Want to know the best Ray Harryhausen movies? How about the worst Ray Harryhausen movies? Curious about Ray Harryhausen box office grosses or which Ray Harryhausen movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Ray Harryhausen movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which one got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013) was an American-British visual effects creator who created a form of stop-motion model animation known as Dynamation. His IMDb page shows 17 visual effect credits from 1949-1981. This page will rank 15 Ray Harryhausen movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. His short film, Tulips Shall Grow (1942) and his documentary, The Animal World (1956) were not included in the rankings.
Drivel page: We have a ton of actor pages, a decent amount of actress pages, many great director pages, a couple of writer pages, one costume designer page and one music composer page…but not a single page on a visual effects person. We think that fact has always bugged Steve Lensman….well we are not ignoring that group of movie makers anymore…as we have done a page on one of Steve’s childhood heroes…Mr. Ray Harryhausen. Highly recommend Steve’s Harryhausen page which is loaded…and we mean loaded with awesome photos. Ray Harryhausen – On The Screen.
Ray Harryhausen Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort by Ray Harryhausen movies by the stars of the movies.
- Sort Ray Harryhausen movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Ray Harryhausen movies by their yearly box office rank
- Sort Ray Harryhausen movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Ray Harryhausen movie received.
- Sort Ray Harryhausen movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Ray Harryhausen Table
- Three Ray Harryhausen movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 20.00% of his movies listed. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) was his biggest box office hit.
- An average Ray Harryhausen movie earned $66.50 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 14 Ray Harryhausen movies are rated as good movies…or 93.33% of his movies. Jason and the Argonauts (1963) was his highest rated movie while One Million Years B.C. (1966) was his lowest rated movie.
- One Ray Harryhausen movie received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 6.66% of his movies.
- One Ray Harryhausen movie won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 6.66% of his movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 40.00. 9 Ray Harryhausen movies scored higher that average….or 60.00% of his movies. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) got the the highest UMR Score while One Million Years B.C. (1966) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Ray Harryhausen
1. Raymond Frederick Harryhausen was born in Los Angles, California in 1920.
2. 1933’s King Kong was a huge influence on a very young Ray Harryhausen. His fascination with King Kong got he to experiment with animated shorts….which got him started on the path to Hollywood greatness.
3. The grand piano in 2005’s Corpse Bride has a gold name plate with “Harryhausen” engraved on it.
4. The restaurant in 2001’s Monsters, Inc. (2001) is named after Ray Harryhausen.
5. Ray Harryhausen thought 1963’s Jason and the Argonauts was his best movie.
6. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Peter Jackson all hail Ray Harryhausen’s film work as indispensable foundations for their own.
7. Ray Harryhausen was married one time and one child.
8. Ray Harryhausen received an Honorary Oscar® in 1992. You can see Tom Hanks give him the award at this You Tube video.
9. Unrealized Ray Harryhausen projects for which test footage was shot include 1953’s H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1953) and 1988’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
10. Check out Ray Harryhausen‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Does nit matter vo me I saw all his movies when it cost one thin dime and have them in my movie collection always the best and better than CG. by a longways
Not sure where these figures come from, but Jason and the Argonauts was not successful when it was released. And Mysterious Island and Gulliver had much higher grosses than Jason or First Men In The Moon, but are ranked much lower?!! I knew Ray personally and he told me Mysterious Island was one of his most successful movies at the box office and that Jason was a disappointment at the box office. Somethings wrong with your stats.
These stats don’t look *only* at box office. They look at critics ratings and Oscars/Golden Globes as well. Bruce gets his stats from various places including film studio records.
That doesn’t answer my question, his stats on these films’ box office are not accurate. Mysterious Island made much more money than Jason and the Argonauts. but according to this site it has it near the top of his list with $6 million . In Mike Hankins definitive book on Ray’s films “The Master of the Majicks” he says on page 129 “But Jason and the Argonauts never quite matched the grosses of Mysterious Island and that baffled Schneer and Harryhausen” And Mysterious Island and Gulliver BOTH received better reviews as well. These are provable facts.
Hey Robert….I wish Mike Hankins would have provided some actual stats in his book The Master of the Majicks. I have done research on box office grosses for many decades. I wish book authors listed there sources better. My other comment addresses some of your concerns…but….just know our review % is constantly changing. Mysterious Island is rated as his 5th best movie on our rankings when looking at movie reviews. Of the three parts in our ranking system that is the good. No Oscar nominations for the movie does not help at all. And our box office totals do not help the cause much….so that is why we have the movie near the bottom. Is our system right? No……as there are no right answers when ranking movies….it is just the way we do it here at UMR. Finally….if you have actually box office informations (meaning actual figures) we would love to see them….we are always looking for better information….it is a lifelong quest that we will never accomplish….but we have fun while we look. Good stuff.
