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Dinosaur Graveyard
The only
thing that is left from this project is a one-page outline,
the story tells of a archaeologist that finds a tunnel that
connects Easter Island and Peru a link between the two
civilizations. In the center of the tunnel is a huge cave
where by some means Dinosaurs came to die, it also told
about a living race of blind cavemen that guarded a great
treasure. Sadly Ray did do any drawings to go along with
this very interesting story.
Food of the Gods
After the
completion of Mighty Joe Young Willis O' Brien had kept his
association with Merian Cooper, O'Brien called Ray and told
him that Cooper was interested in filming H.G. Wells's
story Food of the Gods. The story involved a substance that
once eaten, makes everything grow to a tremendous
size-chickens, wasps, rats and even humans. Ray drew this
sketch but in the end the idea was dropped. Over the years
Ray tried to resurrect the idea many times mentioning it to
Charles, but Schneer discovered that the idea was already
sold and this became 1965's Village of the Giants apparently
based on Well's book and produced by Bert I Gordon who made
it again in 1976 and called it The Food of the Gods.
Force of The Trojans
This
project if completed would have been a Harryhausen epic the
creatures that we would have seen were; a colony of Cyclops,
Furies, Jackal Men, the Sphinx of Phrygia, the evil goddess
Hecate with three faces and six hands, Scylla and Charybdis
two creatures that would have been perfect in the realm of
Dynamation. But at the time (1983) MGM right after Clash of
the Titans loss interest in the project, according to Ray it
was because the audience had turned to more violent films
full of sex, guns and muscles. Mythology could simply not be
turned to this kind of entertainment, therefore the project
slowly faded away...what a shame...
Fountain of Youth
Ray wrote
an small outline for this in the early 1950's, it spoke of a
millionaire that feared death who abducts an archaeologist
to help him locate the fountain of youth, traveling to the
four corners of the world seeking the fabled fountain.
Finally arriving in Egypt where its found inside a giant
pyramid. The idea of a pyramid was resurrected in Sinbad and
the Eye of the Tiger.
Frankenstein
After The
Lost World Willis O'Brien developed the idea of having the
monster perform in the stop-motion animation process, but it
was made by Boris Karloff, so O'Brien dropped the idea. Ray
tried to resurrect the idea but after Abbott and Costello
met the creature he felt that it could have never been taken
seriously again.
Gulliver
This was
not an idea of Ray but more of a curiosity, in the late
1950's there was a proposal for a television series based on
the character from "The Three worlds of Gulliver", using
optical effects to create a world of large and small people.
Although NBC was supposedly interested the series was
eventually dropped.
The
Hobbit
The idea
to film the Hobbit came up several times throughout Ray's
career, but he confesses that he had troubles with the
narrative of The Hobbit and he eventually gave up deciding
that it was not suitable for Dynamation..
Ilya Murometz
Ray had
always wanted to make something out of this Russian folk
hero using Reinhold Glie're's symphonic tone poem. The scale
of the project was huge and way too expensive, but the
originality and depth would have made a unique and wonderful
experience, Ray and Bernard Herrmann spoke many times about
do this but nothing came out of those talks. Picture Ilya
Murometza as Dynamation's "Fantasia" |
