JACK THE GIANT KILLER (1962)

 

My official 50^th Anniversary Edition DVD of Jack the Giant Killer (© Nathan H. Juran/Zenith Pictures/United Artists – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My movie watch on 24 August 2024 was a stop-motion classic from the early 1960s – Jack the Giant Killer.

Directed by Nathan H. Juran, co-produced by Edward Small, and originally released in 1962 by United Artists, Jack the Giant Killer stars Kerwin Mathews as Jack, the film's valiant young farmer hero, and he had also lately starred as Sinbad in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, which was the first of the three iconic Ray Harryhausen stop-motion Sinbad-themed fantasy films. Indeed, because of perceived similarities, Columbia Pictures, who had released the above-named Sinbad movie, threatened to sue the makers of Jack the Giant Killer.

However, the latter avoided legal action by withdrawing the movie in its original form and re-releasing it with additional content as a film musical, the original non-musical version not being re-released for another 30 years. This latter is the version that I watched, however, courtesy of my special 50th Anniversary Edition DVD, which also contains an official folded-up poster of the movie.

Jack the Giant Killer is (very) loosely inspired by the traditional English fairy tale of the same title, but has been greatly expanded on screen, with an evil sorcerer named Pendragon (Torin Thatcher, who had also starred in The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad alongside Mathews) abducting Elaine (Judi Meredith), a Cornish princess, and conjuring forth all manner of monsters in an attempt to thwart Jack's bold attempts to rescue her.

These include not only the single-horned gigantic satyr that Jack had killed earlier when rescuing Elaine but also a two-headed giant, a flying dragon, and some dragon's-teeth warriors, all vividly brought to life via stop-motion animation (as was a bizarre tentacular sea monster that battled the two-headed giant), plus a host of incandescent skeletal witches engendered very effectively on-screen by a novel process dubbed Fantascope.

Yet although very satisfactory, produced as they were by master animator Jim Danforth in one of his earliest film assignments, these did not quite match Harryhausen's spectacular creations, but Don Beddoe as a bottle-entrapped, rhyme-riddling leprechaun who assists Jack in his battles against Pendragon and his minions provides some amusing asides.

Overall, therefore, Jack the Giant Killer is a highly entertaining fantasy film for all the family to watch and enjoy, shot in glorious Technicolor, and with every word of dialogue totally coherent, not a mumble to be mis-heard anywhere. Ah, the good old days!

Worth noting, incidentally, is that in 2013 two separate Jack the Giant Killer-themed fantasy movies were released. Both featured CGI-rendered giants and other monsters, as well as incorporating notable plot elements from another Jack-entitled English folktale – Jack and the Beanstalk. One of these films, Jack the Giant Slayer, was a big-name production, starring the likes of Nicholas Hoult (as Jack), Ian McShane, Ewan McGregor, Bill Nighy, and Eleanor Tomlinson, and is set in medieval times (click here to watch an official trailer for it on YouTube). The other film, Jack the Giant Killer (aka The Giant Killer), was a straight-to-DVD 'mockbuster', starring Ben Cross and Jane March, with Jamie Atkins as Jack, and is set in modern times (click here to watch an official trailer for it on YouTube). As I own both of these movies on DVD, I plan to watch them in the near future, and am particularly intrigued to see how the version set in modern times plays out.

Returning to the 1962 Jack the Giant Killer movie reviewed by me above: if you'd like to watch the official (albeit somewhat colour-diluted) trailer for it, please click here to do so on YouTube, or click here to watch on that site the entire movie free of charge (and in far richer colours).

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.