# Best special effects in classic movies? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 4, 2019, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365 "2019-12-04T16:52:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/41 "2019-12-05T03:51:55Z")
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, but the special effects in the Disney movie _Darby O’Gill And The Little People_ are really quite amazing for the time. I honestly was stunned at their seamlessness in some scenes. It’s on **Disney+** if you want to check it out. Warning: Sean Connery sings in it. ---
**Author:** ![Dropo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce7236/32.png) [@Dropo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dropo)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/42 "2019-12-05T03:55:43Z")
_Samson and Delilah_ (1949) [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/ICrHK4sFRfc/hqdefault.jpg "Samson and Delilah - Part 13") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICrHK4sFRfc) From Wikipedia: “The film’s special effects were supervised by Gordon Jennings.[39] The most spectacular special effect in the film is the toppling of the temple of Dagon, the god of the Philistines.[39] It is the penultimate scene in the film, cost $150,000, and took a year to shoot.[39] The bottom portion of the temple was constructed full-scale.[39] A separate 37-foot high model with a 17-foot high Dagon statue was built for the photographic effects.[39] The model was destroyed three times in order to shoot it through different camera angles.[39] Footage of the full-scale set was merged with footage of the scale model using a “motion repeater system” fabricated by Paramount, which enabled the exact repetition of camera moves.[39]” The “motion repeater system” was a primitive form of what is now called motion control photography, making the film quite a bit ahead of its time technically. > **[Motion control photography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_control_photography)** > > Motion control photography is a technique used in still and motion photography that enables precise control of, and optionally also allows repetition of, camera movements. It can be used to facilitate special effects photography. The process can involve filming several elements using the same camera motion, and then compositing the elements into a single image. Other effects are often used along with motion control, such as chroma key to aid the compositing. Motion control camera rigs are also us... ---
**Author:** ![sweepkick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/87869e/32.png) [@sweepkick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sweepkick)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/43 "2019-12-05T03:57:10Z")
The Bride of Frankenstein had some well-done special effects, but the Pretorius experiments scene was particularly amazing for 1935: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/K7AKLKQqfj4/maxresdefault.jpg "Bride of Frankenstein (1/10) Movie CLIP - Pretorius Shows Henry His Experiment (1935) HD") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7AKLKQqfj4) ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/44 "2019-12-05T04:54:36Z")
> [@Author\_Balk](#): > > Is the house falling on Buster Keaton a special effect or a really good stunt. Buster Keaton has a lot of good stunts. Harold Lloyd has a lot as well, such as the scene on the clock in Safety Last. > > I like the transformation of Spencer Tracy from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. Re: the stunts of Keaton, Lloyd, and Chaplin. Of course primitive film effects were used where they could and stunts were shot with the best safety measures available at the time (i.e. not much), but these titans of silent comedy deserve a shout-out for taking their craft to the extreme for the benefit of their audience (including us, a century later). They performed most of their own stunts and took high-risk chances no studio would allow their stars to take today. Heck, Lloyd even mangled his hand, losing a thumb and forefinger with a stunt-prop gone wrong. He didn’t cry about it, he just carried on with a glove to disguise the disfigurement. That’s grit. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/45 "2019-12-05T05:18:51Z")
> [@Stephe96](#): > > The tornado in _ **The Wizard of Oz** _ still holds up. I’m more impressed with the scene that comes shortly afterwards; [the one where Dorothy enters Oz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6D8PAGelN8). You see Dorothy in the sepia tone house and then she opens the door. The outside world of Oz is all in color. Dorothy steps outside and she is now also in color. This was all filmed in a single shot with no post-production effects. The inside of the house was painted in all sepia tones and then filmed in normal color. The Dorothy you see in the beginning of the scene isn’t Judy Garland; it’s a double wearing a sepia costume and make-up. She opens the door, the Oz set appears in color. The camera pans forward and Dorothy follows it; that’s Judy Garland who was standing just off-camera and stepped into the scene as the double stepped back. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/46 "2019-12-05T07:18:18Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > [Metropolis - Maria transformed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcReykfvqi4) This was going to be mine as well. A great source for older effects is [this twitter stream](https://twitter.com/silentmoviegifs). It’s not the only topic of the stream, but it has lots of great stuff about silent-era FX. Check out this [“Zero G” water effect](https://twitter.com/silentmoviegifs/status/1152988356059357185) from Lang’s other movie, _Frau im Mond_ ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/47 "2019-12-05T13:14:48Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I was given to understand that they built dams, opened them, and showed the film in reverse. They pretty clearly built a miniature “set” of the Walls of the Red Sea out of gelatin (you can see it jiggling), then flooded it with water (probably thickened with gelatin) filmed at high speed. Then they reversed it and ran it at normal speed to show thr=e Red Sea parting. To show it closing, they just ran it the other way. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/48 "2019-12-05T13:22:55Z")
