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Sinbad (John Phillip Law), Prince of Baghdad and legendary sailor, finds an intriguing map and sets sail for the previously uncharted island of Lemuria with a beautiful slave girl, Margiana (Caroline Munro), and the Grand Vizier of the land of Marabia.

1. Cast Of Sinbad And The Golden Voyage

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is a 1973 British fantasy film directed by Dean Wood and featuring stop motion effects by Ray Harryhausen. It is the second of three Sinbad films released by Columbia Pictures, the others being The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977). The film stars John Phillip Law, Tom Baker, Takis Emmanuel and Caroline Munro. It won the first Saturn Award for Best Fantasy Film.

Plot[edit]

While sailing, Sinbad comes across a golden tablet dropped by a mysterious flying creature. That night, he dreams about a man dressed in black, repeatedly calling his name, as well as a beautiful girl with an eye tattooed on the palm of her right hand.

A sudden storm throws the ship off course and Sinbad and his men find themselves near a coastal town in the country of Marabia. Swimming to the beach, he encounters the man from his dream, Prince Koura, who demands that he turn over the amulet. Sinbad narrowly escapes into the city, where he meets the Grand Vizier of Marabia, who has been acting as regent following the death of the sultan, who had no heir. The Vizier, who wears a golden mask to hide his disfigured face, explains that Sinbad's amulet is but one piece of a puzzle, of which the Vizier has another. The Vizier relates to Sinbad a legend, which claims that the three pieces, when joined together, will reveal a map showing the way to the fabled Fountain of Destiny on the lost continent of Lemuria. He who takes the three pieces to the Fountain will receive 'youth, a shield of darkness and a crown of untold riches.'

Sinbad agrees to help the Vizier in his quest for the Fountain and they join forces against the evil Prince Koura, a magician bent on using the Fountain's gifts to conquer Marabia. Koura had previously locked the Vizier in a room and set it on fire, resulting in the disfiguring of the Vizier's face. The creature that dropped the gold tablet was Koura's minion, a homunculus created by his black magic. Koura uses the creature to spy on Sinbad and the Vizier and learn of their plans.

Shortly afterwards, Sinbad meets the woman in his dream, a slave girl named Margiana. Her master hires Sinbad to make a man out of his lazy, no-good son Haroun. Sinbad agrees on the condition that Margiana come along. Koura hires a ship and a crew of his own and follows Sinbad, using his magic several times to try to stop Sinbad. However, each attempt drains away part of his life force, and he ages noticeably each time.

On his journey, Sinbad encounters numerous perils, including a wooden siren figurehead on his own ship, animated by Koura's magic, which manages to steal the map, enabling Koura to locate Lemuria. The wizard uses another homunculus to overhear the Oracle of All Knowledge describe to Sinbad what he will face in his search for the Fountain. Koura seals the men inside the Oracle's cave, but Sinbad uses a makeshift rope to get everyone out. Haroun manages to destroy the homunculus as it attacks Sinbad. After he is captured by hostile natives, Koura animates a six-armed idol of Kali, causing the natives to set him free. Sinbad and his men arrive soon after. They fight and defeat Kali and find the final piece of the puzzle within Kali's shattered remains. The natives capture Sinbad and his crew, but after they see the eye tattoo on Margiana's hand, they instead decide to sacrifice her to a one-eyed centaur, the natives' God of the Single Eye and the Fountain's Guardian of Evil.

Koura arrives at the Fountain of Destiny. When he drops the first piece of the tablet into the Fountain, his life force is restored. He then summons the centaur, which fights the Fountain's Guardian of Good, a griffin. Meanwhile, Sinbad and the others escape, rescue Margiana and reach the Fountain. They watch as the centaur kills the griffin with Koura's aid, then Sinbad slays the centaur. Koura drops the second piece into the Fountain, which turns him invisible (the 'shield of darkness'). He engages Sinbad in a swordfight. Sinbad is barely able to fend off his invisible foe, but Koura makes a fatal mistake by stepping in the Fountain itself, which reveals his silhouette, enabling Sinbad to kill him. Sinbad then drops in the third piece, and a jewel-encrusted crown rises from the depths. He gives the crown to the Vizier. When the Vizier dons the crown, his mask dissolves, revealing his restored, unscarred face. Their quest completed, Sinbad and his crew journey back to Marabia. When Margiana asks him why he did not take the crown himself, Sinbad explains, 'I value freedom. A king is never really free. Why, he's even told who he must marry.' The two of them kiss.

