Jack the Giant Killer
1962 Directed by Nathan Juran
Synopsis
The terrible and trecherous Pendragon plans to gain the throne of Cornwall by getting the king to abdicate and to marry his lovely daughter. To help him he has his dreadful witches in his castle and his almost unstoppable sorcery. A giant under his control abducts the princess, but on the way home with her the giant meets farming lad Jack who slays him. This is only the beginning.
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Of all things to squeeze in before it left us, I chose this Harryhausen-without-Harryhausen flick from frequent Harryhausen collaborator Nathan Juran. Like most of Harryhausen's sword and sworcery flicks, the characters are weak and portrayed by bland leads (partially excused by the genre and the film's deliberate evocation of fairy tales, but there's no excusing bland performances) and the film loses momentum after accommodating one effects showcase after another. The stop motion effects are more Gumby than Jason and the Argonauts, particularly the eyes of the beasts which make all of them "cute" rather than scary. The slaying of the first giant is actually pretty gruesome and apparently this is in keeping with the source material; if only they'd stuck…
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Fun kiddie movie. Watched the Rifftrax live version, but I didn't think it was as bad as Mike and Kevin and Bill did.
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When you run out of Harryhausen Sinbad films, this one will quell the shakes until you can score again.
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I'll freely admit this movie might have been worse if it was not so weird. Feel free to forget the name - it has nothing to do with the beanstalk story. An Evil Prince tries to take over England by kidnapping the Princess with his army of giants and witches and such, and only random farmboy Jack can save the day.
Here we have much of the cast and crew of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad coming back to make another stop-motion fueled fantasy, though notably without Ray Harryhausen. The lack of Harryhausen changes things considerably, and if you ever wanted to really get a feeling of what he adds to a film give this one a watch. It's still…
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It's not Harryhausen, but still pretty damn fun! This is a great candidate for a remake, but right now it doesn't look like Bryan Singer has managed to turn out anything better with the material. He's got a year to fix it, so hopefully that will change.