Stop Motion movie treasures

Here's some old pics that show the visual effects techniques from some of my favorite films:

This is a rear projection set up from Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms, one of my favorite Harryhausen films. On the left side of the picture you can see how the projection screen ends just next to the cop.

This is a great, sad photo. Some stop motion puppets from King Kong, Lost World and the unmade Creation film. The hand there is holding the head of the Brontosaurus from King Kong.

A great close up of the one and only, eight wonder of the world, Kong :)

 

This one's a little blurry, but you can see the Rhedosaurus puppet (the monster from Beast from 20,000) on a small stand next to a miniature building in front of what looks like a blown-up still foto of the New York location of the film, and of course the camera in the foreground. Ray harryhausen was the animator here, this is a rare treat...

 

Lastly, this is a test set up from a shot that was cut from Kong where he was going to jump across a street, rooftop to rooftop.

Man, they should have kept that shot in!

I just can't express how much these films meant to me as a kid, this was all before Star Wars and Indy, and it was magic to me.