Let’s get one thing right out of the way: I’m not going to insult you, our readers, by wasting your time on an introduction to Ray Harryhausen. Chances are, if you’re reading this review, you’re already at least familiar with his work, if not a fan. If you don’t know Ray Harryhausen from Ray Liotta, shame on you. Stop reading, push your chair back from the computer, go to your local video store, and buy (not rent, buy) Jason and the Argonauts, Valley of the Gwangi, Mighty Joe Young, 20 Million Miles to Earth...anything with his name attached. Go home, watch it, and love it. You’ll thank me later.

Even better, pick up a copy of Sparkhill’s Ray Harryhausen: The Early Years Collection. A fascinating smorgasbord of early Harryhausen works ranging from fairy tale adaptations to educational films (!) to real estate and cigarette ads (!!), as well as test footage from Harryhausen’s "demo reels," it’s a loving tribute to a cinematic icon that deserves a spot on any movie buff’s shelf.

One could almost classify Sparkhill’s effort as two discs of extras that could be attached to any Harryhausen film with all the context it needed. However, it easily stands tall on its own, offering a little something for everyone. Disc One features dozens of short films, test reels, and Harryhausen-narrated chestnuts discussing projects that never quite made it. Did you know Harryhausen was looking to adapt both War of the Worlds and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen? I didn’t, and now I need to change my pants after seeing his rough concepts and thinking about how insanely good that would have been! Even the earliest films, like the phenomenal "Evolution," show his knack for creating scenes of remarkable depth with his trademark fog-shrouded background, bold middle, and silhouetted foreground. He also impresses with how experimental some of his ideas were, like creating a giant‘s face out of pliable rubber to express a broad range of emotions for the aforementioned Munchausen project, or his ability to seamlessly blend his stop-motion footage with rear-projection to bring together live actors with monstrous beasts in the same frame. Even his fairy tales, often a victim of cliched adaptation due to how old and hoary they are, simply ooze with imagination, from dodo-esque, breadcrumb snatching birds to a very edible-looking witch‘s house. That imagination carries over to his surreal educational films How to Bridge a Gorge and Guadalcanal, in which saws, trucks, bulldozers, and artillery cannons all operate without human aid, which makes these military maneuvers almost, dare I say it, cute. He even experimented in commercial design with a canceriffic ad for Lucky Strikes (and they think that tobacco ads aim for a young market today?), and a character named Kenny Key who pimped out model homes in the community of Lakewood.

Most fascinating of the shorts though is a three-man adaptation of The Tortoise and the Hare. Originally to be the sixth in his Fairy Tale Sextet, it was shelved for 50 years, until it was completed by two bright-eyed film buffs with a slight helping hand from the maestro himself. Despite Harryhausen’s minimal involvement, the pick-up is nearly seamless, as the original puppets were pulled out of storage and shot with Ray’s old 16mm camera, albeit on different film stock. While one can determine, with a watchful eye, where the old joins with the new as the new stock hasn’t deteriorated as much, and occasionally the animation takes on an almost Warner Bros. quality, the transition is nearly perfect. Couple that with delightfully bouncy "canned" music, and the silken narration of Gary Owens, and you‘ve got one hell of a short film that crosses almost all boundaries to deliver universal appeal.

The best about all of this is how damn good it all looks. Despite some heavy grain (all of the shorts were shot on 8 or 16mm), the films were restored by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. What that means to you, the at-home viewer, is spot-on color reproduction, minimal print damage, and clean blacks. Despite the not-quite-archival setting the movies were kept in (many were stored in boxes in Harryhausen’s garage), the results are nothing short of amazing. Even better, Sparkhill has remastered the audio in 5.1, which has little effect in the shorts for which Harryhausen originally recorded sound (although these segments are remarkably clear as well), but in his originally silent films, they brought in some sweeping orchestral arrangements that give your home theater system a workout. Simply marvelous.

Also marvelous is another disc in the set of all supplemental material. Already dizzy from the stunning quality of Disc One, Disc Two delivered a punishing blow that completely knocked me flat. Already partly filled from Disc One’s documentaries and Harryhausen commentary, the cup runneth over with more extras than one could ever hope for. We’re given some extra animated shorts cobbled together by fellow artists for Ray’s birthday (including one from MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch crew),the unveiling of Ray’s much-deserved star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, galleries bursting with photos and sketches, a featurette on Ray’s permanent exhibit in the Filmmuseum Berlin, and an interview with Ray conducted by Leonard Maltin.

Best of all of these is the nearly half-hour "tribute," consisting of dozens of Hollywood personalities explaining the impact Ray had on them. Everyone from Stan Winston to James Cameron to Ray Bradbury throw their hat in, and it’s one very sweet cherry on top of one hell of a tasty sundae. I don’t know what you’re still doing here...hop on your velocipede and beat cheeks to buy this! Again, you‘ll thank me (and Sparkhill) later.