> [@TroutMan](#): > > [Here’s the scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNUu6Lf9mVU). Now that I read how it’s done, it’s easier to see. He interacts with Lois, then in the last cut, turns away and takes off. He definitely looks a little “flat” and washed out in that final cut. I just watched it. That’s not a projected Superman. It’s not Lois standing in front of a front-projection screen, or an acetate screen, or a blue- or green-screen, because the camera moves with her as she goes to the door, and the set behind her (which Reeve in his Superman Suit was standing on) is clearly real, and not a projection. You may think her looks “flat”, but that was undoubtedly Reeve in a Superman suit talking with Kidder on the set, then appeared 25 seconds later as Clark Kent at the door. He wasn’t matted in or anything. They couldn’t erase matte lines that well in 1979 (look at the dark “shadows” around the rod-puppet “Rancor” in _Return of the Jedi_ only four years later. And that was the best effects work of the period) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/49 "2019-12-05T13:40:55Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > It was the Australian censors, and I have it backwards-they insisted that to keep a rating for children, the monster should NOT be seen. Thanks for fighting theatrical ignorance! > > TFP was shown on a local educational TV channel many years ago, and that’s where I got my backwards info. The local TV guy did interview Leslie Neilson about among other things the Star Trek similarity. > > See [“alternate versions”](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049223/alternateversions) in the IMDB article. > > The question remains, “Why was the Id monster made visible?” So you seem to be saying that when the completed movie was shown in Australia, they butchered it in the name of protecting impressionable young Aussies. That’s very far removed from having “censors:” dictate the making of the original film. It’s like when John Carpenter’s **The Thing** was first shown on prime-time American TV (on CBS, in fact), and they decided to cut out _every single scene that The Thing appeared in_. Then, for good measure, they re-arranged the remaining scenes, maybe in an effort to try to make the mutilated film make some sense. It didn’t work. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/50 "2019-12-05T13:47:36Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > I always get a good chuckle out of old movies that have scenes of a ship on a lake or ocean because they’re so comically and clearly toy boats on a fake body of water. _In Harm’s Way_ is an example of that. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/51 "2019-12-05T13:54:10Z")
I kinda like the parting of the Red Sea in the Charlton Heston _Ten Commandments_. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/52 "2019-12-05T14:13:59Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > I kinda like the parting of the Red Sea in the Charlton Heston _Ten Commandments_. I do, too. They reportedly would say for years how that was done (and, apparently, a lot of the guys who worked on it were close-lipped). But since then, behind-the-scenes images have emerged. Besides, if you look at it closely you can see how it was done. They built an enormous system with two upper tanks of water and a lower receiving tank. They opened both upper tanks at once was filmed the water falling against a removable background. That gave them both sides of the Red Sea filling in the gap between – or at least one element of it. It appears that they repeated the process with the camera place successively further and further back, giving them the shots of falling water at several distances. Then they “stitched” these together (1950s matte technology wasn’t the greatest – you can see when it’s being used at several points in the movie, as when the worker waves the signalling pennant during the “raising the obelisk” scene, so you can see when they’re doing it in the Red Sea scene). The start of the water falling wasn’t the same for all distances, but starts with the farthest away and proceeds gradually towards the front. So you end up with what appears to be a great length of water “zippering” in to fill in the gap across a distanced much, much greater than the size of the water tank. To “part” the Red Sea, they just ran it backwards. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/53 "2019-12-05T14:16:59Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > I always get a good chuckle out of old movies that have scenes of a ship on a lake or ocean because they’re so comically and clearly toy boats on a fake body of water. There are tons of examples of that. But some are very well done. My favorite case is the 1954 Disney _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_. Especially, of course, the scenes with the Nautilus. Some of those are really impressive, like this scene showing both the Nautilus and the ship it’s attacking (about 20 seconds in): [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAkTwIQ8Mfg) ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/54 "2019-12-05T15:28:20Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > I grew up, like many, thinking Lloyd did that stunt at his own personal risk. > > [Did Buster Keaton do this insane(illegal?) stunt sequence on a motorcycle?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp5fTvEWdh4) But Santa’s still real, right? ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/55 "2019-12-05T16:32:53Z")