Cast[edit]

• John Phillip Law as Sinbad, the protagonist
• Tom Baker as Prince Koura, the main antagonist of the film (Christopher Lee was a front-runner to play Koura) Baker's performance helped him get the lead role of the Fourth Doctor in the TV series Doctor Who, because the show's producer, Barry Letts, was impressed with his performance.^[1]
• Takis Emmanuel as Achmed (Emmanuel was dubbed by Robert Rietti)
• Caroline Munro as Margiana (Munro was well known at the time for being featured in advertisements for Lamb's Navy Rum)
• Douglas Wilmer as the Grand Vizier of Marabia
• Grégoire Aslan as Hakim (as Gregoire Aslan)
• David Garfield as Abdul (as John D. Garfield)
• Kurt Christian as Haroun
• Martin Shaw as Rachid
• Aldo Sambrell as Omar
• Robert Shaw as the Oracle of All Knowledge (uncredited)

Screenwriter Brian Clemens helped Munro land the role of Margiana:

'I got the part – I had been signed by Hammer, for one year, for a contract, out of which I did two films, one being Dracula AD 1972, and the second one being Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter, which, kind of, would come full-circle, to Sinbad. It was written and directed by Brian Clemens, who wrote the screenplay for The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, so, I was lucky enough to be chosen for Captain Kronos, and they were searching for somebody to do Sinbad, and they wanted a big name, somebody American, or well-known, but Brian said 'No'. He kept lobbying Charles Schneer [producer] and Ray Harryhausen — saying: 'I think you should come and look at the rushes, and see what you think, because I think she's right'. So, they said 'No', but, eventually, Brian persuaded them to do that, and they saw the rushes, and that was how I got the part.'^[2]

Production[edit]

Producers Charles Schneer and Ray Harryhausen based their production in Spain (Madrid as well as the island of Majorca) to take advantage of the local rugged scenery. At one point the possibility of filming some scenes at the landmark Alhambra palace in Granada was raised; however, rental fees demanded by local authorities proved prohibitive. Eventually the company was able to film at the Royal Palace of La Almudaina. Other scenes were done in the Caves of Artà (the temple of the Oracle) and the Torrent de Pareis^[3]

It was filmed from June 19, 1972 to August 1972.

An early charcoal/pencil illustration showed the one-eyed centaur battling a giant Neanderthal-like creature, who was later ultimately replaced by a griffin in the final version. The idea of the Neanderthal was later featured in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977).^[4]

Adaptations[edit]

• Marvel Comics published a two-issue adaptation in Worlds Unknown #7–8 (June & Aug. 1974).^[5] Titled The Golden Voyage of Sinbad: Land of the Lost, it was scripted by Len Wein, penciled by George Tuska and inked by Vince Colletta.

Home media[edit]

The film was released in the United Kingdom on VHS in 1991.

Blu-ray ALL America - Twilight Time - The Limited Edition Series^[6]

• Picture Format: 1.66:1 (1080p 24fps) [AVC MPEG-4]
• Soundtrack(s): English (DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1)
• Subtitles: English HoH
• Extras:
• Isolated Score (DTS HD Master Audio 5.1)
• Mysterious Island [Featurette] (11:13)
• The Three Worlds of Gulliver [Featurette] (7:12)
• Earth vs. the Flying Saucers [Featurette] (11:52)
• Theatrical Trailer (2:47, 1080p)
• Case type: Keep Case
• Released: Dec 10, 2013
• Notes: Limited to 3,000 copies (none are numbered).
• Blu-ray series: The Fantastic Films of Ray Harryhausen (along with The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger)^[7]

Reception[edit]

The film had modestly favourable reviews. Rotten Tomatoes has given it a rating of 73% from 14 critics. The film was a box office success with a total revenue of $11,000,000, including $5,000,000 in rentals, bringing its total gross to $16,000,000 - the equivalent of $78,227,342 in 2016 dollars.^[8] The film was completed for $982,351, a remarkably small sum, even for a film in the early 1970s.^{[citation needed]}

On 25 February 2018, filmmaker John Walsh, a trustee of the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation gave a talk at the historic Regent Street Cinema for a special 45th anniversary screening of a restored version of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, along with Caroline Munro.^[9] John Walsh revealed how Harryhausen's legacy has improved with age. 'What’s fascinating is that since Ray retired, he’s become more popular. All those young people who saw his films in cinemas are now making films, like Peter Jackson. And when Ray left us in 2013, George Lucas said that without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no Star Wars. His place in the world of film and special effects is unrivalled.'^[10]

References[edit]

