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In my opinion Ray was the last great mainstream surrealist in SFX cinema.

Video isn't working for me here. So just imagine fighting skeletons.

But he was more than just an animator, which in my opinion is a boring laborious job. He was an artist, he didn't create monsters to fit around a film, the films fit around his monsters. There are a lot of individuals who could learn from his output. Not to be part of a system, but to make the system bend to you. His monsters were never realistic, they were surrealistic.

All of his films he had a large amount of input with, he even conceived most of them.

Here are some of the films that were never made but were conceived:

Dante's Inferno

Beowulf

The Hobbit

The Island of Dr Moreau

Sinbad goes to Mars

The Fall of the House of Usher.1.
;

This has really crapped on my day :(

1. R. Harryhausen, T.Dalton, Ray Harryhausen AN animated life (London: Aurum Press, 2003). p.285-298. -Full overview of all unrealised ideas.

Jason and the Argonauts 1963 is the best depiction of the famous myth imo. And if you're interested, try out the PS3 game Rise of the Argonauts. It has a bad rating but is surprisingly faithful to all its sources and is the most interesting hack and slash I've ever played.