Too much of everything

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

1958's Harryhausen classic "7th Voyage of Sinbad" had it all: lush Technicolor, a thunderous score by the brilliant Bernard Herrmann, a decent story with convincing performances (especially Kerwin Mathews as Sinbad), and the greatest of all Harryhausen's stop-motion effects. It wowed audiences and became one of 1958's top grossing movies.Years later, Harryhausen would again attempt two other Sinbad adventures, competing against the increasingly technologically suave special effects of the day. "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" appeared in 1973, campy enough to get the attention of post-stoners who grew up watching the classic Harryhausen films on TV. "Golden Voyage" isn't great, but it's watchable. John Philip Law was a serviceable Sinbad (with the exception of the line "Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel"), the rest of the cast is forgotten now and the only thing that remains are Harryhausen's effects. By 1973, stop-motion was becoming a thing of the past. Although "Golden" contains one of Harryhausen's very best efforts, the fight with the multi-armed Kali, "Golden" was marred by the terrible film quality of the time and a weak, unmemorable score which did nothing to propel the film. Since all Ray's "creature" films contain a battle between two mystical beasts, the climatic fight is between a griffin and a centaur. Both creatures look, well, ratty and slightly drunk. The feathers and fur consistently warp, looking like shag carpeting draped over figures borrowed from "Gumby". All the fluidity shown in the Cyclops sequences for "7th Voyage" are missing. For someone who had looked forward to a new Sinbad adventure since 1958, this second movie failed to deliver.Poor Harryhausen. His amazing work was nearly killed in 1977 when he released "S. and the Eye of the Tiger". From the first moments the film unspools, the low quality of the production is evident. The "ghouls" that appear behind the lousy 70s titles are bad versions of his insect-men from "First Men in the Moon". All the actors involved just wander around looking for a paycheck. "Famous" actors with more famous parents perform in what seems to be drug-fueled stupors. Both Patrick Wayne (son of John Wayne) and Taryn Power (daughter of Tyrone Power) just sort of stand around and watch all the weirdness unfold. Only Margaret Whiting, as Zenobia, the seagull-footed witch gives any energy. Her performance is all scenery chewing, but after Wayne and Power, anything looked better. As to the creatures, only the witch's robotic golden bull-man, the Minotaun, has the charm we want from Harryhausen. Unfortunately, this wonderful creature is destroyed without given anything great to do by dropping a large rock on itself. The expected battle between the titular "tiger" and a troglodyte is weak, jerky, and without any tension.The saber-tooth tiger actually looks like a stuffed toy jumping around. Sadly, Harryhausen would only release one more feature film, "Clash of the Titans" some years later. "Titans' has one worthwhile sequence, the battle with Medusa. That's it. The great auteur and craftsman behind so many memorable moments in a darkened theater was finally eclipsed by technology and the lack of great direction and musical support. "Eye of the Tiger", is a sad coda to a great career, which ended in "Titans". Harryhausen should never have given in to his lust for Greek mythology when his vision for the unknown and exotic were his true talents.Unless you are a Harryhausen completest, it's safe to bypass both "Tiger" and "Golden". With only a few notable sequences,they're not worth wasting your time on.

Sam Wanamaker directed this third Sinbad adventure with Ray Harryhausen's F/X on display, and this time they aren't enough. Patrick Wayne takes over the role from John Philip Law, and isn't as good(why JPL didn't return I don't know) Jane Seymour and Taryn Power are the female leads(no mention of Caroline Munro either!) Plot involves the quest to restore a young prince to his rightful throne(despite being turned into a chimp) with an evil witch and her son plotting to usurp it themselves. Past "Doctor Who" actor Patrick Troughton costars as a wise old man, but his performance does rise above the poorly written character. Whole film feels both tired and redundant, lost in the wake of "Star Wars"...

