The Gotterdamerung of The Griffin
Ray Harryhausen was a creature effects artist and cinema auteur who was active in films from 1949 until 2010, three years before his death at the age of 92. Movies featuring his creature effects take their place among the best High Fantasy productions to come out of the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, though this might not be saying much— audiences didn’t have much room to be selective.
Another Swords and Sandals all-star of the era was the Hercules franchise, an Italian export consisting of dozens of titles— but these films that are scarcely remembered and little-discussed.
By the same coin, hardly anyone bothers to remember Harryhausen films— but in the ‘Sinbad‘’ trilogy produced by Columbia Pictures between 1957 and 1977, Ray Harryhausen towered over the primitive green screen like the prodigal son of the American Kaiju Film.
Each of Columbia’s Sinbad films is crowned by an epic duel between some of Ray Harryhausen’s most awesome creations:
In the 1957’s ‘The 7th Voyage of Sinbad‘, Sinbad and Love Affair escape by the skin of their teeth. The two monsters that are pursuing them become distracted by one another, forgetting about smaller prey and turning their blood-lust on each other.
In the 1977’s ‘Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger‘, Sinbad and the crew make it to the extreme Northern realm of Hyperborea. Here, they befriend an ancient humanoid and are stalked by a sabertooth tiger. The cat and the hominid get into a fight inside some kind of icy pyramid.
The epic monster battle in 1973’s ‘The Golden Voyage’ is framed in Manichean terms. This time, the Crew enjoys a ring-side view of the eternal conflict between the forces of Good and Evil.
The enigma our heroes will face in ‘The Golden Voyage‘ is decoded by a fiery ifrit earlier in the film. The Oracle of All Knowledge guides them on their journey with this ambiguous prophecy:
Destiny is invisible and yet visible, and men may try to hide, yet its waters mark you clearly like a rainbow in the sky.
Destiny is a place where both good and evil wait, and yet their very equality abates their power, for it is the deeds of weak and mortal men that may tip the scales one way or the other,
and then the world shall know, and you shall know, which way the fates have chosen you shall go…
You shall go...North!
I am also an oracle. For instance, I know you’re about fucking tired of my Final Fantasy III references.
…but do you think Yoshitaka Amano’s concept for Ifrit was based on the Oracle of All Knowledge in 1973’s ‘The Golden Voyage‘?
Hear me out. I’ve read enough of The Arabian Nights to know that the Ifrit were never described as horned beings, and that they had no special relationship with the element of fire;
Meanwhile, Final Fantasy’s Ifrit is always a fire spirit.
And, well… just look:
The fiery Oracle’s instructions will guide our crew to the land of Lemuria, where we will encounter an enigma deeper and stanger than any hint dropped by the Oracle of All Knowledge:
For on Lemuria, we will find buried in the sloppy plotting of this summer blockbuster a reference to the 5th century BC Greek historian Herodotus. Gold, griffins, one-eyed horsemen and all.
But first, Sinbad of the 8th century Abbasid Caliphate centered in modern Iraq would have to navigate the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, and the Ring of Fire to make landfall at James Churchward’s fabled Lemuria:
(… I just love that they sent Sinbad to Lemuria. Pop culture was oozing occult resonance in this era.)
Lemuria is a legendary lost continent in the Pacific whose story was popularized by Colonel James Churchward in his book ‘The Lost Continent of Mu‘, first printed in 1926.
Churchward claimed to have learned about Mu from ancient tablets dating back tens of thousands of years, which are being held in trust by a clendestine priesthood distributed throughout the dusky temples of India and Tibet. Sometimes Mu is cast as having brought about the downfall of Atlantis in a long-forgotten war between the two powers.
When Sinbad and friends at long last reach the Fountain of Destiny on the lost continent of Lemuria, they are too late: the dark wizard Koura has beat them to it.
Tom Baker plays Koura, the spell-casting, homunculus-summoning antagonist of ‘The Golden Voyage’. Better known to audiences as The Fourth Doctor in the long-running British television series Doctor Who, Tom Baker is an icon British television. He played the part from 1974 to 1981, and holds the record as the longest-serving Time Doctor.
The tie-in is that Baker landed his spot on the cast of Doctor Who after impressing Brett Kells at the B.B.C with his handling of the menacing Koura in The Golden Voyage. It’s hard to imagine at this distance, but The Golden Voyage‘ was a major motion picture event in 1973.
Returning to our narrative; the fourth Doctor has restored his youth in the Fountain of Destiny and summoned a centaur.
Not just any centaur, mind you.
It’s a cyclopean centaur; gigantic and menacing, all primal strength devoid of compassion.
In the film’s canon, this creature is evil incarnate. The crew despairs; it would appear they are caught in the heart of the spider’s lair.
Just then, like the eagles coming to the rescue of Frodo and Sam, a majestic griffin steps in:
Gaius Julius Solinus, writing in the 3rd century CE, said of the griffin:
‘[they] are extremely ferocious birds, and have a rage worse than madness. Owing to the necessity of facing the griffin’s cruelty, approaching visitors are rare. Indeed, the griffins mangle anyone they see, as though born to punish the rashness of greed.’
