Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

Date Reviewed: 10-2-2004

Critical Kobold Rating:         (2 out of 5 Tasty Fish)

 

Yeah, It's Also the Name of Our Garage Band!

     I recalled fondly the tale of Jason and the Argonauts as one of the many films I'd watched that inspired D&D sessions in my childhood. Hearty adventurers, perilous sea voyages, mythological heroes and beasts, meddling gods, magic, and villains... all the makings of a bitchin' fantasy tale!

     One might say it was an epic story that was destined to stand as a colossus of adventure!

    (If one were the cover blurb writer for video CDs, anyway.)

   I caught Jason and the gang again recently on TV. While it doesn't really live up to the adventure flick I nostalgically remembered it as (thus the lower Tasty Fish Rating), it still holds its own for cheese-O-licious special effects, and as a lazy afternoon movie choice.

     In our saga of ancient Greece, the Evil Dude named Pelias was wealthy and power hungry. He hatched a scheme to overthrow the king of Thessaly, Aristo, and rule the lands himself as the head honcho. So far, so good.

   Of course, those of you familiar with Greek tales know that no mortal who ever makes plans for anything more complicated than a rutabaga patch is free from the tampering of the annoying and often inexplicably vengeful Greek gods. This pantheon, lead by Zeus the Nosy, gets involved in this story when Pelias asks his personal fortune-teller to predict the outcome of his Grecian power play.

     The seer tells Pelias that he'll become king of Thessaly as planned, but that Aristo's son shall return one day and slay Pelias, taking back control of the city as the rightful heir. The seer says that Pelias shall know this man because he'll be wearing only one sandal. (Oh, that, and also he'll be trying to kill you.)  

    During the battle for the city, Pelias orders the children of Aristo to be killed, so as to avoid the whole 'wrathful vengeance from long lost heir' thing hanging over his head. However, one of Aristo's daughters runs to the Temple of Hera, taking her infant brother Jason, and begs the goddess for protection. At this moment, Pelias shows up and knifes her right in the spine. Unfortunately for him, Hera had heard the girl's plea for help, and now the deity is furious at the usurper for slaying someone praying to her in her own temple. Before Pelias can finish off the baby, one of Hera's priestesses appears, and tells Pelias to lay off; the kid, Jason, is under the goddess' protection. If Pelias messes with him, Hera will zap his ass.

* * * * *

    Flash forward two decades. Jason comes merrily striding along the trail somewhere in Greece, and coincidentally blunders into Pelias' men out doing whatever it is Greek men do in the wilderness. (Ahem...) Now, Hera is still fuming about Pelias, and wishes to help Jason kick his ass. However, Zeus has decreed that Hera may help Jason no more than five times during his quest to reclaim the throne. (Another staple of classic Greek mythology is the inclusion of totally random stipulations being placed on situations by gods. It’s like they’re all missing a few days of medication.)

    So, Hera causes Pelias' horse to throw him into a river, almost drowning him. Jason, not knowing who Pelias is, rescues him. As he helps Pelias from the water, the dastardly king notices that one of Jason's sandals was lost in the river during the rescue.

     Gasp!  The man with one sandal! The man prophesied to destroy Pelias! The evil king has but one option... invite Jason to brunch.

     For no discernible reason, over lunch Jason tells the man he rescued (whose name Jason never bothers to ask) that he's on his way to overthrow King Pelias and reclaim the throne.  (Oooooookay. Highly trained in the art of subterfuge, are ya, Jason?) Now, Pelias can't kill Jason outright or he'll bring Hera's wrath down upon his own head, so, thinking fast, Pelias points out that Jason has no army. One good way to attract an army, says Pelias, is to find the legendary Golden Fleece. The reasoning being, I suppose, is that grown men will flock to the banner of a guy carrying glittery wool around. Hell, it worked for Liberace…

    Jason's all, like, yah, what-evah, dude, and goes about his way. Then, in the most heinously cheesy part of the flick, Jason is suddenly accosted by Mercury. (Or possibly Hermes. I can't keep the two versions of the god apart). Jason is taken to Olympus, where Zeus and Hera tell him that the Fleece is real, and if Jason snags it, his plan for vengeance just... might... work!  

