Category: Best Visual Effects

Jungle Book – 1942

The Special effects for The Jungle Book weren’t that bad, but I wouldn’t exactly call them great either.  The movie was visually dazzling, but I think that it was mostly due to the production design.  The visual effects relied on several things that, to be honest, were passable, but not perfect.

For example, one thing that this movie had, which other movies rarely used, was animatronics.  It was both the genius and the failing of the effect.  You see, director, Zoltan Korda, decided to use real animals in the wide shots, and either mechanical or stuffed animals in the close-up shots in which Mowgli had interactions with them.  Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.

Within the hidden treasure room, a real snake is shown slithering into the scene.  Then, a mechanical snake is shown talking to the actors.  That one was done well enough, though a critical eye can still see the difference between the two.  But later, a real Shere Khan is shown chasing Mowgli.  However, when they are fighting in the river, the stiff and motionless stuffed tiger looked really fake.  Another poorly done animal that caught my attention was the crocodile.  Its mechanical movements were clunky, especially when it opened its mouth.

But when it comes down to it, I have to applaud the film for its use of animatronics.  They were unique for movies of the time, and they weren’t all badly done.  The python, Kaa, was done well enough, though even he looked clunky and stiff, at least when he was on land.  He looked better once they got him into the water.  There was a cool shot or two in the river during Mowgli’s fight with Shere Khan, when Kaa reared his head and hissed at the combatants. 

And then there were the matte paintings.  Yes, they were beautiful and colorful, making great use of the Technicolor in which the movie was filmed.  But some of them looked too much like paintings.  It was like the actors were walking through a cartoon.  I would have liked it to look more realistic, though I suppose you could say that its un-realism may have added to the fantasy of the story.

And then I come to the movie’s climax.  When the villain sets the jungle on fire, there were several things that were done incredibly well.  First, they obviously set some real trees on fire.  A few of those shots were really spectacular.  And then they composited some raging flames to consume the ancient temple.  Again, these shots were visually stunning.  There was smoke and fire, and live animals running through the flames.  I really have no complaints about the sequence.

All in all, the special effects for this movie were done pretty well.  It was a fantasy, giving the effects artists and the production design team a chance to stretch themselves.  But I can’t help looking at the movie through my modern eyes.  The animatronic effects may have been impressive back in the 1940s, but I can’t help thinking that, even then, they must have been capable of better realism.

Invisible Agent – 1942

I wouldn’t exactly call this movie a piece of cinematic trash, but I’d come close.  The movie, was pretty bad.  Most of the special effects were awful, especially when seen with my modern TV.  I hope that the audiences of 1942 had such inferior picture quality on the big screen that they couldn’t see all the obvious flaws that I could see.  It was as if Hollywood was just cranking out as many war propaganda films as it could, without regard for story content, continuity, or quality effects.

It is difficult for me to comment on just the special effects, and not the other poor aspects of the film, but I’ll do my best.  First, I’ll mention the obvious things, like being able to see the wires holding up floating objects, like a piece of chicken, or a key.  Or I could mention the ill-conceived lighting on the man who was supposed to be invisible which made his outline completely visible as he smoked a cigarette, but not when we should have been able to see him in a burning room full of smoke.  But I also have to be fair and mention the film’s climactic escape from Germany when our invisible hero bombs the Nazi airfield.  The explosions were well-done and I had no problem with them.

But there are three things in particular which I feel need to be mentioned, things which took away from the effectiveness of the movie’s illusions.  The first concerns a scene in which the invisible agent puts cold cream on his face to make himself visible to the beautiful woman.  In order for the effect to be realistic, we should only have been able to see the areas to which the cream had been applied, but we could see his teeth and tongue.  Also, when he is spreading the cream on his face, you can see not only his head, but the towel wrapped around it, AND HIS EYES!!  In another shot, when the invisible man was removing a Nazi soldier’s clothes, the soldier seemed to be glowing because of the lighting, especially his polished boots.

