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Even if you don’t know who Ray Harryhausen is it’s almost a certainty that at some point in your life you’ve had a frightening – or at least memorable – encounter with his work.

Harryhausen is the undisputed master of stop motion special effects and his mastery is scattered throughout the history of fantasy and sci-fi filmmaking. Now, to celebrate the man’s ninetieth birthday – which took place yesterday – London’s Movieum on the Thames Embankment is staging an exhibition which celebrates the work of this cinematic legend in all its minutely detailed glory

Harryhausen was first inspired by the original movie version of King Kong and began his career on sci-fi b-movies like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, but it’s his work on fantasy classics Jason and the Argonauts, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, One Million Years BC and Clash of the Titans that has really endured.

On a personal level the skeleton army in Jason and the Argonauts and Medusa in Clash of the Titans are the pieces of Harryhausen magic that burned themselves onto my retinas when I was a child. Some will argue that when laid on top of live action stop motion models never looked realistic, but I would disregard that and look at the fact that the skeleton army that fought Jason and the Argonauts in 1963 was a hell of a lot more realistic than any CGI humanoid effects prior to Terminator 2 in 1991.

The Ray Harryhausen Exhibition is housed in three dedicated chambers inside the former City Hall on London’s Embankment. Room one explains the background and influences of Harryhausen’s early work; King Kong, of course, and the work of Georges Melies, specifically 1902’s Voyage to the Moon, the earliest example of an effects blockbuster.

Room two is dedicated entirely to Harryhausen’s coolest creation, in my eyes at least; the Medusa model from Clash of the Titans. It’s quite surreal looking at the model behind the glass, no taller than twenty centimetres, thinking to yourself that’s the same physical Medusa that scared the hell out of me twenty years ago. It’s like coming face to face with Hollywood royalty.

Room three is the real treasure trove with eight display cases showcasing models from a whole host of Harryhausen movies including Pegasus, Calibos and Bubo (the mechanical owl that was either seen as brilliant or terrible, much like the Ewoks) from Clash of the Titans, a sabre tooth tiger from Sinbad and one of the intricate skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts.

Overall I found the exhibition a little light on background history about the man, but those people that already know and love the work of Harryhausen will take a wealth of pleasure from the variety of original models on display.

Coming away from the exhibition I realised that although Harryhausen’s form of visual effects are now seen as obsolete his imagination and his craft have provided me with fantastical images that will always stay with me.

Find out more at Londonfilmmuseum.com