For Better or Werts : TV Worth Watching

FLICK PICKS: Ray Harryhausen's reign of special effects epics

The god of special effects blesses us Friday night. Ray Harryhausen inspired generations of movie makers with his stop-motion mastery from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Three of his mythology epics unreel March 26 on Turner Classic Movies -- 1963's Jason and the Argonauts (8 p.m. ET), 1981's original Clash of the Titans (10 p.m. ET), and 1973's The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (12:15 a.m. ET, all on TCM).

These may not be five-star films, but Harryhausen's work makes them legend. He's the star, rather than Todd Armstrong (Jason), John Phillip Law (Sinbad) or even Laurence Olivier (Titans).

Learn more about Harryhausen here. Click the links above for more on the movies.

Recent DVDs dive even deeper, offering extras like a sit-down chat with Tim Burton and/or featurettes on the films' animation process, marketing and more. Two five-film collections spotlight separate genres -- The Fantastic Films of Ray Harryhausen - Legendary Monster Series and The Fantastic Films of Ray Harryhausen - Legendary Science Fiction Series. There's also the four-film Blu-ray Ray Harryhausen Collection, and various gift sets.

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Diane Werts has been glued to the tube since she can remember, growing up in a household where the TV came on first thing in the morning and stayed on till bedtime and beyond. She worked for the USA Film Festival, then for The Dallas Morning News writing about everything from Shakespeare to macrame art to rock music (and has the hearing loss to prove it). She moved to New York's Newsday to edit their glossy TV magazine, then returned to writing about television, specializing in its stranger permutations. She's a past president of the Television Critics Association.

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