   Back on earth, Jason goes to his sexually ambivalent exhibitionist buddy, the aging shipbuilder Argos. (OK, to be fair, I don't know that Argos is a nudist. I'm just sayin' that he spends practically the whole movie runnin' around in a damn diaper sorta' outfit, lounging on boat decks and exhorting sweaty sailors to work harder. You do the math.)

   So Argos builds a ship for Jason, and they install a wooden Hera's head as a good luck charm. Upon assembling a crew, Jason is "lucky" enough to get Hercules as a recruit! Wow! Herc! This dude can kick some serious ass, right? Well, realistically, this is a sorta' older Hercules, from the looks of him. This ain't no Kevin Sorbo, here, sorry. And, as we'll see later, Herc's not got much upstairs. (His INT roll was a few pips short of the minimum, you know what I'm sayin'?)

   Oh, and Pelias' son manages to infiltrate the crew, which shouldn't surprise anyone, since Jason never realized he had already come face-to-face with his arch enemy many scenes earlier.

Here, in the white toga, is Hercules. He's a bit long in the tooth, and not the brightest lamp in the tent, if ya catch our drift.

Also, I honestly woulda' pictured him a tad more muscular.

    So, after the crew sets sail, they float around for a while, wondering where the hell the Fleece is. When they run out of food, Hera speaks to the crew via her freaky wooden head, and tells them to go to a nearby island. The catch is, they can only take provisions, nothing else. Quite simple instructions, really. Straight from the mouth of a goddess. Crystal clear: "Don't take anything but food." What kind of an imbecile would ignore the dire warnings of a goddess?

   Cue our man, Herc. While on the island, The Hercster and another Argonaut discover a huge-ass building with a 100' iron statue atop it. The building is the ancient workshop of Hephaestus, metalworking god of the Greek pantheon (and later, god of Hair Metal.) Lots of magic goodies are inside, like weapons and armor and items of untold value, some belonging to the Greek gods themselves. Hercules spots a gnarly golden spear, and decides that he can't live without it. So he takes it. (Siiiigh. One rule, Hercmeister. You had one goddam rule to follow…)

Whoa, whoa whoa! Talos! Do we need to see THAT?!...

Oh. Wait. That's just his sword. Heh heh! Sorry.

     Of course, as any 2nd level character would have known, the giant statue, Talos, comes to life, and goes on a rampage across the island, stomp stomp, trying to turn the Argonauts into smears of paste on the beach. Calling on Hera again, Jason learns that to stop Talos, he needs to unplug the iron stopper in his ankle, which is his only Achilles’ heel. (Wait, sorry; wrong tale.)

     This is accomplished, and Talos vanquished, but in the process, Herc's buddy is smashed flat beneath the collapsing titan. Hercules is heartbroken, and stays behind on the island under the absolutely asinine premise that his buddy may not have been crushed, and may just be lost.

   Ummm…. Ok, Herc. Whatever. Honestly, better off without ya.

     So the rest of the Argonauts ditch Hercules and head back to sea.

   The next island brings them upon Phineus, a blind man cursed by Zeus to have two harpies steal his food and drink every day, tormenting him with their screeching and, assumedly, their piles of harpy dung.

Being the good guys, the Argonauts rescue Phineus, trap the evil creatures without much ado, and are on their way in two shakes of a harpy's hooters.

     Our story is just flyin' by, eh, kids?

    But to pass the island, the Argo must sail through the dreaded Pass of Crunchy Cliffs. (Or whatever.) This narrow pass comes to life when boats attempt to navigate it, crushing them against the cliff walls or scuttling them with boulders.

