Int: What do you think of modern cinema creatures?
H: Some of them are so extreme--modern cinema creatures are somewhat extreme today. We tried to make ours logical, up to a point, that you can in fantasy, but when they get too extreme I think you lose your audience because they are used to seeing certain things. The humanoid form is the most functional form there can be, so we tried to make, for example, the gorilla in Mighty Joe Young, that has a humanoid form, the Ymir has a somewhat humanoid form,
and it's much easier to get sympathy for them, and give them character, than it is for a four legged animal, or even a tyrannosaurus.
Int: What creatures would you like to work with?
H: All the mythological creatures. I remember when I grew up in the early days of cinema, there was a lady called Maria Montez who use to make Arabian--you're too young to remember them I think--but she made with Sabu and John Hall these Arabian Night pictures. And they would talk about these creatures of the Arabian Nights and you never saw them on the screen, they were always off screen, and that annoyed me enormously when I was growing up. So I was bound and determined when I got into film making to put these, from the creature's point of view, on the screen. And the same applies to 
mythology. The early Italian muscle man pictures always talked about the Cyclops, or the flying horse, but you seldom ever saw it on the screen. And when you did see it you usually saw a muscle bound man riding a horse with wings about three feet long, which was, you know, illogical, completely illogical. So, of course, with mythology, you have to take license with it, because there's no real strong basic logic in mythology, but we have to try to inject a certain amount of it in order to hold an audience.
Int: What would you do if I told you there was a creature loose in the city right now?
H: I would say you've got a great imagination. But, again, this is a "what if?" Fantasy after all, science fiction and fantasy and mythology is "what if?" That's the whole point of these types of rather outrageous stories. They all tend to stretch the imagination. I think they're very valuable. Greek mythology has a great deal to it, more than meets the eye, and we try to inject that type of interpretation into our Greek mythology. We even resorted to science fiction with Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, and I worked very closely with Kurt Siodmak on the original script when we 
formulated the story, and I even brought to his attention that these creature's uniforms were made out of solidified electricity. Now, obviously solidified electricity is of the imagination, but it sounds good, and technically sound for an alien. We tried to make the saucers give the impression that an intelligence was guiding them, and we showed only, I think, one scene where we actually showed the creature itself.
Int: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us, Mr. Harryhausen.
A video of this interview can be viewed by going to You Tube.
