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 7th 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.
