The Comic Critic Reviews "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad"

When I was growing up, a “Sinbad” movie meant that I was in for a visual treat. Ray Harryhausen, the master of stop-motion model animation, was involved in the creation of three Sinbad movies: The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977). Harryhausen experimented with different films and continually improved his technique to produce the most vivid display of moving creatures ever seen on the big screen. In The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, his magic brings inanimate objects to life as our hero sets out on a noble quest. While he has courageous friends to help him, his adversary is an evil man who will stop at nothing to achieve his own goal. And crossing their paths along this journey is an array of mythical beasts with which they must contend. There’s plenty of swashbuckling and thrills on this grand adventure. While I love all of Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbads, I selected The Golden Voyage of Sinbad to review for a few reasons. It was the first Sinbad movie I got to see in the theater. I was eleven, and it left a very strong impression on me. Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger was released only a few years later and did extremely well at the box office. However, the approach to that story has a bit more camp. By then, a little more camp was fine in my book. But the stronger storytelling in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is why I chose it to immortalize in a cartoon review. My hope is that you will become intrigued with how Ray Harryhausen works his magic in the others. And don’t stop there; there are lots of Sinbad movies that both predate and follow the Harryhausen flicks.