Celebrate the Drive-In is a tribute to a beloved venue of the past. During it's heyday, a trip to the drive-in was one of my favorite things, both on the rare occasions as a child, and in my early adulthood. This blog is going to celebrate Drive-In Day (Jun 6) with a series of movies that I was too young to see (or in a couple of cases, not even born yet) that I wish I could've experienced in a drive-in. Keep coming back for the entire week as there will be one per day for the duration.
Don't you just hate it when a magician shrinks your fiancee to the size of a GI Joe doll? Presenting the next Coming Attraction! The 7th Voyage of Sinbad!
A few years ago I covered a couple of movies featuring an adventurer named Sinbad (no relation to the African American comedian...), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. Both of those I was fortunate enough to have seen at a drive-in theater when I was still in my teens. As I related in the review (and you can follow the link if you want to read the whole thing yourself), the story of Sinbad and his adventures captivated me. A lot of that had to do with the stop-motion special effects of Ray Harryhausen.
Those films came out in the 70's. But those were not the first pairing of Sinbad the Sailor with the special effects expertise of Ray Harryhausen. (And actually there was an even earlier film, Sinbad the Sailor from 1947, with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr in the title role, but that was just a "plain Jane" swords and sandals pirate melodrama, lacking the monsters that populated the Harryhausen films). The best Sinbad movies were these later epics which added some fantastic creatures for the pirate to battle.
Sinbad had his origins in classic literature, specifically a book called One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. They were originally published in English in the early 1700's, but the history dates even before then. The collection was of stories and legends that had been collected Middle Eastern folktales circa the 8th to the 13th century.
The story behind the collection of tales, if you are not familiar, focuses on a girl in a sultan's harem. The sultan would have sex with a girl in his harem and then have her executed the next morning. Scheherezade, one his girls, told stories to the sultan each night, always leaving a cliffhanger at the end of the night, thus postponing her execution. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and the tale of Aladdin were two of these stories, and you have probably heard of several others.
Sinbad was a hero that ended up having seven classic voyages, although none of the classic films were actually directly based on the print stories. Instead, the films were more or less original tales inspired by the adventures of the literary character. I suggest you find a good copy of the book and read some of those stories however. They are entertaining in their own right. Sir Richard Burton (the British adventurer from the 1800's, not the actor) has the best version.
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958):
The film opens as Sinbad (Kerwin Mathews) and his crew are sailing to Baghdad. They have been looking for a place to resupply their ship, as they have apparently run out of food. Sinbad, the heir apparent to the Caliph of Baghdad, is on his way back with the princess of Chandra, Parisa (Kathryn Grant). The imminent marriage between the two serves two purposes; one they are truly in love, but also a marriage between the two will be able to stave off a war between the two countries.
They make landfall on the island of Colossa, where they encounter a giant Cyclops, as well as a magician who has been stranded there, with his magic lamp. The magician, Sokurah (Torin Thatcher), has some incredible magical powers, plus he has the genie in the lamp (Richard Eyer), but seems to be unable to get off the island by himself...
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| Cyclops |
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| Sokurah |
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| Genie |
As Sinbad, Sokurah and his crew try to make their escape, Sokurah loses the lamp, which is recovered by the Cyclops. When Sinbad finally gets to Baghdad, Sokurah does everything he can think of to try to get the Caliph, Sinbad's father (Alec Mango), to authorize and finance a trip back to Colossa to get the lamp again. Not all of his efforts are above board... He finally uses some of that (seemingly) elusive magic that he is capable of to shrink the princess to the size of a porcelain doll.
Then he manages to convince the Caliph that some other magic has caused it, but that he, Sokurah, can reverse the spell. The only thing is, he needs a part of the shell from an egg of a roc, and that creature can only be found on...wait for it....Colossa.
Due to the fact that most of Sinbad's crew is not willing to go back with him to Colossa, he has to get a crew of prisoners from the local jail. And you can see what's coming. That crew of reprobates is not interested in fulfilling their mission, probably because they know if they succeed they'll just be back in prison when they get back. So they mutiny. But forces beyond their control end up with them back on Colossa anyway.
On the island Sinbad and company divide forces. One group of them find the Cyclops' stashed treasure trove, and of course, lose track of the original mission. While they are overcome by the greed inspired by their discovery, the Cyclops captures some of them, including Sinbad. It is up to the miniature Parisa to help free them, and at one point she enters the lamp and meets the young boy who is the genie. The genie only wants one thing in life, to be free from the curse of imprisonment in the lamp. Parisa promises to help. (It's a sure bet Sokurah isn't going to be so magnanimous...)
Since Sinbad holds all the cards (read: the lamp), he has the necessary motivation to get Sokurah to reverse the curse. But Sokurah is not going to go so gentle into that good night. He kidnaps the princess and takes her to his cave, which is guarded by a fire-breathing dragon. The genie helps Sinbad get by the dragon, and confronts Sokurah, making him follow through with the promise to reverse the curse.
Ultimately there is a battle between the Cyclops and the dragon, and wonder of wonder, the good guys end up winning. (Did you expect it to end any other way?)
And Parisa follows through on her promise to help the genie escape his bondage.
Throughout the film there are several scenes that involve other Harryhausen creations. In one, Sokurah turns one of Parisa's handmaidens into a serpent woman.
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| Serpent woman |
In another, Sinbad does battle with a skeleton (which might be confused with a similar battle in Jason and the Argonauts, although in that movie it was an entire contingent of skeletons).
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| The 7th Voyage skeleton |
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| Jason vs. the skeletons |
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is one of those rare movies that garners a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Most critics agree that it is the best of the Sinbad movies. Roger Ebert, although not a reviewer at the time it came out (he was still in high school), reminisces in an article that it was one of his favorites. It made a fairly decent profit, managing to get a little over $3 million in tickets sales against a budget of only $650 thousand.
You can't go wrong watching any of the movies that Ray Harryhausen was involved in, whether it be the Sinbad movies or Jason and the Argonauts, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers or even Valley of the Gwangi . Like I say, the stop motion animation that he helped advance may seem quaint to people who grew up on CGI, but I can't name one movie in Harryhausen's oeuvre that is not worth watching multiple times.
It's hard to believe he was never nominated for an Oscar, although he did get an honorary award in 1992. How he was passed over for a even a nomination nod for the 1981 film, Clash of the Titans, is a mystery, although he probably would have ended up losing to Raiders of the Lost Ark, since that film was one of the darlings at the Academy Awards that year... Especially effective, visually, was his Medusa.
Realizing after writing this review that Harryhausen has been neglected in my 10 year span of writing, I am going to start posting a few more movies of his over the next few months. Just gotta find the time. I have a LOT of projects going on at this time. But since I am retired, there is no excuse of "I gotta work"...
See you next time, folks. Drive safely. And don't pick up any suspicious looking magicians... Come back tomorrow for The Born Losers!
Quiggy
There are some great set pieces, and some good location filming. I found the bit with recruiting prisoners disappointing - it was a bit too obvious, in that it's only there to create future plot tension. But that's my only gripe with this movie (which must have looked stunning on the big screen).
ReplyDeleteHarryhausen said years later that Kerwin Matthews was the best of all the actors he worked with at filming the stop-motion scenes (where the actor is acting and/or fighting against nothing in the studio or on location)