Save your CGI for the young folks. Here are my favourite films that never heard of computers and still managed special effects the old-fashioned way.
10. A Trip To The Moon (1902)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JDaOOw0MEE[/youtube]
Let’s get ancient on this list’s ass. George Méliès was a stage magician who saw the possibilities of film and ran with it, making a remarkably entertaining little film about a group of coat-tailed astronomers who ride a rocket straight into the moon’s eye. Not only does the film contain some classic special effects, it was probably the first film to feature a narrative scope more complicated than some guy getting sprayed with a hose.
9. L’Atalante (1934)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFPhBjIG35s&feature=related[/youtube]
Mmmm, L’Atalante. You should do yourself a favour and seek out this movie, the last from French filmmaker Jean Vigo before he died of tuberculosis at 29. I’m going to admit that I put this movie in here more for the fact that it’s one of my favourite films of all time. But the special effects were tremendously clever and innovative for its time. Many of the trippy special effects sequences, such as the character of Jules wrestling with his ghostly double, were cut in its initial release but have since been restored.
8. Orphée (1950)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCYcWpMDWLQ&feature=related[/youtube]
Midway through Jean Cocteau’s dreamlike reinterpretation of the myth of Orpheus, a character shares ‘the secret of all secrets’ with the film’s hero: “Mirrors are gates through which death comes and goes. Moreover if you see your whole life in a mirror you will see death at work as you see bees behind the glass in a hive”. Cocteau himself knew the secret of film: that it is nothing more than a beam of light and a strip of images, which can be manipulated to dazzle the viewer. Cocteau played with his materials like a mad collagist, running the film backwards, using reflections, substituting pools of water for mirrors in order to make it seem that people were reaching through the glass. Creepy and beautiful.
7. Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yYeZMx1Y7U[/youtube]
Stop motion FTW! Jason and the Argonauts is a profoundly silly film, but even fifty years later it’s still fun as hell. The movie is remembered now chiefly for the scene in which the heroes battle an army of animated sword-wielding skeletons. Ray Harryhausen was the genius behind the stop-motion effects.
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukeHdiszZmE[/youtube]
I’m not much interested in the endless light show at the end of the movie, but there’s plenty of great special effects moments in 2001, from the shots of Dave Bowman running around the rim of the space station to the zero-gravity simulation as Dave shoots through the airlock without a helmet. Many of the effects in 2001 are so effective that they’re not even noticeable.
5. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGbPwV-lqXg&feature=related[/youtube]
George Romero’s sequel to Night of the Living Dead was by no means the first film to feature hordes of people in horrific bloody makeup, but man, did he do it well. Special effects director Tom Savini lays on the gore in great bloody gobbets for this film, featuring scenes of dismemberment that may not be as sophisticated as modern fare like The Walking Dead but are unequaled in their enthusiasm and sheer grossness.
4. Blade Runner (1982)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaR5wVL9x2I[/youtube]
This film is all about doing effects the hard way. The opening landscape shots of a hellish Los Angeles in 2019 were filmed with a gigantic model in a room full of mineral oil vapour. Shots of flying cars and flames were added later. Blade Runner is kind of an incoherent film, but Douglas Trumbull’s special effects work (he was also responsible for Close Encounters of the Third Kind) sells the look of the film and creates a convincing world.
3. E.T. (1982)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9p9S4LeRqw[/youtube]
One afternoon I read an article in the newspaper about the use of computer generated graphics in the film. It was one of those breathless techno-triumphalism pieces bursting with enthusiasm about the future. Computers, the article, were used to create the oscillating line on a heart monitor in one scene. The rest was all models and puppets and latex. I don’t know about you, but when I saw E.T. in theatres at the age of thirteen, I believed in that little sucker. The 20th anniversary re-release, with its extra effects and CGI airbrushing of materials possibly deemed offensive to today’s audiences, wrecks much of the film’s original charm.
2. Aliens (1987)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brEzYdLrPws[/youtube]
I know that I’ve included this film on a previous list, but the Alien Queen and her horde of slimy warriors are the most convincing monsters I’ve ever seen on screen. Period. It also featured some of the coolest space-type vehicles ever. Cameron used a camera capable of changing film speeds in mid-shot, which made a huge difference in his ability to use models in his compositions. It also allowed him to film the famous knife game scene between Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton.
1. Dead Ringers (1988)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQPT4VdjRUQ&feature=related[/youtube]
Critics applauded David Fincher’s choice to use one actor to play twins on The Social Network, but nobody has pulled it off quite like David Cronenberg. Jeremy Irons plays twin gynecologist brothers who descend into addiction and insanity. Split-screen techniques at the time were difficult to achieve and usually required a locked-down camera and indoor scenes. Cronenberg simply breaks the rules and films his characters seamlessly. Somehow the illusion never falls apart.
Those are my takes, but as always, this list could be expanded endlessly. What are your favourite pre-CGI effects-heavy films? Tell us in the comments.
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