Runtime: 88 minutes
Directed by: Nathan Juran
Starring: Kerwin Mathews, Kathryn Grant, Richard Eyer, Torin Thatcher, Alec Mango
From: Columbia
A fine way to pay tribute to what would have been Ray Harryhausen's 100th birthday. TCM ran several of the films he contributed his revolutionary stop-motion animation effects to last night and as this is highly rated online, that was my criteria. In my life I've seen some of Ray's movies yet none have been reviewed here until now as those were many, many years ago.
Ironically, the story is more like the 3rd and 5th voyages of Sinbad as told in the ancient Middle Eastern legend. It has classic tropes... Sinbad's lady is Parisa; their upcoming marriage will hopefully broker peace between their two homelands... Sinbad comes across magician Sakurah who shrinks Parisa to about 2 inches tall as blackmail so Sakurah can acquire literal treasure that is guarded by such mythical creatures as Roc-a huge bird of prey from that region-cyclops and dragons. While there is white-washing here, I know how things were back then so I can still appreciate how various aspects of that culture were incorporated here.
It was nice to see an unpretentious adventure film which had action on land & sea... various colorful creatures all nicely brought to life by Harryhausen via effects that haven't aged poorly; what a stark contrast to a lot of the CG we have had in almost the past 30 years now. Mix in a nice Bernard Herrmann score and this was simply a fun movie to watch. Maybe one day I'll give a shot to Columbia's 70's Sinbad pictures (The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger) as if nothing else, I would see more Harryhausen effects.
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