Thursday, August 4, 2011

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)




Director: Gordon Hessler

Starring: John Phillip Law, Caroline Munro, Tom Baker, Douglas Wilmer, Martin Shaw

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Sinbad battles the creatures of legend in the miracle of Dynarama!

Plot: Sinbad and his crew intercept a homunculus carrying a golden tablet. Koura, the creator of the homunculus and practitioner of evil magic, wants the tablet back and pursues Sinbad. Meanwhile Sinbad meets the Vizier who has another part of the interlocking golden map, and they mount a quest across the seas to solve the riddle of the map, accompanied by a slave girl with a mysterious tattoo of an eye on her palm. They encounter strange beasts, tempests, and the dark interference of Koura along the way.




My rating: 8/10

Will I watch it again? and again, and again, and again...

#22 from SWORD & SANDAL TRAILERS VOL. 1. (part of the TRAILER TRASH PROJECT)

There's no way you could top THE 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958) (a solid 10/10 in my book - the epitome of adventure) but that doesn't stop Hessler, Harryhausen and company from trying.

John Philip Law does a great job playing the hero...


as does Tom "DOCTOR WHO" Baker playing the villain...


and Caroline Munro's boobs playing themselves!



Oh, BOY, this is fun! It seems like Harryhausen wasn't content at just doing really great effects; with each film you can see that he's trying to raise the bar and create more elaborate scenes with more realistic creatures. In this picture you get...

Exotic locales!


See a wooden ship front statue thingy come to life!



See Sinbad fight the 6-armed goddess, Kali! (MAJOR BADASS MOMENT!)




See a minotaur fight a griffin!



This shit's just amazing. It's funny 'cause just the other day when I wrote about one of his films, THE VALLEY OF GWANGI (1969), I was thinking out loud how amazing it would be if Ray Harryhausen ever made a scene with stop motion titties. Well...


That's a start.

This picture's a blast from start to finish. THIS is how you make adventure flicks. The Harryhausen Sinbad movies are great fun. Not only that, you get amazing scores. THE 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD had my favorite, Bernard Herrmann, and this one's got a real beaut of a soundtrack by the legendary Miklos Rozsa. It's been a gazillion years since I last saw this and I dare not let that many go by again. I'm looking forward to revisiting SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER (1977) very, very soon.





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