Movie special effects

These days the movies are filled with computer-generated special effects.  But what is your favorite "classic" or "pre-Star Wars" special effects.

For me, today at least, is Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling, walls and floor of a room in Royal Wedding.  Cannot figure out how it was done.  You can check it out on You Tube should be interested.

What say you?

http://www.bigfott.com/astaire_unwound.html

I believe similar techniques were used in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There seems to be a small resurgence of practical effects. 

Much of Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" was done with set building (physical spaceship and the floating library). He did the walking around the room effect in "Inception" with a set built on a spindle 

Even smaller scale movies like "Dumb and Dumber To" had a neat effect involving urban camouflage   

CGI is great, allowing realistic shots that w/h/b impossible in the past. I'm glad that filmmakers use all of the tools at their disposal - digital and physical 

I believe that Roger Ebert broke it down and found that Citizen Kane had significantly more special effects shots than the original Star Wars.  I also for one thought that the Lord of the Rings movies were littered with CGI shots but upon hearing the director's commentaries there were less than I thought and more of the "old fashioned" kind (like the miniatures and the use of forced perspective to simulate the hobbits' smaller size).

I tend to like "stunt" movies and appreciate when movies have physical stunts.  While there is a ton of CGI in them, I like the Fast and the Furious movies because they still do a lot of physical stunts.  

(04-16-2015, 06:09 PM)Teddyboy Wrote: These days the movies are filled with computer-generated special effects.  But what is your favorite "classic" or "pre-Star Wars" special effects.

For me, today at least, is Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling, walls and floor of a room in Royal Wedding.  Cannot figure out how it was done.  You can check it out on You Tube should be interested.

What say you?

The cameras were inverted 180 degrees giving the appearance of Mr Fred dancing on the ceiling when in fact it was the floor. 

Jackie Chan's stunts in many of his movies. 

There are a few that stand out as having made a major impression on me from childhood. In no particular order; the Fred MacMurray version of the Shaggy Dog when the kid starts to turn into said dog (serious goosebumps), any scene from The Wizard of Oz involving the Wicked Witch of the West, particularly the morphing-mid-tornado scene and the skywriting scene (practically peed in my pants); though, the greatness of the character is more likely the result of spot-on acting. From my teen years, pretty much every scene in The Exorcist - that movie scared the crap out of me.

60s TV sci-fi also really impressed. I was a huge fan of Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Star Trek. Those effects at the time, (for me) epitomized the height of special effects.