What are some older special effects that you liked a lot?

[Argus Skyhawk]

So, What are some older special effects that you liked a lot or think worked really well? By "older" I mean before Star Wars and the advent of Industrial Light & Magic. That may be an arbitrary moment to draw the line, but I tend to think of special effects work from before that time as separate from what followed.

The parting of the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments is thrilling to watch.

Darby O'Gill and the Little People made some excellent use of forced perspective and split-screen work.

All of the Ray Harryhausen stop-motion fantasy creatures were quite beautiful to watch. I'll pick the giant walking statue in Jason and the Argonauts as a particularly cool example.

Also, I'm impressed by how well much of the effects work in the 1950's version of War of the Worlds holds up beautifully.

 

[Gepard]

Pretty much all the Krell facility model and matte work in Forbidden Planet. It still looks amazing today.

And, since it is technically before ILM, everything in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Aside from using models instead of CGI and rear-projection instead of greenscreen (and not suffering from orange-and-teal, of course), it looks like it could have been made this year.

 

[Christopher]

Would it be cheating to include the special effects from Star Trek: The Motion Picture? It's after Star Wars, but ILM was dissolved after SW and not reconstituted until The Empire Strikes Back. So it's before ILM's existence as a permanent company. John Dykstra did work on both SW and TMP, but Douglas Trumbull represents an earlier school of FX going back to 2001: A Space Odyssey and before.

Anyway, the Enterprise flyby and the V'Ger flyover are my all-time favorite visual effects sequences in terms of beauty and grandeur.

Let's see, earlier than that... well, I have to give props to the FX work in Fritz Lang's Metropolis. There was some extraordinary miniature and matte work there, remarkable for its time and rivalling work from decades later.

Forbidden Planet is also right up there, especially the gorgeous matte paintings of the Krell underground complex.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I do agree about 2001.

I like the effects seen in the original Star Trek television show which some of you might have seen. My favorite may be an episode called Journey to Babel. I think the stun effect looks good even today. Also the fact that they used a strange light rather than model for the Orion ship actually added to the mystery of it.

I think some of the work from Logan's Run looks quite good.

 

[Greg Cox]

The old George Pal version of THE TIME MACHINE has some clever effects--especially as George watches the world change around him while he's sitting stationary in his machine: the sun whipping through the sky, the changing fashions on the mannequin across the street, getting buried along and then unburied by centuries of erosion, etc.

There's also that neat bit near the end when the dead Morlock decomposes in fastforward . . ..

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Harryhausen and Jason, for sure. That moment when Talos first turns its head to look at Hercules and his friend is one of the freakiest things on film.

Pal's Time Machine and also his War Of The Worlds, check.

And everything - every fucking thing - in Forbidden Planet.

 

[Argus Skyhawk]

Dang! I can't believe I forgot to mention 2001: A Space Odyssey in my original post! I'm glad you guys remembered.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I'll add the model work that Brian Johnson and others did for Space: 1999 and that Derek Meddings and others did for UFO.

 

[Beagleman]

Pretty much all the Krell facility model and matte work in Forbidden Planet. It still looks amazing today.

This! (and alot of other stuff from Forbidden Planet)

 

[Christopher]

I'm quite fond of the Martian War Machines in Pal's War of the Worlds. Possibly the first "alien ship" design in cinema to be neither a rocketship nor a saucer -- though since they were technically hovercraft (or even "walkers" using force-ray "legs"), maybe they don't quite count.

 

[J.T.B.]

In addition to the ones mentioned above, I've always been partial to the 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Great combinations of practical/mechanical effects, special photography, models, matte paintings and a little animation. The surface ship shots look a little miniaturey (pretty much the rule before CGI) but the Nautilus looks great, and pretty fearsome on a ramming run.

I always thought Destination Moon looked good, too, probably mostly on the strength of the Bonestell paintings.

ETA:

And, since it is technically before ILM, everything in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Aside from using models instead of CGI and rear-projection instead of greenscreen (and not suffering from orange-and-teal, of course), it looks like it could have been made this year.

2001 was mostly front-projection, Kubrick didn't like rear-projection and I believe there is little, if any, in that movie.

--Justin

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The Doomsday Machine (TOS, if that needs to be clarified) is very convincing, considering it's a paper mache cone on a string.

For very early stuff, Buster Keaton did a movie (can't recall the name) where he dreams (?) of being a caveman fighting dinosaurs. Maybe he's responsible for the caveman-fighting-dinosaurs trope? It was startling to see any kind of SFX like that from a movie that old.

And of course, we should acknowledge Harold Lloyd's illusion of free-climbing a skyscraper in Safety Last, although the "special effects" there were minimal.

 

[Christopher]

For very early stuff, Buster Keaton did a movie (can't recall the name) where he dreams (?) of being a caveman fighting dinosaurs. Maybe he's responsible for the caveman-fighting-dinosaurs trope?

Apparently not -- Wikipedia and TV Tropes credit that to D. W. Griffith's Brute Force from 1914. Though I'd be amazed if there weren't references in prose or still cartoons before then.

And of course, we should acknowledge Harold Lloyd's illusion of free-climbing a skyscraper in Safety Last, although the "special effects" there were minimal.

Yeah, that was really clever. They built fake building exteriors on the roofs of real buildings, so that what looked like a drop of many stories was just a few feet. And it's also really clever the way film historians deduced that, by studying the background cityscapes and figuring out where they were shot from.

 

[Mistral]

I always liked the robots from Silent Running. Also, Lon Chaney in the Wolfman. And the ghost of Marley in the Alastair Sim's A Christmas Carol, as well as the door knocker....

 

[C.E. Evans]

Another vote for 2001: A Space Odyssey. The stargate sequence towards the end still fascinates me, even though I've seen it more than a dozen times...

 

[Tulin]

The invisible monster's footsteps as the camera dollies along with them from "Forbidden Planet", along with the attack on the force field when we can see the creature's outline.

Scared the shit out of me as a kid.

LOVE that film!

Sorry Gen Y but practical still kicks CGIs arse!!!

 

[Mysterion]

Just saw Forbidden Planet again for the first time in a long while, and it looks great even now. Trumbull's work in Silent Running is a stand-out for me, as well as the realization of the drones in that movie - some of the best movie robots prior to the Star wars films. Also, Trumbull's work for Close Encounters still holds up very well, IMO. And, as other have already mentioned, pretty-much anything that Ray Harryhausen or George Pal did is legendary.

 

[ManOnTheWave]

When Bram Stoker's Dracula came out, there was a lot of bitching about how bad the effects were. I loved them because the effects team deliberately used techniques dating back to the late 1800s which was when the book was written. They projected images on set Or double exposed film rather than super impose. They used moveable floors and trap doors. They even hired a magician as a consultant. It's a really fun watch if you ever liked old movies.

 

[Kirkman1987]

I echo everything in the thread so far. Here are a few additions.

The effects in The Invisible Man.

King Kong

The transporter effect on Star Trek.

That mutated baby creature in Eraserhead, which is a mystery to this day (lynch refuses to say how it was done).

 

[DeafPoet]

I think Fantastic Voyage still looks pretty good, all things considered.