(dir. Sam Wanamaker)

⭐️⭐️⭐️
52-week film challenge, film 40

It’s a pity this is probably the weakest of the three Columbia Sinbad movies, but it had a surprising amount of bad luck behind it. Patrick Wayne (son of John) is a handsome enough Sinbad, but … no charisma. He definitely puts in the work on the buckling of the swashes and such, but he never comes off as the lead of the film, or even as the hero of the story. Even Sam Wanamaker couldn’t pull a convincing performance out of him.

Another issue with this particular entry in the Sinbad series was that they literally gave animator Ray Harryhausen too much to do, resulting in a mix of excellent work and some clearly rushed and less-well-done effects. As a result, the story really drags, and has difficulty building any tension.

But the killer problem is that, as luck would have it, the film opened just three months after the truly revolutionary (and by comparison, breakneck-paced) first Star Wars movie, that instantly made Harryhausen’s mostly-great work look very dated by comparison.

Fans of Harryhausen’s incredible stop-motion work get a feast with this picture, and point to some of the creatures as among his best work — and they’re right, so if you want to see those you kinda have to suffer through the non-animated slog. The best of these effects are really enjoyable, but there are perhaps too many sequences of them for one movie, and the ghouls we see early on seem very lazy —- since they strongly resemble repurposed skeleton soldiers from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.

The storyline reads well on paper: Prince Kassim is about to be crowned Caliph of the kingdom of Charak, but his evil stepmother, the witch Zenobia (Margaret Whiting), places a curse on him that turns him into a prehistoric baboon. If the curse cannot be lifted within seven (full) moons, Zenobia’s son Rafi (Kurt Christian) will become Caliph.

Sinbad enters the picture by sailing into town to seek the hand of Princess Farah (Jane Seymour), but the town is under lockdown. Farah eventually finds Sinbad, and tells him of Kassim’s curse and that Kassim must be made whole and assume the Caliph before she can marry Sinbad.

The pair set sail to find the Greek alchemist Melanthius (Troughton), who may be able to help. Zenobia and Rafi, worried that they could succeed in undoing her curse, set off in pursuit using a ship powered by a giant “Minodon,” a Bull-Man creature made of metal, brought to life by Zenobia. The Minodon can do the rowing of six men from a single master oar (an uncredited Peter Mayhew, ironically also playing Chewbacca in the competing Star Wars), so they don’t need a crew.

Our heroes eventually do find Melanthius, who can’t help them, but knows of a temple in the faraway land of Hyperborea that will be able to undo the curse, if they can get there quickly. If they can’t, Kassim will remain an ape forever, so Melanthius and his lovely daughter Dione (Taryn Power) accompany the group to help in the quest.

Zenobia, who transformed herself into a seagull to go spy on the group (a really bad effect that’s really noticeable in a movie with mostly strong effects), sees enough of the map they have to navigate her own path there, but some of her potion was spilled when the crew discovered her in seagull form, so when she transforms back, she still has one foot as a seagull — a nice touch (and callback to Koura’s price to pay for his own sorcery, but that’s from another Sinbad movie).

Anyway, it’s a loooonnnngggg journey to get to this mythical land, that keeps getting interrupted by stop-motion creatures (mostly quite good) and some disappointing traveling mattes that don’t quite work. Both ships finally make it to the Arctic, eventually find alternate ways into the somehow-temperate lost city, which provides the opportunity for a brief nude scene of the girls swimming — until they discover a giant troglodyte.

Finally, the two opposing crews have their big fight scene that also involve stop-motion creatures inside the temple of the lost civilization. One guess who wins (and who doesn’t end up as an ape permanently, as we were constantly warned would happen if they didn’t hurry things along), but it’s pretty well-done — and of course they make their escape just as the temple and city destroy themselves, and all ends up well for our heroes and very badly for the villains.

Kassim-ape is by far the most consistently excellent effect, almost at times convincing you that in some shots an actual ape was used. The now-friendly troglodyte and friends’ battle against Zenobia-in-smilodon-form in the climax is another standout sequence, though it’s never made fully clear why this creature threatens and then later helps our heroes, other than a weird “friendship” with Kassim-ape, maybe.

You could cut this film down, shorthand more of the interminable “here’s Sinbad’s boat … and here’s Zenobia’s boat” travel sequences, tighten the plot machinations, and have a really pretty good, exciting adventure movie that runs maybe 80-90 minutes instead of the poor pace of its actual 1h53m. It’s a pity they didn’t do that, because there’s some excellent work scattered among the overrunning parts.

I may be biased, but Troughton as Melanthius is far and away the best actor in the film, apart from the stop-motion ape which is kind of mesmerizing. I should add that the two women, Seymour and Power, do a very effective job in their stereotypical love-interest roles even if poor Jane is romancing up against a flat wall named Patrick Wayne sometimes. At least Kassim, once restored to human form, also finds a mate in Dione.

It’s a pity the Columbia Sinbad franchise finished on such an uneven note, both because of the flaws of the film and because it was mistimed to a fluke revolution in sci-fi special effects by Star Wars and Close Encounters at the box office that same summer. The earlier two Sinbad films are much better examples of the adventure genre, with the pinnacle of Harryhausen’s Sinbad work shown off in the second one, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad — which just so happens to have Fourth Doctor Tom Baker in a major role …