The first mention of griffins in the historical record comes down to us by way of Greek writer Herodotus. This means the legend of the griffin is as old as history itself; for the Histories of Herodotus, a work of the 5th century BC, is regarded as the first systematic attempt to organize historical events on a factual basis.
“It is clear that it is the northern parts of Europe which are richest in gold, but how it is procured I cannot say exactly. The story goes that one-eyed Arimaspians steal it from the griffins who guard it; personally, however, I refuse to believe in one-eyed men who in other respects are like the rest of men. In any case it does seem to be true that those countries which lie on the circumference of the inhabited world produce the things which we believe to be the most rare and beautiful.”
By the time of Gaius Solinus, the Legend of the Griffin had been gestating for over eight hundred years. In the Christian era, a cult developed around the lore of the griffin which saw in them the instruments of divine punishment.
At the climax of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, we have a one-eyed centaur beating the ever-living piss out of a guardian griffin— just like in Herodotus’ account. What’s more, they are on the island of Lemuria— and if any country lies on the ‘circumference of the inhabitted world’, it’s Lemuria. And what could be more rare and beautiful than the Fountain of Destiny?
The minds at work behind the scenes of ‘The Golden Voyage of Sinbad’ didn’t stop at Herodotus, though. To get a full picture of why the final battle in ‘The Golden Voyage’ is definitely solid gold robbed from the clutches of the fierce and noble griffins, we have to turn to a 5th century play (falsely?) attributed to that god among dramatists, Aeschylus:
But now listen to another and fearsome spectacle. Beware the sharp-beaked hounds of Zeus that do not bark, the Griffins, and the one-eyed Arimaspian folk, mounted on horses, who dwell above the flood of Pluto’s Stream that flows with gold. Do not approach them’
Do you see it? The rivers flowing in the realm of Pluto; that is, underground. Greedy one-eyed horsemen battling Guardian griffins. It’s all there at the end of ‘The Golden Voyage’, with the fiery oracle of all knowledge standing in for the all-wise fire-thief Prometheus. The only thing that’s missing from the formula is the gold itself, unless you count the golden sextant which was the primary quest object and namesake of the Golden Voyage.
Or Caroline Munro.
Caroline Munro was cast in the female lead role because, as Schneer explained, "We wanted her to project that sex appeal, because that was what was happening at the time in the film business. But we were still making a G-rated picture, so we went for G-rated sex appeal."
Despite all the charming puppets, Caroline Munro might be the most memorable thing about this film. Anytime I’ve seen it referenced in Sword and Sorcery message boards and Facebook groups, Caroline Munro is half of all anyone wants to talk about. She was styled up like 1970’s gooner bait in harem pants, and remains devastatingly effective.
Full disclosure: when I was in the 4th grade, seeing Caroline Munro’s midrith in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad on a late-night satellite television rerun at grandma’s house is the first time I remember feeling some type of way about a woman. I waited for the credit roll just to learn the actresses name.
When I secured unsupervised internet access a few years later, ‘Caroline Munro’ was the first thing I searched for.
This is what G-rated sexy pirate looks like, you fucking goons:
Well…. someone had to rescue the film from it’s bad dialog and sloppy plotting. Dad would pay to see it twice!
Suddenly,
Tom Baker’s hand flashes out from behind a pillar.
The wizard drives a knife shaped like an oversized talon into the griffin’s flank. This god-like beast had drawn the chariots of both Oceanus and Apollo, and now it’s dying at our feet. We can only look on in impotence as the cold hand of the fourth Doctor tips the scales of Good and Evil.
The one-eyed Arimaspian centaur moves in to deal the killing blow. There is a struggle, but the griffin is overpowered. When the griffin’s head hangs limp on its broken neck, the murderous hands of the cyclopes rudely discard its corpse.
I’m mortified, but too numbed out by this point to care about what happens next. This movie sucks, and they brutalized my favorite puppet.
In Harryhausen movies, the people feel like puppets a lot of the time.
Per the laws of stop motion animation, the objects in many of the scenes exist frames apart in time and space. Even if your eyes don’t notice the effect, your soul does. It feels cold. It is not life, but an illusion of life produced by manipulation of the gestalt. The fur and feathers of the griffin had offered us an oasis of visual and textural warmth in a desert of stock characters and stock situations ad-libbed by a winged homonculus pulling buzzwords out of a capsized turban.
When griffin dies and it’s soul departs, it seems to carry away that perception of warmth with it.
Gotterdamerung is a German word that describes events such as The Death of King Arthur and the Nordic End-Times Vision of Ragnarok. It means something like, ‘Twilight of The Gods’.
‘Sinbad’s Golden Voyage’ ends in the Gotterdamerung of The Griffin. This is a metaphysical disaster on par with the silencing of the Oracle at Delphi; with the Griffin’s death, Humankind’s greed was free to run roughshod on the earth unchecked. You don’t need to imagine the results; we live in their midst.
For our consolation, we can only hope that Sinbad made it home with the Griffin’s gold.
You can watch ‘The Golden Voyage of Sinbad’ for free on Youtube:
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