1. ^Doctor Who the Handbook: The Fourth Doctor Doctor Who Books, 1992, pg 43.
2. ^^{[dead link]}Caroline Munro InterviewArchived 27 December 2005 at the Wayback Machine. Margiana.freeservers.com (23 November 2002). Retrieved on 9 August 2013.
3. ^http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=67592
4. ^Dalton, Tony. The Art of Ray Harryhuasen. London: Aurum, 2005, pg 178.
5. ^Buttery, Jarrod (April 2014). 'Ready for the Spotlight'. Back Issue!. Raleigh, North Carolina: TwoMorrows Publishing (71): 8.
6. ^http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Golden-Voyage-of-Sinbad-Blu-ray/80945/#Review
7. ^‘The Fantastic Films of Ray Harryhausen’ Making Australian Blu-ray Debut
8. ^'All-time Film Rental Champs', Variety, 7 January 1976 p 48
9. ^https://www.regentstreetcinema.com/programme/the-golden-voyage-of-sinbad/
10. ^https://www.heyuguys.com/golden-voyage-sinbad-45th-anniversary-qa/

External links[edit]

• The Golden Voyage of Sinbad on IMDb
• The Golden Voyage of Sinbad at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Golden Voyage of Sinbad at the TCM Movie Database
• The Golden Voyage of Sinbad at AllMovie
• The Golden Voyage of Sinbad at the American Film Institute Catalog

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is a 1958 Technicolorheroic fantasyadventure film directed by Nathan H. Juran and starring Kerwin Mathews, Torin Thatcher, Kathryn Grant, Richard Eyer, and Alec Mango. It was distributed by Columbia Pictures and produced by Charles H. Schneer.^[3]

It was the first of three Sinbadfeature films from Columbia, the later two from the '70s being The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977). All three Sinbad films were conceptualized by Ray Harryhausen using Dynamation, the full color widescreenstop-motion animation technique that he created.

While similarly named, the film does not follow the storyline of the tale 'The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor' but instead has more in common with the Third and Fifth voyages of Sinbad.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad was selected in 2008 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant'.^[4]

• 8References

Plot[edit]

Sinbad the Sailor and his ship's crew make landfall on the island of Colossa, where they encounter Sokurah the magician fleeing a giant cyclops. Though he escapes, Sokurah loses a magic lamp to the creature. Sinbad refuses his desperate pleas to return to Colossa because Parisa, Princess of Chandra, is aboard. Their coming marriage is meant to secure peace between her father's realm and Sinbad's homeland, Baghdad.

After reaching Baghdad, Sokurah performs magic at the pre-wedding festivities, temporarily turning Parisa's handmaiden into a snake-like being. Despite his prowess and a dark prophecy about war between Baghdad and Chandra, the Caliph of Baghdad refuses to help the magician return to Colossa. Later that night, Sokurah secretly shrinks the princess, enraging her father, the Sultan of Chandra, who declares war on Baghdad. Sinbad and the Caliph give in to Sokurah, who explains that the eggshell of a Roc is needed for the potion that will restore Parisa, and it can be found only on Colossa. Sokurah provides Sinbad with the plans for a giant crossbow for protection against the island's giant creatures.

Sinbad recruits additional crewmen from among the convicts in the Caliph's prisons. Before they reach Colossa, the cutthroats mutiny and capture Sokurah, Sinbad, and his men. During a violent storm, the sounds of keening demons from a nearby island drives the crew nearly mad, endangering the ship. One of the men releases Sinbad so he can save them, after the mutineers' leader falls to his death from the crow's nest.

On Colossa, Sinbad, Sokurah, and six of his crew enter the valley of the cyclops, followed by Sinbad's loyal aide Harufa. Sinbad and Sokurah split their forces. Sinbad and his men find the cyclops' treasure cave, but are captured by one of the creatures and locked in a wooden cage. Sokurah, in the meantime, retrieves the magic lamp, but is chased by the cyclops, who kills three of the men. With Parisa's aid, Sinbad manages to escape, then blinds the one-eyed creature and lures it off the edge of a cliff to its death. Sinbad decides to hold on to the lamp until Parisa is returned to normal size.

Sokurah leads Sinbad and his starving men to the nesting place of the giant Rocs. Out of hunger, Sinbad's men try to break open a Roc egg, causing it to hatch, but the newborn chick is killed by the men and fire-roasted for food. While the men are eating, Parisa enters the magic lamp and befriends Barani, the childlike Genie inside, who tells her how to summon him in exchange for her promise of his freedom. The parent Roc returns and slays the men. Sinbad tries to summon the genie, but he is grabbed by the Roc, who takes flight, and drops him, unconscious, into its nearby nest. Sokurah kills Harufa and abducts the princess, taking her to his underground fortress.

