jason, Castor and Phalerus watch. After all of them have risen from the earth
Aeetes commands them to attack them and kill them
"Destroy them!! kill, kill, kill, kill them all!!!" --King Aeetes--
They start their attack with this really strange wailing and one of the most amazing sequences in this entire film begins. After a couple of minutes of fighting with the skeletons, Castors falls victim to one of them and dies, soon after Phalerus is struck by one too.
Jason
seeing that both of them are now dead he runs towards the edge of the cliff with
the Skeletons after him. He soon realizes that their is no way to win against
them so he jumps off the cliff and lands in the water with the skeletons after
him. I guess these skeletons could not swim because they don't come out of the
water and I guess die and second time....I've seen these as a collectors item a
while back but I think their sold out.
Miniature
Major update a new miniature is available! as chess pieces and man where they sold out quickly! they stand between 3 to 4 inches tall they come in a really cool box with great packaging at $99.99 www.monstersinmotion.com
Children of the Hydra's Teeth Facts
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The skeletons were all jointed figures and had all the joints that a real skeletons would have.
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The skeletons were actually just the armature with sockets and joints so what Mr. Harryhausen did was use cotton dipped in latex an build in the bones.
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This sequence was very difficult to make according to him because of the number of skeletons. Once again Ferdinando Poggi (Castor) was brought on to do the sword fights, he was also the one who choreographed the fight sequence in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad against one skeleton.
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"All the live action for the sequence was filmed on a hill above the beach near Palinuro, where we had shot the Talos sequences. When we were looking for locations for Clash of the Titans some years later, we naturally returned to the hill, but at some time over the intervening years a huge hotel had been built on the site. To say that we were disappointed would have been and understatement."
"After filming a stuntman jump into the sea, the prop men threw seven plaster skeletons off the cliff, which had to be done correctly on the first take as we couldn't retrieve them for a second. To this day there are, somewhere in the sea near that hotel on the cliff edge, the plaster bones of the seven skeletons."