Excellent but underrated film

Captivating movie !

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Sinbad (Wayne) sets off to locate the antidote that will transform Prince Kassim from his baboon state back into the human he was before the evil Zenobia (Whiting) cast her spell, a task made all the more urgent as his altered state becomes increasingly irreversible. With the aid of an ageing wizard (Troughton), a princess (Seymour) and the blonde, blue-eyed Taryn Power (daughter of Tyrone Power) he sails the seven seas, contesting with mutated creatures (the minotaur, played by Dave Prowse pre-'Darth Vader') and other creatures, richly brought to life via Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animation.Harryhausen fans will marvel at his technical capabilities; the scene In which Whiting is miniaturised, scampering about the ship's cabin while the crew try in vain to capture her before she can morph back into a seagull and escape is classic. For others, the cinematographic illusions will be dated or even amateurish. I guess that will depend on your vintage and preferences. Interestingly, this film was directed by Sam Wanamaker, the former blacklisted actor/director following a near decade long hiatus."Golden Voyage" (1974) was, in my opinion superior among the brace of Sinbad films that emerged in the mid seventies, but this is still an enjoyable romp, suitable for the family and one of the last of its ilk, indeed also for that of Harryhausen's imaginative creature effects.

Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger has some interesting historic significance of a sort. Patrick Wayne as Sinbad proved himself fare more capable of swordplay than his father the legendary Duke. In fact two offspring of screen legends co-star in this film. Taryn Power, daughter of Tyrone Power, who was certainly more than capable in these kinds of films is the leading lady. Taryn is the princess of Bagdad whose got eyes for her sailor man.But before these two can live happily ever after, Sinbad's got a big mission. Taryn's brother Damien Thomas the prince of Bagdad and would be Caliph has been turned into a baboon by their stepmother Margaret Whiting. Whiting would much prefer her son Kurt Christian to be the new Caliph.What to do but sail in search of the wisest man on earth who happens to be Patrick Troughton, one of the Doctors Who. and who lives on a deserted island with his fetching daughter Jane Seymour. His advice is head north and seek the Aurora Borealis which is said to have some magical properties for reversing spells. Off goes the whole cast to the North Pole and they pass no sleigh driven by reindeer on the voyage.Margaret Whiting's performance is an interesting one. Her character and in fact her machinations come straight out of I Claudius. I'm not sure who influenced who's performance, Whiting's characterization is like Sian Phillips's Lydia the evil empress wife of Augustus.The film isn't too much different than those Arabian Nights movies that Maria Montez did back in the day. It does have the added attraction of some nice work by that master of special effects, Ray Harryhausen. That makes watching it all worthwhile.

"Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger" is not as good as the other two Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movies. There are too many instances where events could play out really cool, yet they invariably fizzle. Given that this is the third installment of Sinbad by the same creative team, I expected more. The plot seems to wear out halfway through the movie, and important scenes are poorly executed. But can any movie featuring Ray Harryhausen's creatures and sexy Jane Seymour ever be truly bad? Of course not! I'm just frustrated that this movie missed being great, because it easily could have been. The storyline of the movie is acceptable, and some of it is directly lifted from an 1001 Nights story, which is a plus. A prince is cursed into baboon shape by a witch so a challenger for the throne (the witch's son) can take over the kingdom. The shapeshift will become permanent after a while. The sister of the prince hires Sinbad to sail to a foreign land to find a wizard to break the curse. The witch and her son pursue Sinbad to prevent the reversal of the shapeshift. At the end of the movie, the competitors end up at the north pole in the temple of a lost civilization, the last hope to cure the prince.Much of the plot follows standard elements found in the three Harryhausen Sinbad movies such as a race to a lost land and a shapeshifted/disfigured royal person. But that is okay. What does not work is that there are too many characters just tagging along with little to do. Sinbad is one of the characters left hanging, which is not a good sign for a movie with Sinbad in the title. Once Sinbad states (early in the film) that he cannot remove the curse but he knows someone who can, Sinbad exits center stage and the wizard becomes the driver of the plot. Jane Seymore visually dominates any scene she is in with her sexy princess outfit, but does little else. The witch's son and the wizards daughter must have some dramatic story potential, I'll figure out what it is some day, maybe.Basically, the heart and soul of the movie comes down to a duel between the wizard and the witch, as both ships race for the north pole. The witch (Margaret Whiting) is outrageous and bizarre, and has plenty of stop-motion creature sorcery at her disposal. The wizard (Patrick Troughton) has obscure knowledge and is wonderfully nutty. But this duel is hardly a battle of wits. Their antics actually make the movie kind of funny, not necessarily on purpose, but since they are the main focus for drama the whole tone of movie feels uncertain. The writers do not seem to grasp the central importance of these two characters, and the plot devolves into random encounters and padded scenes. It would have been great to have an ongoing duel of sorcery (and dynamation creatures) throughout the race to the pole, but this opportunity was missed. As always, the dynamation monsters are entertaining, but perhaps not as effectively presented in the dramatic parts of the story as they could have been. The minotaur is totally cool, but almost pointless; the walrus is totally pointless; the skeletons are okay but without any sense of why the witch could summon them (and then only once); the troglodyte looks great but is almost pointless; and the saber-toothed tiger and troglodyte fight (two dynamation creatures fighting at the climax is another staple feature in these Sinbad movies) is an awkward disappointment. The baboon is by far the best creature in the film. Harryhausen always manages to evoke personality from his creations, and the baboon-prince is one of his very best in terms of expression, emotion and presence. However, too much screen time is spent with this creature and the baboon ultimately adds drag to the film.In spite of my frustrations with the film, I've watched it several times and will undoubtedly watch it several more. There is something charming about a Ray Harryhausen movie, even one that misses the mark.

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