Sinbad awakens and rubs the magic lamp, summoning Barani, who takes Sinbad to Sokurah's fortress and helps him evade the chained dragon that stands guard. Sinbad reaches Sokurah, who restores the princess to normal. When Sinbad refuses to hand over the lamp, the magician animates a skeleton warrior, which Sinbad sword-fights and destroys. With the help of the genie, Sinbad and Parisa make their way out of the cave, stopping to destroy the lamp by throwing it into a pool of lava, thus freeing Barani.

Leaving the cave, they encounter another cyclops. Sinbad releases the dragon, which fights and kills the creature. Sinbad and Parisa make their escape, but Sokurah orders the dragon to hunt them down. Sinbad heads to the beach, where his men have readied the giant crossbow, and they use it to kill the dragon. The dying dragon collapses on Sokurah, crushing him to death. Sinbad, Parisa, and the remaining crew depart for Baghdad. They are joined by Barani, now human, who has appointed himself as Sinbad's cabin boy. In a final act of magic as he was being freed, Barani filled the captain's cabin with the treasure from the cyclops' cave, a wedding gift to Sinbad and Parisa.

Cast[edit]

• Kerwin Mathews as Sinbad
• Kathryn Grant as Princess Parisa
• Richard Eyer as Barani, the Genie
• Torin Thatcher as Sokurah
• Alec Mango as the Caliph of Baghdad
• Harold Kasket as the Sultan, Parisa's father
• Alfred Brown as Harufa, Sinbad's loyal right-hand man
• Nana DeHerrera as Sadi (as Nana de Herrera)
• Nino Falanga as Gaunt Sailor
• Luis Guedes as Crewman
• Virgilio Teixeira as Ali
• Danny Green as Karim

Production[edit]

It took Ray Harryhausen 11 months to complete the full color, widescreen stop-motion animation sequences for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Harryhausen's 'Dynamation' label was used for the first time on this film.^[5]

Harryhausen gave the cyclops a horn, goat legs, and cloven hooves, an idea based upon the concept of the Greek godPan. He lifted much of the creature's design (for example the torso, chest, arms, poise and style of movement) from his concept of the Ymir (the Venusian creature from his earlier 20 Million Miles to Earth). He used the same armature for both figures; to do this, he had to cannibalize the ymir, removing the latter's latex body.^[6]

Harryhausen researched the cobra-woman sequence (when Sakourah entertains the Caliph and the Sultan) by watching a belly dancer in Beirut, Lebanon. During the performance, Harryhausen says, 'smoke was coming up my jacket. I thought I was on fire! It turned out the gentleman behind me was smoking a hookah!' The cyclops is the film's most popular character, but Harryhausen's personal favorite was the cobra-woman, a combination of Princess Parisa's maid, Sadi, and a cobra.^[7]

The film's original script had a climax that involved two cyclops fighting. In the final version, however, the climactic battle featured a single cyclops versus a dragon. The model of the dragon was more than three feet long and was very difficult to animate; the fight sequence took nearly three weeks for Harryhausen to complete. Originally, it was planned to have the dragon breathing fire from its mouth during the entire sequence, but the cost was deemed too high. So the scenes where it does breathe fire, Harryhausen used a flamethrower, shooting out flames 30 to 40 feet against a night sky, then superimposing the filmed fire very near the dragon's mouth.^[8]

The sword fight scene between Sinbad and the skeleton proved so popular with audiences that Harryhausen recreated and expanded the scene five years later, this time having a group of seven armed skeletons fight the Greek hero Jason and his men in 1963's Jason and the Argonauts.^[9]

The stop-motion cobra-woman figure used for the film was cannibalized 20 years later in order to make the Medusa figure in Harryhausen's final film, Clash of the Titans.^{[citation needed]}

Film score[edit]

The music score for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad was composed by Bernard Herrmann, better known at the time for his collaboration with the director Alfred Hitchcock. Herrmann went on to write the scores for three other Harryhausen films: Mysterious Island, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, and Jason and the Argonauts. Of the four, Harryhausen regarded the score for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad as being the finest, due to the empathy Herrmann's main title composition evoked for the subject matter.^{[citation needed]}

