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Plot summary
Pelias kills King Aristo and seizes the throne of Thessaly. A prophecy says one of Aristo's children will avenge him, so Aristo's infant son Jason is carried away. Because Pelias kills a daughter of Aristo inside Hera's temple, the goddess becomes Jason's protector and warns the king to beware a man with one sandal. Twenty years later Jason saves a drowning man and loses a sandal, not knowing he has rescued Pelias. Pelias urges Jason to seek the Golden Fleece, hoping the quest will kill him. Jason means to rally support against the king. Hera directs him to Colchis.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Heavy censorship at the time the film was made forced a change from classical legend: the Children of the Hydra's Teeth, the skeletons Jason fights at the end, are rotten corpses in the original myth but were made skeletons in the film.
- Bernard Herrmann's score for Jason and the Argonauts was written without a string section, unlike his all-string score for Psycho; brass and percussion carry the heroic fanfares while woodwinds and harp dominate the romantic passages.
- In Great Britain the film is recognized as an important children's film and is regularly shown on television during public holidays; the British Film Institute put it in its 2020 updated list of "50 films to see by age 15".
- Ray Harryhausen's earlier films had generally played as double features in "B" theaters, but Columbia was able to book Jason and the Argonauts as a single feature in many "A" theaters in the United States.
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