> [@Patch](#): > > I feel like I just learned Santa Claus wasn’t… Geez, can we use spoiler tags on stuff like this, please? [pointy red felt junior mod hat doffed] ---
**Author:** ![Cayuga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Cayuga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cayuga)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/56 "2019-12-05T19:34:40Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I just watched it. That’s not a projected Superman. It’s not Lois standing in front of a front-projection screen, or an acetate screen, or a blue- or green-screen, because the camera moves with her as she goes to the door, and the set behind her (which Reeve in his Superman Suit was standing on) is clearly real, and not a projection. You may think her looks “flat”, but that was undoubtedly Reeve in a Superman suit talking with Kidder on the set, then appeared 25 seconds later as Clark Kent at the door. He wasn’t matted in or anything. They couldn’t erase matte lines that well in 1979 (look at the dark “shadows” around the rod-puppet “Rancor” in _Return of the Jedi_ only four years later. And that was the best effects work of the period) I’m not sure what your explanation is, **Cal** (are you saying Reeve got out of the harness and changed his clothes really quickly?), but I have to disagree with you. In the mid-1980s, the quality of effects shots in movies shown on HBO (the only cable movie network back then, at least where I lived) were really funky. The other example I can think of off the top of my head is in _Return of the Jedi_, when Luke is training with Yoda and has a whole bunch of crates and rocks and things levitating. In whatever print they showed on HBO, each individual floating object had a different color balance and contrast level — it looked phony as hell. Same thing with this shot from _Superman_ (one of my favorite shots in a movie ever, BTW). Yes, Reeve and Kidder are standing on the balcony set interacting with each other. But for the very last part, when Reeve says, “G’night,” does that forehead-salute thing, and flies off, he is in a rear projection. When I watched it on HBO, he and the Manhattan skyline were very grainy and washed out practically to the point of being black and white — it was very jarring. On the one hand, I was fascinated to see how Donner had accomplished it. On the other hand … well, as **Patch** said… P.S. You’re right about taking all the user-provided info on IMDB with a ton of salt. Hell, sometimes they contradict each other. ---
**Author:** ![tullsterx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@tullsterx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tullsterx)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/57 "2019-12-05T20:10:35Z")
> [@teela\_brown](#): > > Hitchcock’s _Foreign Correspondent_ has a hair-raising, realistic aftermath of a plane crash. The wrecked plane seems to be tossed on a horrific ocean, but the scene is filmed in a tank and the backdrop is rear-projection. With every big wave that seems to come crashing from behind the plane, water gushes from the windows as though the wave went right through it. > > It’s realistic enough to give me goose bumps, but I have a barely-suppressed phobia of flying. I shouldn’t watch that scene anymore. I was thinking of this scene. I read about how they had this big print of the windshield and the ocean and just dumped an enormous tub of water on the set right through it, ripping the paper and swamping the cockpit set. So simple but turned out looking so great. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/58 "2019-12-05T20:14:40Z")
> [@Cayuga](#): > > I’m not sure what your explanation is, **Cal** (are you saying Reeve got out of the harness and changed his clothes really quickly?), but I have to disagree with you. > > In the mid-1980s, the quality of effects shots in movies shown on HBO (the only cable movie network back then, at least where I lived) were really funky. The other example I can think of off the top of my head is in _Return of the Jedi_, when Luke is training with Yoda and has a whole bunch of crates and rocks and things levitating. In whatever print they showed on HBO, each individual floating object had a different color balance and contrast level — it looked phony as hell. > > Same thing with this shot from _Superman_ (one of my favorite shots in a movie ever, BTW). Yes, Reeve and Kidder are standing on the balcony set interacting with each other. But for the very last part, when Reeve says, “G’night,” does that forehead-salute thing, and flies off, he is in a rear projection. When I watched it on HBO, he and the Manhattan skyline were very grainy and washed out practically to the point of being black and white — it was very jarring. > > . I disagree strongly. Reeve does NOT look like a rear projection. Ho _goes over the edge of the balcony_, which is NOT a projection, because the camera swivels with Kidder as she turns and goes to the door. If they’d only shown Reeve after he’d cleared the balcony wall, I could agree that it’s a rear projection. But the