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(1886–1962). American special effects artist.
Special effects, wrote, and directed short, silent
animated films: Morpheus Mike (1915); The Dinosaur and the Missing
Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy (1915); R.F.D., 10,000 B.C. (1916); Prehistoric
Poultry (1916); Curious Pets of Our Ancestors (1917); The Birth
of a Flivver (1917); The Ghost of Slumber Mountain (wrote with
Herbert M. Dawley) (1918); Along the Moonbeam Trail (directed with
Dawley) (1920).
Idea for: King Kong vs. Godzilla (Inoshiro HONDA
1963); The Valley of Gwangi (Jim O'Connolly 1969).
In a strange way, however, it is only natural to
overlook O'Brien. His protégé Harryhausen came of age at a time when science
fiction and fantasy films were a recognized genre; he could pitch his ideas to
potential backers who understood what he wanted to do and knew that it could be
very profitable; and as a result, he was able to obtain regular assignments,
gradually gain control over his projects, develop his own distinctive style,
and produce a body of work that still commands attention, despite advances in
film animation that have made his techniques obsolete. In contrast, O'Brien's
best years were at a time when films about giant monsters and fabulous
creatures were rare, singular creations that no one envisioned as a genre; more
often than not, O'Brien's proposals were rejected by skeptical producers and
investors; and as a result, his career was a matter of fits and starts, a few
isolated masterpieces bookended by steady, less interesting work at the
beginning and end of his career.
Purely by happenstance, O'Brien's early career provided
him with the perfect background to initiate the technique of stop-motion
animation with special attention to dinosaurs: he had worked as a sculptor, as
a newspaper cartoonist, and as a guide for paleontologists in California. It
all came together when he realized that he could construct movable dinosaur
sculptures, photograph them one frame at a time as he gradually moved them, and
create the persuasive illusion of a walking dinosaur. He first perfected the
art with a series of short films (we would call them cartoons), mostly about
dinosaurs (an Internet search for "Willis O'Brien" will lead you to a website
where you can watch a few of them), and after the success of the most ambitious
of these, The Ghost of Slumber Mountain, he was hired to work on an
entire film about dinosaurs, The Lost World. His years of effort on the
film paid off spectacularly, for it remains a rousing adventure and one of the
few silent films that can engage audiences to this day despite the absence of
dialogue (hardly needed, in any event, for a film which, after a prologue, mostly
requires its actors to stand and gaze in awe at O'Brien's magnificent dinosaurs).
The success of The Lost World led to another
assignment, Creation, which was eventually abandoned (though some
footage from it survives) when O'Brien was asked to work on another project, King
Kong. The famed giant ape remains, of course, his greatest triumph, not so
much because of its technical polish but because O'Brien succeeded in imbuing
him with a distinctive personality that could inspire both fear and pity. None
of the later King Kongs, either men in monkey suits or products of
sophisticated computer graphics, have ever succeeded in topping the original,
testimonial enough to O'Brien's consummate skills. Also meriting some praise is
the hastily contrived sequel to the film, Son of Kong; for while the
film itself may be disappointing, O'Brien outdid himself to craft and animate a
smaller, though still enormous, baby ape which was more adorable than
frightening. If King Kong is the most prominent ancestor of the monsters and
dinosaurs which would later thunder through scores of lesser films, his son is
the progenitor of E.T., the Gremlins, and all of the other insufferably cute
creations of recent science fiction films.
Incredibly, the failure of Son of Kong to
duplicate the success of his predecessor led producers to conclude that movies
about dinosaurs and giant creatures were passé, and O'Brien spent the next
sixteen years of his life struggling to get another project off the ground. Finally,
Hollywood green-lighted a grand reunion of the producer, director, writer,
star, and special-effects artist of King Kong to bring to life a smaller
giant ape, Mighty Joe Young, O'Brien's last noteworthy film and the work
that finally earned him an Academy Award.
In the 1950s, the emergence of a true genre of science
fiction films meant that O'Brien could finally garner regular assignments, but
the budgets were small, O'Brien was past his prime, and the results were
usually undistinguished, although the enormous The Black Scorpion, with
glittering drops of slobber in its mouth, lingers in one's memory while scores
of its gargantuan contemporaries are forgotten. It is a shame that he was lured
into doing something for Irwin ALLEN's
contemptible remake of his early classic, The Lost World, since his name
should not be linked to a film that pasted fins on the backs of lizards, called
them dinosaurs, and spliced them into footage of purportedly awestruck actors.
Better tributes to O'Brien's career were two posthumous projects based on his
ideas: the enjoyable King Kong vs. Godzilla, Inoshiro HONDA's adaptation of his
plans for a cinematic battle between King Kong and Frankenstein, and The
Valley of Gwangi, which inspired Harryhausen (now specializing in fantasy
films) to do dinosaurs one more time. More broadly, every single film of the
last fifty years which features enormous creatures should be regarded as a
homage to Willis O'Brien, even if critics, inexcusably, persist in overlooking
this remarkable man and his pioneering work.
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