Second, there was a scene in which he is captured.  A net fitted with fish hooks is dropped onto his invisible form.  We should have been able to see through the net, but instead, I could see the man in the black body suit.  The director, Edwin L. Marin, should have realized that if you can’t do an effect properly, you should find a way around doing it at all. 

And third, there were a few shots in the film in which a technique was use that always bothers me.  It had nothing to do with the invisible aspect of the movie.  It had to do with a bit of rear-projection and the motion of the film being sped up to make it appear as if the action is happening fast.  It always puts me in mind of either Benny Hill, or worse yet, the Three Stooges.  It makes the movie feel campy or cheap, which I’m sure was not the intent, as other parts of the movie were treated as a serious action film.  Fortunately, this effect was only used sparingly. 

1942 – Flying Tigers

This was a good movie with some top-notch visual effects.  As was the trend in the early 40s, it was another wartime action/drama.  The story was about, you guessed it, the ace fighter squadron known as the Flying Tigers.  So we got some pretty great air battles with the Japanese Air Force, some great bombing scenes, and the big climax of the movie, the US bombing of a Japanese supply bridge.  There was a lot to see, and the story did a good job of keeping my interest.

So first, let me address the aerial battles.  There were plenty of planes in the air, making the screen full of fast flying planes with some pretty impressive stunt flying.  They mixed this in with some great models and fancy camera angles.  There were planes that were damaged, with smoke trailing from them, and even planes on fire as they fell from the sky.  There was one airplane that was completely engulfed in flames as it fell from the sky.  The action was fast-paced and chaotic, and it was sometimes difficult to tell which were the Americans and which were the Japanese.  But in one case it didn’t matter as we saw one plane crash into another in mid-air.  Upon impact, the two fighters exploded in a massive ball of flame.  Very cool!

There was another great sequence where there was a commercial airplane that had been hit with anti-aircraft weaponry and had to make a hard landing with one of its engines spewing forth smoke and flames.  It had to land without using its landing gear.  It hit the ground on a wet and muddy runway, and slid to a rough stop.  I couldn’t tell if this was a real airplane or a model.  Whichever it was, the illusion worked.  That was a cool effects sequence.

The bombing of the US air base and the village it was next to was great.  There were explosions everywhere, and people ducking to the ground.  And in the later half of the film, some building were hit, throwing splintered wood and debris everywhere.  But that climax I mentioned, where the bridge is blown was very exciting.  It was clearly a model, but the detail was great.  The only thing that would have made that effect better would have been a train moving on the bridge as it was destroyed.  But that was a plot point.  The train was missed, so our heroes had to keep going to destroy the train, which one of them does by making the ultimate sacrifice, and crashing the plane directly into it.

The only thing that caught my attention as bad, wasn’t really even bad.  Every time a Japanese aircraft was shot by American bullets, they had an overused effect where the Japanese pilot would cover his face with his hands and then we could see blood pouring through his fingers.  It wasn’t a bad effect.  I just think they did it a few times too many.

This Best visual effects nomination was well-deserved.  They clearly knew what they were doing, and it showed.  They elevated the action and pacing to an exciting pitch, and it was exciting to watch.  Combine that with a great script, and you’ve got a great movie that was thrilling in all the right ways.

1942 – Desperate Journey

Here is another example of a kind of dumb movie with some pretty decent visual effects.  The script was terrible, but at least they made the movie look pretty impressive.  It was a wartime propaganda film that was about a group of Allied soldiers who go on a mission to bomb a Nazi target and are shot down.  The surviving men are captured, but their farcically easy escape allows them to steal important documents, then make a desperate journey across the German countryside, even waltzing through Berlin, and finally into friendly territory, blowing up critical enemy targets along the way.

So we got some flying effects, multiple explosions, some fair compositing, and a lot of rear projection effects.  Of all these, I was most impressed with the flying airplane effects.  As was common for the time, miniature models were used for the flying aircraft, but there were two things that caught my attention.  First, the models were incredibly detailed.  The camera was outside the plane, and it was incredibly steady.  If it were live footage of a real plane in the air, I doubt they had the technology to make the shot so smooth and even.