   Luckily, as a ‘thank you’ for rescuing him, Phineus had given Jason a medallion which, when tossed into the water, summons Poseidon, the God of the Sea and Maritime Disaster Movies. Poseidon holds the Crunchy Cliff walls apart with much macho posturing, so the 'nauts can haul ass out of the canyon. And as a bonus, on the way out of the channel, they rescue the sole survivor of the last ship that tried to pass the cliffs: the sorta' lovely Medea. Wouldn’t ya know it, Medea just happens to know the island where the Golden Fleece is located!   Sweeeeet! 

    As soon as the location of the Shiny Wool is known, however, Pelias' son, who was blending in with the crew, attacks Jason. Jason whups his ass. Upon being defeated by Jason, the son leaps overboard and disappears.

    When the Argos finally arrives at the island, the crew is welcomed by the king there. Why, yes, they're told, there is indeed a fleece on the island, and it is quite golden and sparkly!  

    But YOU shall never have it! Guards! SEIZE THEM!...

    You see, the evil son of Pelias got there first. (No, I don't have the foggiest clue how one guy swimming in the ocean managed to outdistance a boat of experienced sailors who had a guide. He must have caught a tide or something.) The evil son warned the king of the island that the Argonauts were coming to take their prized dead sheep carcass, and of course the king couldn't have any of that shit goin' down. So Jason was imprisoned.

   Of course, in the fifteen minutes that Medea knew Jason, she grew to love him, and so she sets the Argonauts free. Hey! Lookit that! Medea just happens to be the High Priestess of the island! So she knows exactly where the Fleece is! So the hearty band of wool thieves runs through the woods to where the Golden Fleece, the fabled and prized possession of a nation, is securely protected… by being casually hung on a tree branch in a clearing.

    Um, yeah. "Security" hadn't been invented yet, apparently, in the time of the ancient Greeks. The Fleece is just hangin' there in the middle of nowhere. Hell, if Medea had been straight with them from the first, they didn't even have to meet the damn king and his tribe, they coulda' just waltzed in and plucked the thing from the bushes. Crap, man. Seriously.

   But wait! There is a guardian! We should have known it wasn’t really gonna be that easy, in a Greek tale. Making an appearance is… why, it's the hydra!  This many-headed dragon monster bites the snot out of Pelias' son, who once again almost managed to beat Jason to the goal. (This dude's fast, I’ll give him that!)  After the son is turned into hydra chow, Jason of course lops the monster’s heads off, grabs the Fleece, and books it outa' town.

   But juuuust before they make it to the boat, the king catches up, and flings hydra teeth on the ground, thus summoning Ray Harryhausen. No, no, wait, he summons a kick-ass squad of skeletons, which appear from the scattered teeth, and attack the Argonauts.

    INTERESTING NOTE: Ray Harryhausen is the stop-motion animation king who did all the special monster movement effects in the best old cheesy movies, until CGI came along. Ray has often said in interviews that this skeleton fight scene in J&tA was his favorite scene of any movie work he'd ever done.

This goofy site is a parody of Harryhausen's work, using this very scene from Jason and the Argonauts.

   After defeating the skeletons using sticks and stones (Heh heh! Get it? 'Sticks and stones may…'? Oh, never mind…), Jason and his Argonauts rush aboard the boat and sail for home. Oh, and Medea goes with him. I guess she's had enough of being the High Priestess for a bunch of people who worship scintillating animal hides.

   The movie ends with the daring escape and them sailing off into the sunset, so you don't really know if Jason goes back and kicks Pelias' ass, but one would assume so. I mean, hell, he's got the Fleece. I'm sure he had no trouble raising an army with that. ("Hey, what's that? Some guy waving around a dead animal skin? That reflects the sunlight with a brilliant sheen? Why, that's great! Let's sign up for whatever he's doing!")

     So, anyway. I thought it was a cool fantasy romp when I was younger, but watching it recently, I must admit it's a bit slow. I found myself wishing for more killer attack skeletons and fewer chubby half naked middle aged boat builders.  

   As a quaint story about legendary heroes and Greek myths go, it was adequate. As far as recommended viewing for the gamers out there, I'd say, catch it, but only if you've already seen Clash of the Titans.

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