Fantasyland

For someone who claims to be a fan of the fantasy film genre (“Can Fantasy Take Flight?,” Nov. 11), Mary McNamara displays a shocking ignorance when she dismisses all ‘50s-style monster films as bad. Some of the films from this period are as seminal as the titles she cited as classics: Ray Harryhausen’s films, Nathan Juran’s “Jack the Giant Killer,” George Pal’s “7 Faces of Dr. Lao” and Jacques Tourneur’s “Curse of the Demon,” for example.

The makers of these films were directly influenced by classic literature and mythology, not earlier films, and were as sincerely passionate about the genre as those contemporary filmmakers quoted.

She also does not lay enough blame at the feet of studio executives and producers who have been brought up to look down on such films and their supposed low-brow audiences. For every Pal or Charles Schneer, 50 others saw these movies as either fare for small kids or excuses to parade starlets around in as little clothing as possible.

Somehow, I don’t think the success of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” or “Lord of the Rings” is going to change this.

RICK MITCHELL Film editor, director, historian

Los Angeles