The soundtrack producer Robert Townson, who re-recorded the score in 1998 with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, described the music as rich and vibrant, commenting 'I would cite The 7th Voyage of Sinbad as one of the scores which most validates film music as an art form and a forum where a great composer can write a great piece of music. As pure composition, I would place Sinbad beside anything else written this century and not worry about it being able to stand on its own'.^[10]

Reception[edit]

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad continues to be well-reviewed, with many critics holding the opinion that it is the best film of the 'Sinbad' trilogy. The film carries a 100% approval rating at the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 14 reviews with a weighted average score of 7.61/10,^[11] with several reviewers citing its nostalgic value. Mountain Xpress critic Ken Hanke, for example, calls it 'Childhood memory stuff of the most compelling kind'.^[11]

American Film Institute Lists

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills - Nominated^[12]
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains:
  • Sinbad - Nominated Hero^[13]
• AFI's 10 Top 10 - Nominated Fantasy Film^[14]

The film was released during Christmas 1958 to cash-in during the family holiday, but it continued to do well following the holiday period, becoming a sleeper hit.^[15] In its first three weeks the film grossed $3.5 million, including $500,000 at the Roxy Theatre in New York City.^[15] Its total rentals were more than $6 million worldwide.

Producer Edward Small, impressed with the film's success, produced a fantasy film on his own in 1962, titled Jack the Giant Killer, reuniting the starring cast members of The 7th Voyage, Kerwin Mathews as Jack and Torin Thatcher as the evil sorcerer Pendragon.

Comic book adaptions[edit]

Cast Of Sinbad And The Golden Voyage

• DellFour Color #944 (September 1958)^[16][17]
• Marvel Spotlight #25 (December 1975)^[18]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Notes[edit]

1. ^The 7th Voyage Box office / business from the Internet Movie Database
2. ^'1959: Probable Domestic Take', Variety, 6 January 1960 p 34
3. ^Swires, Steve (April 1989). 'Nathan Juran: The Fantasy Voyages of Jerry the Giant Killer Part One'. Starlog Magazine. No. 141. p. 61.
4. ^'Cinematic Classics, Legendary Stars, Comedic Legends and Novice Filmmakers Showcase the 2008 Film Registry'. Library of Congress. Retrieved 23 January 2017.
5. ^'The name Dynamation'. The Official Ray Harryhausen Website. Retrieved 23 January 2017.
6. ^Johnson, John (1996). Cheap Tricks and Class Acts: Special Effects, Makeup and Stunts from the Fantastic Fifties. McFarland and Company, Inc. p. 75. ISBN0-7864-0093-5. Retrieved 23 January 2017.
7. ^Dalton 2003, p. 112.
8. ^Dalton 2005, pp. 160–166.
9. ^'Jason and the Argonauts'.'Monstervision, 2000. Retrieved: January 29, 2015.
10. ^Luchs, Kurt. 'The 7th Voyage of Sinbad: An Interview with Robert Townson, part 1.'The Bernard Herrmann Society, October 1998. Retrieved: January 29, 2015.
11. ^ ^abThe 7th Voyage of Sinbad at Rotten Tomatoes
12. ^'AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills.'AFI. Retrieved: January 29, 2015.
13. ^'AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains Nominees.'AFI. Retrieved: January 29, 2015.
14. ^'AFI's 10 Top 10 Ballot.'AFI. Retrieved: January 29, 2015.
15. ^ ^ab'Bureau of Missing Business: Sweet Music of a 'Sleeper''. Variety. February 25, 1959. p. 13. Retrieved July 4, 2019 – via Archive.org.
16. ^'Dell Four Color #944'. Grand Comics Database.
17. ^Dell Four Color #944 at the Comic Book DB (archived from the original)
18. ^Buttery, Jarrod (April 2014). 'Ready for the Spotlight'. Back Issue!. Raleigh, North Carolina: TwoMorrows Publishing (71): 8.

Bibliography[edit]

• Dalton, Tony. The Art of Ray Harryhausen. London: Aurum, 2005. ISBN978-1-8451-3114-2.
• Dalton, Tony. Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life. London: Aurum, 2003. ISBN978-1-8541-0940-8.
• Warren, Bill. Keep Watching the Skies: American Science Fiction Films of the Fifties, 21st Century Edition. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2009, (First edition 1982). ISBN0-89950-032-3.

External links[edit]

• The 7th Voyage of Sinbad at the TCM Movie Database
• The 7th Voyage of Sinbad on IMDb
• The 7th Voyage of Sinbad at AllMovie
• The 7th Voyage of Sinbad at the American Film Institute Catalog
• The 7th Voyage of Sinbad at Rotten Tomatoes