But second, the camera was making some pretty awesome sweeping moves around the model, making it appear as though the plane were banking and diving in a really impressive and fluid motion.  And again those shots were smooth and steady, almost like a shot in a modern film.  It was actually very cool and it is the first time I have seen shots quite like them in a film from the 40s. 

And then there were the ground explosions.  At one point, they raid a Nazi chemical plant that is a producer of nitroglycerin.  To start the fire, they throw burning bottles of the explosive liquid onto crates full of the volatile chemical, and then run.  The entire plant then explodes in a gigantic ball of flame.  Yes, the building looked like a model, but the towering fireball was pretty spectacular, nonetheless.

Later, the surviving men come upon an Allied Forces aircraft that the Nazis are using to deliver a devastating bombing attack to England.  They commandeer the plane and use its guns to mow down the Nazis who were working on the mission.  They take off in another impressive sequence.  This one was not a model, but utilized some competent stunt flying, instead.  The camera was on the ground, but the plane did some low flying shots where men had to dive out of the way of the airplane as it fought to gain altitude.  Then, they drop the bomb onto a German base before heading into safe territory.

Compared to other war films of the time, I’d say the effects were few, but the ones they had were pretty well-done.  There was even a memorable scene where the men are making a rooftop escape by leaping from one building to another.  They used some great camera angles and some excellent composite effects.  But it’s just a good thing I’m reviewing the visual effects and not the poor script or the ridiculous portrayal of the Nazi military.  They were German Nazis, not morons.

The Black Swan – 1942

The Special Effects for this movie were passable, but I’m glad it didn’t win the Oscar.  Unfortunately, I can’t count Tyrone Power with his shirt off as a special effect.  If I could, I would say it was an over-used effect.  But seriously, there were some good composite shots that blended images fairly well, and some of the rear-projection was done well, though not all of it.  The film’s best special effects were the choreography and stunts.  There were also a few nice explosions, some fires, and a couple of really good scale models. 

It all started with the opening sequence, in which a band of pirates attacked Jamaica.  All the fast sword fighting was an exciting way to start the movie.  But after that, there was very little action until the final ten minutes or so of the movie.  Then the pirate ship battle took off.  There were canons firing, blazing explosions, a lot of smoke, and a bit of mayhem.

But one of the best effects was when our hero cuts the rudder line of the Black Swan, causing the vessel to crash against the rocks.  We see it approach the camera which is on the shore, then slam into the land.  Then the camera switches to a shot from behind the galleon, and we see one of the giant masts break in half and collapse onto the deck, sails and all.  It was a great effect!

After that, there was more fast-paced swashbuckling, pistol shooting, and sword-fighting.  There were a lot of extras battling in the background as the two leads, Tyrone Power and George Sanders, madly fenced with each other.  It really was impressive to see the speed with witch the two combatants faced off.  One wrong move and either one of them could have lost an eye!

But as I implied earlier, not all the special effects were perfect.  There was one little sequence in which the fiery damsel is riding in a carriage with one of the villains.  It should have been a simple rear-projection effect as we see the buildings behind them go by.  But it looked terrible, I’m sorry to say.  Other contemporary movies were getting it right, so I don’t know why this little inconsequential scene was so poorly done.  I think what caught my attention and pulled me out of the narrative was the fact that the buildings behind the actors were bouncing slightly, as if the camera filming them were being driven down a cobblestone street.  But the actors themselves were completely motionless, not following the bounce of the projected background.  It should have been the other way around with the buildings being stationary and the actors bouncing a little, right?

But aside from that, the effects were not too bad.  The matte-paintings of the harbor at Maracaibo, which served as the backdrop for the climactic battle, was very pretty and looked good in the Technicolor film.  Sure, the lighting effects were sometimes off, way too dark in the close-up shots and bright as day in the wide shots, but that is a minor complaint in an exciting pirate movie that was fun to watch!  Eat your heart out, Erol Flynn!