Hey Flora. Thanks for helping out in my absence. Good feedback for Robert.
Hey Robert. Thanks for stopping by and commenting on our Ray Harryhausen page. So…where do we get the box office grosses? For this page most of the numbers are from Variety. Jason and the Argonauts was their 51st biggest hit of that year with box office rentals coming in at $2.10. We have a pretty well researched formula that uses the rentals and “estimates” what that would mean in 2019 dollars. As for it being a disappointment at the box office. I would say it was a modest hit…..nothing like his 7th Voyage of Sinbad….so I can see him saying it was a disappointment. But let me stop there for a second…..that is awesome that you knew him….I am very envious.
As for the others…..Variety shows them having lower box office rentals. Granted these are only domestic grosses and not worldwide grosses. Mysterious Island and Gulliver, I have read, were much bigger overseas. Sadly we do not have much information of the total grosses. I wish we did. In the end….these box office grosses are “estimations” as the actual grosses will never be known….which is so sad.
Ok….reviews…..when his movies came out……there were far less reviewers than today. Many of the factors we use in our review % come from places like IMDb (21,406 votes there)…..so his movies get pretty much reviewed from how we look at the movie now….versus how more current movies are reviewed how they looked then. However if your sort the above table by review %…..you see 5 of his greatest movies. Hope that helps.
Yes Ray and I were close friends for 35 years, and I just spoke with Mike Hankin, and again he reiterated that Jason did less box office than Mysterious Island and Gulliver. I also read on IMDB that Jason did 2.1 million domestic and Mysterious Island 5 million world wide. Even at the domestic that you quoted, Mysterious Island did 2.4 million which is still greater than Jason did, if those figures are to be believed. But Ray is on record, in fact on dvd and blu ray in the featurette on the making of Mysterious Island and he says emphatically that it was one of his most successful pictures. but on Jason he says it failed to do well. I also knew Charles Schneer and he too made the same comments to me. That Mysterious Island in 1961 and 62 ( as it came out at Christmas 61 and thus the bulk of its box office was in 62) was their last film to make profits for Columbia until they did Golden Voyage in 74! Jason and First Men in the Moon did very poorly for Columbia.
Hey Bruce?/Robert. Thanks for the further detail on your friendship Ray and Mike Hankin. I will check out IMDb to see if I can see the worldwide gross for Mysterious Island. Interesting information on Columbia. That is one of the studios that kept their box office grosses close to their vest. Good stuff.
My name is Bruce but use my middle name for some of these message boards so we both share the same first name! Just concluded an email talk with Mike Hankin and Jason did 2.1 million in domestic rentals and Mysterious Island 2.6 million, domestic a full half million dollars more than Jason and nearly 3 quarters of a million more tickets sold over Jason. Average tickets costing approx 75 cents then! And world wide Mysterious Island did good business as well. Still better than Jason. In Jeff Rovins “From the land beyond beyond, the films of Ray Harryhausen and Willis O Brien” he also states that both Gulliver and Mysterious Island did modest box office here and were successful, but that Jason and First Men in the Moon and Gwangi were out and out box office failures. Although world wide they did ok, but First Men actually lost money. Gulliver and Island both did approx 5 to 6 million world wide and Jason less than that. 7th Voyage did nearly 7 million in rentals world wide. Ray and Charles did not have a box office hit for Columbia from 1961 until 1974! With Mysterious Island being the last money maker until Golden Voyage of Sinbad!
in 1958 i was 13 i saw 7th voyage and was amazed ,since then up to today i watch all of his movies over and over.i still rate his movies with anything made today.the musical score by bernard herrmann was special and harryhauser did all of the special effects buy himself,his creatures had amazing detail work and you rooted for them to win the battles they fought. my favorite was the Cyclops . Ray Harryhauser should be on MT. Rushmore.
Hey John. Thanks for sharing your memory of seeing 7th voyage. I agree that he was an amazing talent. When it comes to special effects he is on Mt. Rushmore. Good stuff.
he is a legend for sure
I agree with you 100%
Hey Bruce,
When movies were magic….I mean real magic. The first Harryhausen movie I saw was the 7th Voyage. I was hooked! Then came Patrick Wayne and then the Titans!
True fantasty; not real…but magic. My personal favorite was The Valley Of Gwangi! I mean cowboys and dinosaurs….how can you miss. I am surprised at the numbers for Jason or Gwangi but I guess Steve has explained that away. Great page for a great magicmaker.
Marcel
Hey Marcel. Thanks for the comment and visit. I enjoyed reading your memories of Harryhausen movies. I also saw the Patrick Wayne movie in theaters….a fun movie to watch….for sure. You have me interested seeing The Valley of Gwangi…..which until doing this page I had not even heard of before…..thanks again.