Sinbad the sailor from Basrah (Patrick Wayne, son of the Duke) wants permission from the good Caliph to marry the Caliph's sister (Jane Seymour, not related to THE Jane Seymour) but the Caliph has been turned into a baboon by his and Seymour's wicked stepmother, Zenobia (Margaret Whiting).Well, a baboon who can't speak and whom no one recognizes as the transformed would-be Caliph can't very well give permission for Wayne and Seymour to marry, so they must travel to distant lands where magic and its practitioners prevail. Pursued by Whiting and a bronze beast with the head of a bull, they make their way to the island where the magician Melanthius lives with his fetching daughter Dione (Taryn Power, daughter of Himself).Then they're on to Hyperboria and another perilous journey. All these journeys are perilous and, in fact, they don't make a heck of a lot of sense except that they provide an excuse for fantasy, adventure, romance, the exercise of avarice, and Ray Harryhausen's agreeable special effects.All the performances are overdone but that's in no way objectionable because it suits this kind of phantasmagorical story. Do we really want realism when Sinbad is fighting off four bug-eyed scimitar-wielding ghouls? No. No, we don't. Not if we're the kind of people I think we are.In any case it's hard to tell whether Patrick Wayne's acting is good or not because he isn't really an actor but an icon in Charles Sanders Peirce's sense of the term. He corresponds to an actor.Jane Seymour I had mixed feelings about. When she was a "Medicine Woman" on television, I always prayed that the bandits or Indians would get her and do things to her. Here, she's so young and tender, and so decked out in low-cut pantaloons and bustiers that I was happy she survived long enough to bring medicine and compassion to the Wild West.The best performance -- envelope, please -- goes to Margaret Whiting as the evil witch. My God, she looks fiendish. Make up did a splendid job. And she overdoes her depravity to within an inch of her life. Totally ruthless. She barks out orders and expects instant obedience, and she can be rough on those who don't act as automatons. Totally ruthless, rather like my ex spouse.It's the kind of movie in which you settle back in your easy chair with a bag of tortilla chips and a bowl of pineapple salsa and while away the time, savoring the nicely executed location shooting in Andalucia, Malta, and the old tombs in Jordan. The kids will probably get a big kick out of it.

Prince Kassim, the young heir to the throne of Baghdad, is magically transformed into a baboon by his evil stepmother, the witch Zenobia, who wants the throne for her own son, Kassim's half-brother Rafi. Sinbad, accompanied by Kassim's beautiful sister Princess Farah, as well as the Prince himself in his monkey form, sets sail in search of a cure. This being a Ray Harryhausen film, much of the plot involves the heroes struggling against various monsters, all animated by the stop-motion process which Harryhausen pioneered. This must be the only film in which the hero gets to fight a gigantic killer walrus. The title "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger" may refer to the fact that, having seen off the walrus, Sinbad then has to battle a sabre-toothed tiger, although I am not sure how the "eye" part fits in.This was the third and last of Harryhausen's films about the legendary hero Sinbad the Sailor, the others being "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" and "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad". It was not, however, Harryhausen's final film; that was to be "Clash of the Titans" from four years later. In the fifties and early sixties his techniques of film-making (which he named "Dynamation" or "Dynarama"), combining stop-motion animation with live action, seemed something new and exciting, opening up new possibilities for fantasy films. By the late seventies they were starting to look old-fashioned; there is little in "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger" (which came out in the same year as "Star Wars") to distinguish it from "The Seventh Voyage" which had come out nearly twenty years earlier.Today, of course, films made using the "Dynamation" process have a very retro feel to them, but I have long had a soft spot for Harryhausen's work ever since I was taken, as a child, to see a double bill of "The Seventh Voyage" and "Jason and the Argonauts" as part of a friend's birthday treat. I would not rate "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger" quite as highly as either of those films. The acting is variable; neither Patrick Wayne as the hero nor Taryn Power has the talent or the charisma of their famous fathers, but Margaret Whiting as Zenobia makes a splendidly over-the-top villainess, former Doctor Who Patrick Troughton is good as the wise old philosopher Melanthius and Jane Seymour as Farah looks as lovely as ever. With its fairy-tale Arabian Nights atmosphere, this film can perhaps best be described as the cinematic equivalent of a pantomime, and like most pantomimes serves as very enjoyable family entertainment. 6/10