January 2025

Vengeance Most Fowl Mines Classic Visual Cues

All images courtesy of Netflix. Stop-motion animation was for decades the only way to get non-human-shaped monsters and creatures on movie screens, from Willis O’Brien’s 1925 The Lost World and King Kong to the menagerie of mythological beings and dinosaurs brought to life by Ray Harryhausen from the 1950s to his last film, 1981’s Clash of the Titans. Computer-generated effects supplanted stop-motion for monster effects after 1993’s Jurassic Park, but a parallel province of stop-motion has survived and thrived even in this computer-dominated cinematic era. More comedic, stylized stop-motion has been popular at least since George Pal’s Puppetoon features up through the adventures of Gumby and Davey and Goliath in the 1960s and more recent...more