We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
A Sinbad double feature!
THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1973)
When producer Charles H. Schneer and stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen made the Greek mythology adaptation Jason and the Argonauts together in 1963, they were clearly hoping to make follow-ups, as story threads were left dangling. Unfortunately, that movie was a box office disappointment, so it never got a sequel. Ten years later, Schneer and Harryhausen decided to return to a concept they had success with: the Middle Eastern folktales about Sinbad the Sailor that were featured in the story collection One Thousand and One Nights. Their movie The 7th Voyage of Sinbad had done well in 1958, but other filmmakers seemed financially wary of digging further into the adventures of Sinbad – so they would bring Sinbad back themselves.
Harryhausen created a dozen master sketches for sequences, which writer Brian Clemens was to base his script on. Gordon Hessler was hired to direct the film, with John Phillip Law taking on the role of Sinbad and delivering a performance that Schneer was never satisfied with. He has said that Law was flat-footed, not very athletic, and didn’t handle a sword very well. He also didn’t like that the actor chose to speak his lines with an accent. Law isn’t an inspiring Sinbad, but the producer’s criticisms may cause you to feel pity for the guy as you watch him.
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad isn’t as exciting as its predecessor. This one takes its time getting to the really good stuff. It begins with Sinbad acquiring a golden amulet from a flying homunculus, which instantly puts him on the bad side of the evil magician Koura (Tom Baker), who had been planning to use that amulet to guide him to the Fountain of Destiny on the lost continent of Lemuria. This Fountain can grant “youth, a shield of darkness, and a crown of untold riches.” The masked Grand Vizier of Marabia (Douglas Wilmer), who wears a mask because Koura disfigured him, clues Sinbad in on this Fountain business and they set out to find Lemuria... with Koura following close behind.
Before setting sail, Sinbad encounters a slave girl named Margiana (Caroline Munro), who he’s been having visions of since acquiring the amulet. He buys her from her master since she’s the woman from his dreams (makes sense; Caroline Munro is a lot of guys’ dream girl), and also agrees to take the master’s lazy, hash-smoking son Haroun (Kurt Christian) on the journey to make a man out of him.
We get some homunculus moments in the first half and there’s also a sequence where Koura makes the wooden siren figurehead on Sinbad’s ship come to life, but these things aren’t so dazzling when we’ve seen snake women, dragons, skeleton warriors, and multiple cyclops in previous Harryhausen adventure movies. They held off on the heavy hitters until the climactic sequence of this one, where we get to see Sinbad and Margiana get menaced by a one-eyed centaur, the centaur’s fight with a griffin, and a battle with a living, sword-wielding, six-armed statue of Kali.
So, while Golden Voyage is a step down from 7th Voyage, it does end up being pretty cool in the long run.
SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER (1977)
Columbia Pictures, the studio behind both The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, was so pleased with the second film that they made sure producer Charles H. Schneer and stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen wouldn’t wait another fifteen years before making another Sinbad movie, getting them to work on Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger right away. Again, Harryhausen earned a story credit for coming up with effects sequences, and this time Beverley Cross (who had worked on Jason and the Argonauts) was the writer tasked with building a story around those sequences. Since Schneer hadn’t been impressed with the lead performance in Golden Voyage, he hired “actor’s director” Sam Wanamaker to take the helm, while John Wayne’s son Patrick Wayne was chosen as the new Sinbad.
Never mind Margiana from Golden Voyage or Parisa from 7th Voyage, because in this movie Sinbad is out to marry Princess Farah of Charak (Jane Seymour). Unfortunately, his plans have to be delayed when he reaches Charak to find that Farah’s brother, Prince Kassim has been cursed by his own stepmother, the witch Zenobia (Margaret Whiting), and transformed into a baboon before he could be crowned King. If Kassim isn’t turned back into a human soon, Zenobia’s son Rafi (Kurt Christian) will become King. So Sinbad, Farah, and his crew set sail for the island of Casgar, where Sinbad hopes to cure Kassim with the help of hermit / alchemist Melanthius (Patrick Troughton).
Melanthius can’t help immediately, but he and his daughter Dione (Taryn Power) join the quest as they continue on to the land of Hyperborea, where they might be able to find the answer to this problem. Of course, Zenobia is tracking their progress the entire way...
While the previous films had focused on mythological creatures, the filmmakers went into this one with the intention of working prehistoric animals into the action. So while we get things like ghouls and a bronze minotaur, our heroes also encounter things like a giant walrus, a horned troglodyte, and a saber-toothed tiger.
I wouldn’t say that Patrick Wayne was a great improvement in the acting department, but the acting skills of the person playing Sinbad are not that important to the success of these movies. They’re all about the flow of the story and the special effects – and since Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger moves at a good pace and features some cool effects, it works just as well as it needed to.
In 1999, drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs hosted a double feature of Eye of the Tiger and Golden Voyage on his TNT series MonsterVision – and that’s the order they were shown in! Backwards. TV networks are always showing movies out of order, and I’ve never understood it. AMC is always showing franchise movies in reverse order during their Halloween celebrations, and I’ve watched a USA Up All Night double feature of A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, shown in that order. At least showing Sinbad movies in reverse order isn’t as bad as showing Elm Street movies in the wrong order, since these movies don’t have anything in the way of continuity.
During his hosting segments, Joe Bob talked about the movie’s cast members, drooled over Jane Seymour, pointed out some of the questionable dialogue in Golden Voyage (“walls have eyes and eyes have ears,” “he who walks on fire will burn his feet,”), wonders if Raiders of the Lost Ark ripped off the “gold doohickey” in Golden Voyage (which inspires him to talk about the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland), drools over Caroline Munro, explains how Harryhausen achieved the Kali effect, recapped the plot in the way only Joe Bob can, and has a couple of digressions, one involving people from newly discovered tribes joining the modern world and another about his friend Donovan, who has a thing for flight attendants.
Rusty the Mail Girl also stops by to deliver mail from a prisoner who shares a recipe for no bake cheesecake.
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