Nightmare Fuel / Clash of the Titans (1981)

• Medusa is the mother of all nightmares. She's so hideous that anyone who looks at her gets turned to stone. Ray Harryhausen deliberately averted the Gorgeous Gorgon trope, making her crone-like, scaly and rattlesnake-tailed instead. It's perhaps one of the scariest Stop Motion scenes ever put to film, which is an achievement in itself.
  • Not only is she dangerous to look at, this version is also a damn good archer striking from the shadows of her lair. One of the two soldiers accompanying Perseus finds it out the hard way, receiving an arrow in his back before the party can even hear her and falling into a pool of acid... The other gets turned to stone shortly afterwards.
  • Her whole scene plays out like it's Perseus' party that gets hunted by the Gorgon instead of the other way around.
  • Even after Perseus kills her, she's creepy as hell. First we see her fingernails leaving claw marks on a stone column... then we get the lovely image of her headless corpse writhing around uncontrollably. Anyone who has seen a beheaded snake knows that this is Truth in Television, and in the novelization, Perseus is barely able to keep from throwing up when he sees this. Finally, the headless corpse drops to the floor, and thick, chunky and acidic blood starts to run out. Said blood is acidic enough to dissolve Perseus' shield, despite it having been crafted by a god of Olympus.
• Zeus turned the cruel Calibos into a grotesque faun to punish him for the massacre of Pegasus' herd.
• Poor Andromeda. Her plight is a literal living nightmare. Her betrothed Calibos is turned into a grotesque horror (possibly before her very eyes), a curse is put upon the people of her beloved city, many of which probably blame her, many young men who desire her in marriage are put to death in one of the most agonizing fashions possible, and on top of all that, apparently every night her soul is stripped from her body and transported into the presence of her former lover, who now presides over a veritable horrorshow within a dismal bog.
• The first appearance of the two-headed dog Orthrus (Medusa's guard dog), hidden in shadow with shining red eyes, is genuinely creepy. It almost makes him look like Gmork, retroactively since Clash of the Titans came out first.
• Charon, and the journey to the Isle of the Dead. The sight of the boat resolving out of the mist on the River Styx, and then the revelation of the ferryman’s skeletal form, all accompanied by low-key but truly chilling music, sets the mood of terror appropriate for the confrontation to come with Medusa.

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