There aren't many movies that span even one generation as representing good entertainment. Those that do rarely fall into the category of sword-and-sandal, but "Jason" was one of them.Advanced CGI now makes Harryhausen work look primitive so today's kids probably wouldn't be impressed. Yet this movie that stunned me as a 10 year old still stunned my own sons 25 years after it's release. It required a significant piece of work to do that.There are plenty of comments regarding the quality of the animation so I won't add to that. I will note that a young person who has any interest in the history and development of film special effects needs to rank this one with "King Kong" and take a look. They won't be sorry.

I saw this on a VHS with my dad when i was only 7 years old. I got terrified seeing the giant Talos. The incredible images stayed with me for years until I saw the movie again when I was 13. This movie is my childhood fav. Saw many times after that. Bought a VHS in the 80s. Bought a vcd in very late 90s. Saw this few years back with my kids. A very nostalgic n one of the finest 60s monster/adventure/horror film fr me. It is a fun, quickly paced adventure movie. The movie has a towering bronze giant named Talos. Winged Harpies, who torment a blind ol man. A seven headed hydra, who gaurds the fleece. N the best for the last- armed skeleton warriors. The main attraction of the film is the special effects work of Ray Harryhausen (The 7th voyage of sindbad, One Million Years BC, The Valley of Gwangi, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger and Clash of the Titans).Special thanx to the producer Charles H. Schneer who was famous for his collaborations with Ray Harryhausen. Together, they created some of the best-loved fantasy and science fiction films to grace the silver screen. It is one of the best of the sword-and-sandal epics. The scene where the giant appears from around the cliff was awesome. There is also some decent score by Bernard Hermann. (The man behind the woodwinds of Citizen Kane, the shrieking violins of Psycho, and the saxophone of Taxi Driver). Only one bad thing about this film, the abrupt ending of the movie. Its directed by Don Chaffey (One million years bc).

I want to start by saying that Ray Harryhausen's effects in this film are quite brilliant even though I would say they are more an excess than a spectacle. What breaks the illusion of this being a film is the idea that his miniatures that were animated by stop- motion seemed choppy at times rather than moving with fluidity.Some creatures within the film seemed a little unnecessary to be honest - the bat-like figures that take advantage of a blind man are very purple and look like puppets, not allowing me to take them seriously. What is really unnecessary, however, is the skeleton figures fighting for Jason's enemies at the conclusion of the film. I mean, Jason's enemies already have Jason and his team outnumbered, yet they insist on raising skeletons from the ground to fight with Jason and the Argonauts. They basically included this just because they could.The main thing that bothers me about this film is disregarding the inciting incident entirely; Pelias goes out of his way to attempt to kill Jason at the film's start, who is destined to kill him. Jason then talks about his plan to avenge his father - not knowing he is talking to Pelias, and Pelias advises him to travel to the edge of the Earth to retrieve a tool that will aid him in his quest to kill Pelias. Then this is completely disregarded later, and Jason comes nowhere close to getting his vengeance at the film's conclusion. What was the point of the beginning then? What was the point of the film in general?I enjoyed seeing Harryhausen's effects, but this film seemed like a waste of time since it threw the story it had at the beginning away and never looked back.

Ray Harryhausen was the master of stop-motion special effects. Although he seemed to just get better with time, this is nonetheless one of the best films of the bunch, a thoroughly enjoyable drama with interesting moments of mythical creature action. Bernard Herrmann wrote a brassy score for this film while off duty from Hitchcock. Producer Schneer's and Harryhausen's goal was not a faithful rendition of the Greek myth, but a Hollywood action spectacle, and at that, they succeeded. The story takes many liberties with the original myth, such as the seven-headed hydra Jason fights to get the golden fleece. One liberty it does not take is politically correctness: the Greeks are white, no 'token women' join the Argonauts, and that is just fine.The general story holds true to the myth: Pelias steals the throne of Thessaly and puts all but one contender to death - Jason. To return to his rightful throne, Jason, with aid of the Goddess Hera, obtains the Golden fleece of Colchis, accompanied by the trusty band of Argonauts through many adventures, and marries the pagan sorceress Medea. Many adventures ensue throughout, such as saving Phineas from the harpies, squeezing past the Symplegade rocks (no dove in the film ). Much is also left out, some of which can be seen in the more recent miniseries, and much is added to make for more stop-motion spectacle.The special effects are a bit rickety as all stop-motion animation is, but they often interact very well with the human characters. For example, the skeleton fighting scene has not been topped by any modern efforts, whereas the hydra scene has a lot of sword stabbing at thin air and little engagement. Before faulting the film for that, consider Obi Wan Kenobi fighting droids and drones in Star Wars Episode I: so many years later, so much CGI money, and the interactivity is less than Harryhausen's fighting skeleton's scene. The drones fall and get cut apart without really seeming to put up a fight; and boy, do they miss a lot for machinery that should have millisecond response time."Jason" is not perfect: the acting is often wooden, many fight scenes look very staged, and the story occasionally bogs down. So it stays at the level of a grand Saturday matinée, of which Indiana Jones many years later reflected the best spirit also, with an archaeologist hunting myths, instead of the myths themselves.