The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974) - film review

Sinbad is out sailing one sunny afternoon when a strange bat-like creature appears from nowhere and accidentally drops a gold ornament at his feet.  Never one to look a gift horse, or in this case, a gift bat, in the mouth, Sinbad claims the ornament as his own and turns it into a nice necklace.  Not a good idea, as it turns out, because that night the renowned sailor and collector of bling artefacts suffers a series of horrific nightmares.  Premonition or guilty conscience?   A nasty storm then diverts Sinbad’s ship to an attractive seaside resort in the country of Marabia, which offers our hero even more opportunities for fantastic adventure and illicit bling accumulation.  After a vicious encounter with a sinister looking man in a dark cloak (an autograph-hunter no doubt), Sinbad arrives at a city, where the Grand Vizier lets him into a secret or two.  The pretty gold ornament which Sinbad is currently modelling is actually one part of precious artefact which, when assembled will show the way to untold wealth and power for anyone who possesses it.  The Grand Vizier takes Sinbad to a dark underground chamber (Sinbad never did take his mother’s advice) where they find an object identical to the one that the sailor is wearing around his neck.  Sinbad picks up a few additional clues (eat your heart out Miss Marple) and realises that to find the third piece of the jigsaw he must undertake a fantastic sea voyage to a far and distant land where he will encounter bizarre monsters and a very nasty villain.  As Sinbad embarks on his quest, the nasty villain in question, a power-mad fiend named Koura (who spends so much of his time soliloquising and invoking the demons of Hell that you could easily mistake him for a career politician or P.E. teacher) is not far behind.  Koura’s taste for tacky bling vastly surpasses that of his young rival and with his talent for breathing life into inanimate objects (I said he resembled a P.E. teacher) Sinbad certainly has his work cut out this time...

The long-awaited follow up to The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) proved to be yet another triumph for special effects guru Ray Harryhausen.   Whilst the plot has marginally less substance than a microscopic test tube filled with hydrogen gas and most of the characters look as if they were (hurriedly) cut out of a cornflakes box, Harryhausen’s effects never fail to impress and keep us entertained, making this muddled fantasy concoction just about palatable.  Among the marvels that Harryhausen offers us this time are an adorable bat lizard (which is so cute that Sinbad immediately loses our sympathy when he tries to kill it), a walking ship’s figurehead, a sadistic one-eyed centaur and a six-armed statue that could teach Errol Flynn a thing or two about swordsmanship.

Among the lacklustre cast only Tom Baker stands out, giving a commanding performance as the deliciously villainous Koura.  Baker definitely deserves an award of some kind for keeping a straight face whilst delivering some of the most excruciating lines ever to be inflicted on an unsuspecting cinema audience.  It was on the strength of his performance in this film that the boggle-eyed actor was offered the leading part in the long-running BBC TV series Doctor Who – the role that made Tom Baker a household name but put paid to a promising film career.  There are some people who still believe that Tom Baker is really just a Ray Harryhausen creation.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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