fact that he crosses that shows that he and the wall are in the same camera shot . And the fact that the camera subsequently moves and the wall disappears from sight shows that the wall is not itself part of a rear-projection shot. Reeve clearly didn’t have time to divest himself of a harness. It had to be under his Clark Kent jacket, which is believable, since I’ve seen actors on stage in flying harnesses that were concealable under clothes. The Clark Kent outfit need not have been the full suit it appears to be. They could prepare a shirt/vest/tie front that got slapped onto him really quick (like an “anti-breakaway” outfit), then put the suit jacket on him. It’d be a real quick change, but it could be done. The alternative is that they “blended” two separate shoots at the moment that Lois walks behind a plant after turning away from Superman (at 6-7 on that Youtube video). It doesn’t completely hide her, but it would make any sudden “jump” from editing two scenes together a lot less obvious. And it would explain why she had to walk behind that plant, which is otherwise not necessary. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/59 "2019-12-05T20:54:02Z")
A lot of special effects work looks as if it was contrived to impress other special effects creators, and make them ask “how did they do that?” Ray Harryhausen did this quite a bit. A lot of his shots were wonderfully atmospheric , like the Rhedosaurus attack on the lighthouse, done almost entirely in silhouette, in **The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms** , or the scene from the same film where the Beast attacks a gun emplacement in New York City, and it’s lit entirely by muzzle flashes from the guns. Or the scene in **Five Million Miles to Earth** where the Venusian Ymir attacks a dog in a barn, and the entire scene is only seen as the shadows of the animals on the barn wall. But when he did **Jason and the Argonauts** he pulled off a very neat trick. Jason is a human actor, and the Hydra is one of Harryhausen’s stop-motion models. There are various ways of combining them into the same shot, short of straight matte work. You could rear-project the animated hydra behind Jason, or animate the hydra model in front of a projected scene (frame by frame) of Jason. but in one scene Jason takes his very real sword, which the actor is holding, and stabs it right into the model hydra. How did he do that? He had the actor drop the sword, and he “erased” it from subsequent frames by matte work. Then, when he rear-projected the scene behind the Hydra (although Jason appears to be to the side of the monster), he used an “aerial brace” (a fancy name for “they do it with wires”) to suspend a _model_ sword directly in front of the real sword, and this model sword is what plunged into the model hydra. It’s at about 2:40 here – [Jason et Les Argonautes -Jason vs Hydra (1963)R.Harryhausen' - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow-dkIuIaz8) Incidentally, I’m awed by the animation of the hydra. It has seven heads and two tails, and Harryhausen had to remember from frame to frame not only which way each of them was moving, but how quickly they were moving, as well. Otherwise, the motion would not appear fluid. In the scenes where the hydra is holding a model human, you have to add all the human limbs as well, even if they were only under the influence of gravity. ---
**Author:** ![Dropo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce7236/32.png) [@Dropo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dropo)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365/60 "2019-12-05T21:08:04Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I disagree strongly. Reeve does NOT look like a rear projection. Ho _goes over the edge of the balcony_, which is NOT a projection, because the camera swivels with Kidder as she turns and goes to the door. If they’d only shown Reeve after he’d cleared the balcony wall, I could agree that it’s a rear projection. But the fact that he crosses that shows that he and the wall are in the same camera shot . And the fact that the camera subsequently moves and the wall disappears from sight shows that the wall is not itself part of a rear-projection shot. > > Reeve clearly didn’t have time to divest himself of a harness. It had to be under his Clark Kent jacket, which is believable, since I’ve seen actors on stage in flying harnesses that were concealable under clothes. > > The Clark Kent outfit need not have been the full suit it appears to be. They could prepare a shirt/vest/tie front that got slapped onto him really quick (like an “anti-breakaway” outfit), then put the suit jacket on him. It’d be a real quick change, but it could be done. > The alternative is that they “blended” two separate shoots at the moment that Lois walks behind a plant after turning away from Superman (at 6-7 on that Youtube video). It doesn’t completely hide her, but it would make any sudden “jump” from editing two scenes together a lot less obvious. And it would explain why she had to walk behind that plant, which is otherwise not necessary. Looks like rear projection to me. At the 40 second mark, Ms. Kidder is standing in front of an RP screen on set. The footage being projected is of the entire BG of the set as well as Mr. Reeve as he takes off. Subsequently, they pan off the RP screen with Ms. Kidder as she walks screen left. The foliage she walks behind at the 53 second mark is critically placed because it is hiding the edge of the RP screen. When she gets to the other side of it, the BG is part of the set. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-special-effects-in-classic-movies/844365.md?page=4)