My rating takes into account that the
primary audience for this film was children - and back in 1973 before CGI
took over the world, this must have felt amazing to children - and adults
like me. It still works, but much of that now is just being aware of the
astonishing work of Ray Harryhausen to create his stop-motion creatures.
It was remarkably complicated and labor intensive. There are four stop-motion
set-pieces, each which must have taken months to do. Nowadays of course with
computers, these are pretty basic. So now when a child sees this, he might
think it's cool but nothing he hasn't seen on TV many times before with CGI
or animation. His stop-motion technique was coming to an end in the movie
business because few could do it like he did and it was very time consuming.
He still had another Sinbad film in him and Clash of the Titans.
Harryhausen was still partners with producer Charles Schneer as they had
been since the 1955 It Came from Beneath the Sea. They had co-operated on
one Sinbad already back in 1958 with the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. They wanted
to make another (and in 1977 yet another) though feeling there was an audience
for this sort of adventure fantasy and they fit perfectly with their mythology
for Harryhausen. It was up to him to come up with the creatures and he has
four on hand. First there is the ship masthead that comes alive and fights
the crew, then the spectacular six-armed statue of Kali with a sword in each
fighting the crew, a centaur and finally a griffin - that fights the centaur.
It is all wonderfully done.
Of course, some might argue that the best effect had nothing to do with Harryhausen
but was Caroline Munro's ample cleavage that magically never leaves its home.
I have no idea what a ten-year old back then would have made of that but
for this 70-year old they still had a power of their own. And clearly, the
director Gordon Hessler was not shy about focusing on them whenever he could.
Monro was British and went to school in a convent. This film was the one
that really gave her publicity - she has a fairly large fan base all
these years later for her appearances as a Bond Girl and a number of horror
films.
A part of a golden necklace falls from the sky onto Sinbad's ship and he
holds on to it - he is met on shore by the evil wizard Koura (Tom Baker -
over 170 episodes of Dr. Who and great here) who wants the necklace. They
spar but Sinbad (John Phillip Law) escapes into the town of Marabia where
he meets the Grand Vizier (Douglas Wilmer) who also has a piece of the necklace
that fit together. He wears a gold mask because his face was ruined in a
fire - which made me feel bad for Wilmer and his Sherlockian profile (he
played him on TV). We don't see his real face till the very end. The Vizier
tells Sinbad that the third piece is on the mythical island of Lemuria (sort
of a real thing) and if they can find it, the necklace will bring wealth
and fame. So off they go with the Wizard in a ship following them.
Great adventure follows. Margiana (Monro) was a slave girl given to Sinbad
and against all naval tradition and superstition, Sinbad brings her along.
I mean who can blame him.
