Trailer
Plot summary
King Acrisius of Argos locks his daughter Danaë away, and when the god Zeus fathers her son Perseus, Acrisius sets mother and child adrift in a wooden chest. Zeus kills him in retribution and orders Poseidon to unleash the Kraken against Argos. Danaë and Perseus come safely ashore on Seriphos, where the boy grows to adulthood. Calibos, son of the sea goddess Thetis, is betrothed to the princess Andromeda, but his atrocities, among them the killing of Zeus's sacred flying horses, leave him a deformed monster. Thetis brings the grown Perseus to Joppa, where the soldier Thallo and the poet Ammon become his companions and he learns that Andromeda may marry only a suitor who solves Calibos's riddle. Zeus sends Perseus a helmet that grants invisibility, a sword and a shield, and Perseus captures Pegasus.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Clash of the Titans (1981)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Harry Hamlin threatened to quit Clash of the Titans when producers wanted to rewrite the scene in which Perseus cuts off Medusa's head, fearing it would earn the film an X rating in the UK. Hamlin argued the scene was central to the story, and the producers relented and shot it as written.
- Columbia Pictures dropped the project during pre-production as too expensive, and Orion Pictures would only take it if Arnold Schwarzenegger played Perseus; producer Charles H. Schneer refused because the role had too much dialogue, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer financed the film instead.
- In 1978 the script was submitted to the British Board of Film Classification, which found scenes of the Kraken tearing Pegasus to pieces and Andromeda appearing naked unacceptable; after script changes and cuts to Perseus's final battle with Calibos, the film secured an "A" certificate.
- MGM overruled producer Charles H. Schneer's choice of John Gielgud to play the poet Ammon and asked for Burgess Meredith instead; Schneer said the studio preferred an American actor so audiences would not think the film was totally English.
- Ray Harryhausen built some of the film's stop-motion creatures from old models: the troglodyte figurine from Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) was cannibalized to make Calibos, and the Ymir template from 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) was recycled to make the Kraken.
- Two identical models of Bubo the mechanical owl were made: one containing remote-controlled motors so it could move when handled by an actor, and a stop-motion model because the live-action model's movements were too limited.