A Yank in the R.A.F. – 1941

This movie had some pretty spectacular special effects.  In my book, the seemed to really outshine the special effects in most of the other films that were nominated for the category in 1941.  Now, that being said, I must also mention that they were pretty average until about an hour and twenty-five minutes into the hour and thirty-three minute movie, at which time they became absolutely spectacular!

Before the point, most of the story was a romance, and a pretty creepy one, at that.  So two military men are interested in the same girl.  The British officer, played by John Sutton, was the nice guy who the female lead, played by Betty Grable, should have ended up with.  In fact, in the original draft of the film, The Yank, played by Tyrone Power, was supposed to get killed in the final battle sequence.  But the real R.A.F. felt that the death of the film’s lead might have been bad for military morale.  So Power lived, and in the end, got the girl to boot.

During most of the film there were only a few very short battle sequences.  In the first, the bombers were only dropping leaflets.  The effect of the German searchlights was pretty interesting.  In the second, there is a little action and we see a plane get shot down.  The effect of the plane falling from the sky were a little shaky.  The burning aircraft looked very much like models on wires.

But that final battle sequence, which was the famous Battle of Dunkirk, the special effects became amazing.  The sequence only lasted about four minutes, but had some incredible battle effects that rivaled any great war film, even by today’s standards.  One shot in particular gave us a very exciting aerial view of the battlefield.  There were explosions, billowing smoke, burning buildings, ships escaping into the water, and trucks speeding along the beach.  Just don’t look too closely.  Nobody on the beach was moving, and neither were some of the ships in the water.  But the shot was over so quickly, and the moving parts of the image was so attention-drawing, I barely had time to notice.

Also, I haven’t seen any other war movie from the 1940s that features such a complex and busy aerial battle as this one.  The image contained at least thirty Spitfires and Luftwaffe fighters battling it out in the air, all on the screen at the same time!  There were over a thousand extras on the ground!  There were explosions, machineguns, men running, swimming, screaming, shouting.  And men dying.  There were fires, burning planes and boats, aerial crashes, and complete chaos!  It was an intense and exciting sequence that, in my book, really made up for the lack of special effects in the rest of the film.

After watching that scene, I understood why this movie had been nominated for Best Special Effects.  The battle sequences were brief, but the movie’s climactic battle at Dunkirk was really a pleasant surprise.  It woke me up and got my heart pumping.  I can’t say enough about how really well done those four minutes of battle were.  Very cool, and very worthy of the nomination!

Topper Returns – 1941

The special effects on this film weren’t bad at all.  They contained your standard issue of matte-paintings, rear-projection, composited shots, and even a fair amount of double exposure shots, creating effects like those seen in the Invisible Man.  It all made for some fun visuals, and a delightful little film.

Topper Returns is the third movie in the Topper franchise.  As a zany, supernatural, screwball comedy, the jokes and witty one-liners were plentiful, and once the story got going, the effects were just as numerous.  The plot revolves around a woman who is murdered.  She enlists the help of Cosmo Topper, a man who can communicate with ghosts, to help her learn the identity and motives of her killer, and in doing so, save her friend from sharing her fate.  The whole silly adventure takes place inside a mysterious old mansion with creepy servants, secret passageways, trap doors, and an underground lake.

But one thing this movie did that even bested the effects in The Invisible Man, was that the ghost of Gail, played by Joan Blondell, had the ability to appear and disappear at will.  In some shots where, for example, she was holding a glass of wine, the glass would appear to be floating in mid-air.  When she appeared, the image of the glass shifted a tiny bit as the image on wires disappeared and the woman holding the glass appeared.  Still, the placement of the glass was pretty closely matched and the illusion, while not perfect, was pretty good.  The same thing happened when the ghost is changing her clothes.  We see the dress standing on its own, and then we see it visibly shift as the woman appears inside of it.  Again, the transition from one image to the other was not perfectly aligned, but it was close enough for horseshoes and hand-grenades.

Being a screwball comedy, there were a few running gags that had me laughing, one of which was the various ways in which Topper’s chauffer kept falling down secret shafts into the underground lake.  Of course, they were obviously dropping a mannequin, but even its slightly poor quality actually helped to add to the campy nature of the movie as a whole.

