There was a time when you could, and the effects, though widely considered dated by today's standards, are still truly special in my eyes. For my money, these are the ten best pre-CG special effect showcases.
10. Forbidden Planet (1956)
It was something of a small coup that MGM managed to accrue such a substantial budget for a B sci-fi adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest, but it's a good thing, as the resulting effects are quite impressive by 1950s standards. The mysteriously animated "creatures from the id" have an ambiguous, thus all the more lethal, quality. And let's not forget Robbie the Robot, who was such a hit in this film that he appeared in several more.
9. The Thief of Bagdad (1924)
Despite a daunting 3 hour run time, this stunning fantasy adventure is almost impossible to take one's eyes off of. Much of the film's captivating power is owed to its benchmark-setting production design by William Cameron Menzies, a gargantuan undertaking built on a six-acre lot, and special effects by Hampton Del Ruth & Coy Watson, many of whose illusions are still indecipherable today. It flies circles around the garish, technicolor-exploiting 1940 remake.
8. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Rarely does a film come along whose effects are so singularly iconic and specifically memorable as The Wizard of Oz. From the terrifying twister that lifts Dorothy's house to Oz, to the Wicked Witch's infernal entrances and exits (one of which nearly killed poor Margaret Hamilton!), to the realization of Oz himself, it all adds immeasurably to the film's identity. Effects legend A. Arnold Gillespie lost the Oscar that year, but he'd go on to win three in his career.
7. Aliens (1986)
By extrapolating from H.R. Giger's original alien design (for which Giger himself won a Best Visual Effects Oscar seven years earlier) and by applying his own sophisticated animatronics, Stan Winston ended up giving us one of the most horrifying movie monsters of all time in the form of the mother alien. Equally impressive is the execution of all the space-aged technology, including that awesome loader suit, which clashes with the alien puppet in the best action sequence of James Cameron's career.
6. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Old fashioned stunt-based effects rule the first three quarters of Spielberg's indelible adventure yarn. Kit West's staging of the onset mechanical effects make for great action scenes, but naturally, they save the coolest, and most morbid, supernatural effects for the end! Most people don't remember that this film is the one that brought director Joe Johnston (The Wolfman, Captain America), who was working as an art director at ILM at the time, an Oscar.
5. TRON (1982)
Widely considered one of the most influential effects films of all time, TRON broke exciting new ground in the use of computer animation in film, resulting in a sci-fi cult classic with an unmistakable visual signature. I can think of no greater irony that the Academy's visual effects branch disqualified it from Oscar consideration because using computers to create and animate images was considered "cheating"!
4. Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
Stop-motion guru Ray Harryhausen produced a number of fantasy films throughout his career, from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) to Clash of the Titans (1981), bringing life to their many bizarre creatures with his distinctive stop-motion animation. This film stands out, particularly for that meticulously crafted skeleton battle, which took him four months to produce. Tragically, he was never nominated for an Academy Award.
3. King Kong (1933)
Speaking of stop-motion gurus, Willis H. O'Brien gets cited next on my list for his timeless articulation of Kong in RKO's landmark monster flick. It's one thing to send people screaming from the theatre with the illusion of a 24-foot ape, but it takes real talent to actually convey that beast's heart and desires with little more than a few carefully animated gestures. Sure, stop-motion animation has become more refined since then, but the art owes a lot to early exemplars like this one.
2. Star Wars (1977)
George Lucas' visionary space opera kicked off a long run of commercial, critical, and Oscar successful for Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects company that he co-founded himself out of necessity when 20th Century Fox's effects department was closed before he began work on the film. Drawing inspiration from Douglas Trumbull's work on 2001, the fledgling company revitalized an old aesthetic with innovative techniques (after much grief and budget spending, of course). The resulting aliens, space chases, lightsaber battles, etc. have become the stuff of legend.
1. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
The first time I laid eyes on Robert Zemekis' brilliant cartoon/live-action hybrid, I was honestly gobsmacked. Sure, the combination of animated characters in frame with real actors had been done before, but the painstaking level to which Zemekis' ILM crew evoked interaction between toons and the real world far surpassed anything that had been done prior. George Gibbs & Peter Biggs' elaborate manipulations of onset props, later filled in by Richard Williams' 24-frames-per-second animation and Ken Ralston's lighting/shading (among other optical enhancements) is what gave those toons real presence on screen. To this day it stands alone as the most seamless and clever marriage of animation and live-action ever committed to film.
(Honourable mention to Stanley Kubrick and Douglas Trumbull's Oscar-recognized work on 2001, which comes in a close 11th.)
This is my final list of the year. It's time to bunker down and catch up with the Oscar season's increasing pace.