And then there was an effect where the ghost of Gail was driving a car, so it appeared to be driving itself.  There were several ways in which they could have accomplished this.  I’m not sure they had the technology to drive the car via remote radio-control, so I’m guessing they had to have a guy crouching on the floor, pressing the pedals and turning the wheel.  However they did it, it was a convincing effect.

And they made good use of things like seats that depressed by themselves whenever the ghost sat in them, or the fur rug that moved by itself when she walked across it.  Doors opened and closed by themselves and curtains magically separated as the spirit moved between them.  Fun effects for a fun movie!

That Hamilton Woman – 1941

This movie’s special effects surprised me.  Even while I was watching the movie, I was surprised.  You see, there were virtually no special effects in the film other than some pretty good matte-paintings and a bit of rear-projection.  The movie was all about the romance between the two leads, and not much else.  For the most part, grand special effects were just not really needed.

Lord Horatio Nelson, played by Sir Lawrence Olivier, was a great military leader, fighting against the infamous Napoleon Buonaparte, which opened the door for some spectacular battle sequences.  But the film’s final climactic sea conflict almost seemed like nothing more than a vehicle to facilitate Horatio’s death for the purpose of the romance story, like the battle might not have been in the movie at all if Lord Nelson didn’t have to die.  Ultimately, I was disappointed that it was the only battle sequence in the whole movie. 

And more than that, it felt a little like an afterthought.  In a film that was almost two hours long, there was no action or impressive effects until the last fifteen minutes or so.  Now, granted, that battle was pretty spectacular, but it felt like too little, too late.  In a movie in which one of the leads is a larger-than-life Naval Commander like Lord Nelson, I expected more military sequences.  Especially since, at its core, the movie was really another propaganda film, made with the goal of getting the United States to join the fight in WWII.  But all I got was the romance between the Admiral and Italian Ambassador’s wife, Lady Hamilton, played by Vivian Leigh.  You see, it wasn’t a bad movie.  I actually liked it.  It just had very few special effects for a movie that was nominated for Best Special Effects.  So what else did the movie have to offer?

Well, there were three things that I can think of.  First, there was a very short sequence in which some of those huge clipper-style sailing vessels were caught in a storm.  Again, the effect, or what little there was of it, was very well-done.  There was ocean spray, heavy mist, dense fog, and gale-force winds that drove the ships onto their sides.  It was an exciting, though brief effect.

Second was the great composited shot of the British Armada, right before the climactic battle.  The front four vessels had sails that were flapping majestically in the wind, though I noticed that all the ships behind them were completely motionless.  Yes, their sails appeared full, but they were as still as paintings… or should I say matte paintings.  Still the shot made for an impressive visual.

And third was the little effect done on Lord Nelson.  Early on in the film’s narrative, he lost two things: the use of his right eye, and his entire right arm.  These effects might have been attributed to the film’s director, Alexander Korda, for his use of clever camera angles and shot blocking to hide the actor’s arm.  Either way, it was a neat little effect which was appropriately maintained for most of the movie. 

The Sea Wolf – 1941

This was a good movie with some pretty good special effects.  Based on Jack London’s famous adventure novel, the story gives us plenty of opportunities for some pretty cool visuals.  But there is also a cast of wonderfully complex and realistic characters.  Put them together, and you have a movie that easily keeps your interest.

The very first shot of the movie shows a massive clipper ship slowly emerging from a dense fog bank.  It was a really cool image that immediately captured my interest.  Then there is a great little sequence in which one ship rams another and sinks it.  Those two little things went a long way to establish the quality of the special effects by Byron Haskin and Nathan Levinson.

Sure, as you might expect, there were a lot of scenes that made use of rear-projection, but fortunately, for the most part, the little details were adhered to.  For example, the story took place on a clipper ship.  There the projected sea in the background was constantly moving, though not so much that the people on the vessel would be losing their balance.  There were even shots that took place below deck where the image was slowly rocking left and right, appropriately reminding the audience that they were not on land.

Other effects were nicely done, like when Dr. Prescot committed suicide by climbing up into the sails and then leaping to the deck.  Sure, it was fairly obvious that they were dropping a dummy, but I think the effect was handled much better than, say, in the famous Hitchcock film, Foreign Correspondent.

The movie’s big climax was the sinking of the clipper, the Ghost.  The visual effects team had to make it a slow process because there were several scenes that still had to take place on the boat, both above and below deck, before the ship went under the water.  The Pacific had to slowly rise over deck over the course of several minutes.  Even the interior of the captain’s cabin had to slowly fill with water as the actors played out their parts.

Unfortunately, in a movie with some otherwise good special effects, this one little sequence bothered me, but only slightly.  In the final moments, the blind Captain Larsen stands alone in his cabin as the sinking of the Ghost gets faster.  Half the ship is underwater and the deck is severely angled.  However, the actors on the deck were clearly walking on a level set.  Then we cut back to the interior of the Captain’s cabin.  The encroaching seawater breaks the door in.  It hits Larson, who doesn’t even move or react.  I imagine that door would not have been made of cardboard.  If you are blind and standing knee-deep in churning water on a tilted floor, and a large heavy object hits you from the side, you cannot stand perfectly still without so much as reacting to the blow. Just a little detail that took me out of the scene for a few seconds.  But even after those minor complaints, I still liked the climactic sequence, and applaud the film’s special effects.

The Invisible Woman – 1941

I’m sorry to say, I was pretty disappointed in the effects from this film, and here’s why.  They were just sloppy.  There, I said it.  I am just coming off of watching the 1940 nominee, The Invisible Man Returns, and I did my research, figuring out how the “invisible” effects were done without the use of blue-screen technology.

The trick with the way they did it relied on an actor dressed in a black velvet body suit.  Then the camera would film the actor, and because the black sections of the film wouldn’t be exposed, a second exposure, or double exposure, would film a background that would show through the black velvet.  As long as the actor didn’t move in front of anything that was supposed to be kept visible, the illusion was fantastic.  But this movie just ignored the importance of that rule, and… I don’t know.  They just hoped the audience wouldn’t notice the invisible woman’s black arm moving in front of the white skirt?  Well, that’s what happened, and I noticed.

Add to that, the fact that the movie changed two significant things.  First, the genre of the movie was changed from horror to screwball comedy.  This, in itself, wouldn’t be a problem.  But second, the story changed the method of invisibility.  In The Invisible Man Returns, it was a chemical injection, through which we saw transformation happen in stages.  We were shown different parts of the interior of the body as they became visible.  Here we were just shown the woman’s feet.  Then, as if they are raising a curtain, her ankles, and then her legs are exposed.  Fortunately, the curtain stopped in the middle of her thighs, so as not to reveal any naughty bits before the disembodied legs ran off the screen.  These two things just made the effect look a little cheap, especial when compared with the movie’s predecessor.

Aside from those glaring things, the effects were just fine.  The fact that the film was a screwball comedy opened the door for a little more suspension of disbelief than serious films.  Thus, when the invisible woman hits a man over the head with a shotgun so hard that the barrel of the weapon is literally bent in half, you have to give it a little leeway.  A blow hard enough to do that would have crushed the man’s skull in.  And I’d venture to say that no human being without the strength of Superman could have swung it that hard.  So when the invisible woman begins bonking men on the head with a wooden mallet, I guess it was understandable why a single bonk was enough to render every witless victim instantly unconscious.

But never-mind that.  The rest of the film’s effects were amusing enough.  The array of “floating” objects that moved about by themselves was cute enough.  And I suppose the flying cat that was then hurled across the room at the surprised butler was kind-of funny.  But really, the somewhat sloppy effects of the movie seemed to be almost secondary to the silly, slapstick comedy, and the titillating idea of a naked woman running all over the place, causing all sorts of mischief.  I don’t think it should have been nominated for Best Visual effects.