A mysterious flying creature soars over a ship at sea, carrying some shiny object. The ship's crew observe it and fire an arrow. The arrow misses the creature, but causes it to drop the ornate golden sector it held. The crew suggest throwing the object overboard, but Captain Sinbad fastens it around his neck. 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. Sinbad's visions continue and the man in his dreams appears as a mirage on the shore. Diving from the ship and swimming to shore, he encounters the man from his dream. The man, an evil magician named Koura, demands that he turn over the amulet, which he claims belongs to him. Sinbad narrowly escapes into the city and 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 Koura, who is 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. When Sinbad and the Vizier discover and catch the homunculus, it destroys itself.
Shortly afterward, 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 comes 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 ship, animated by Koura's magic, which manages to steal the map, which enables 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 statue of Kali, causing the natives to set him free. Sinbad and his men arrive soon after, fight and defeat Kali. As she falls and breaks apart, they 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"), and engages Sinbad in a swordfight. Sinbad is barely able to fend off his invisible foe, until 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. Instead of donning it, Sinbad 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 that he enjoys his freedom more than kinghood. With Margiana as his wife, and Haroun as a new member of his crew, they sail into the sunset.
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.[2]
Takis Emmanuel as Achmed (Emmanuel was dubbed by Robert Rietti)
Producer Charles Schneer and actress Caroline Munro in Amsterdam for the premiere of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.
Producer Charles Schneer said he and Harryhausen chose to do another Sinbad movie as they "felt it was time to go back to the Arabian Nights, since no one else has been dealing with it and we had a great success with it in the late fifties. We felt there was a new audience that was ready for it. We knew of no other producers who were considering this type of material, largely because they probably didn't know how to handle it on a basis where it became economically viable".[3] Harryhausen did a dozen master sketches which, Schneer said, they "felt would be intriguing and interesting and characteristic of the period." They then hired Brian Clemens to do a screenplay based on the sketches. Harryhausen was given a co-producer credit in this film to reflect his greater involvement in the writing, editing, and casting process.[3]
Schneer said Law was cast at the suggestion of Columbia: "He wasn't very athletic, and he didn't handle a sword as well as Kerwin did. Frankly, he was kind of flat-footed, but he did the best he could. He used a Middle Eastern accent that I wasn't altogether pleased about, either."[4]
Caroline Munro was given the female lead. Schneer said: "We wanted her to project that sex appeal, because that was what was happening at the time in the film business. But we were still making a G-rated picture, so we went for G-rated sex appeal."[4]
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, they considered filming some scenes at the landmark Alhambra palace in Granada, but decided against it after the rental fees demanded by the local authorities proved prohibitive. Eventually the company was able to film at the Royal Palace of La Almudaina in Palma, Majorca. Other scenes were done in the Caves of Artà (the temple of the Oracle) and the Torrent de Pareis.[5]
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).[7]
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad received favorable reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes has given it a rating of 75% from 16 critics with an average rating of 5.6/10.[11]
Box Office
In the United States and Canada, 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.[12] The film was completed for $982,351,[13] a small sum, even for a film in the early 1970s.[citation needed]
Overseas, the film sold 37 million tickets in the Soviet Union[14] and 527,437 tickets in France,[15] for a combined total of at least 37,527,437 tickets sold overseas.
Columbia did not enjoy the spoils of the film's success as they had sold off all their interest in its 1974 slate to Bright-Persky Associates.[4]
Jason and the Argonauts is a 1963 independent fantasy adventure film distributed by Columbia Pictures. It was produced by Charles H. Schneer, directed by Don Chaffey, and stars Todd Armstrong, while co-starring Nancy Kovack, Honor Blackman, and Gary Raymond.
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is a 1958 American Technicolor heroic fantasy adventure 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.
Raymond Frederick Harryhausen was an American-British animator and special effects creator who created a form of stop motion model animation known as "Dynamation". His works include the animation for Mighty Joe Young (1949) with his mentor Willis H. O'Brien ; his first color film, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958); and Jason and the Argonauts (1963), which featured a sword fight with seven skeleton warriors. His last film was Clash of the Titans (1981), after which he retired.
Sinbad the Sailor is a fictional mariner and the hero of a story-cycle. He is described as hailing from Baghdad during the early Abbasid Caliphate. In the course of seven voyages throughout the seas east of Africa and south of Asia, he has fantastic adventures in magical realms, encountering monsters and witnessing supernatural phenomena.
Sinbad of the Seven Seas is a 1989 Italian fantasy film produced and directed by Enzo G. Castellari from a story by Luigi Cozzi, revolving around the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor. Sinbad must recover five magical stones to free the city of Basra from the evil spell cast by a wizard, which his journey takes him to mysterious islands and he must battle magical creatures in order to save the world.
It Came from Beneath the Sea is a 1955 American science fiction monster horror film from Columbia Pictures, produced by Sam Katzman and Charles Schneer, directed by Robert Gordon, that stars Kenneth Tobey, Faith Domergue, and Donald Curtis. The screenplay by George Worthing Yates was designed to showcase the stop motion animation special effects of Ray Harryhausen.
First Men in the Moon is a 1964 British science fiction film, produced by Charles H. Schneer, directed by Nathan Juran, and starring Edward Judd, Martha Hyer and Lionel Jeffries. The film, distributed by Columbia Pictures, is an adaptation by screenwriter Nigel Kneale of H. G. Wells' 1901 novel The First Men in the Moon.
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a 1953 American science fiction action horror film directed by Eugène Lourié, with special effects by Ray Harryhausen. The film stars Paul Christian, Paula Raymond, Cecil Kellaway, and Kenneth Tobey. The screenplay is based on Ray Bradbury's 1951 short story "The Fog Horn", specifically the scene where a lighthouse is destroyed by the title character. The film is about the Rhedosaurus, a dinosaur that is released from its frozen hibernating state by an atomic bomb test in the Arctic Circle and begins to wreak a path of destruction as it travels southward, eventually arriving at its ancient spawning grounds, which includes New York City.
The Valley of Gwangi is a 1969 American fantasy Western film produced by Charles H. Schneer and Ray Harryhausen, directed by Jim O'Connolly, written by William Bast, and starring James Franciscus, Richard Carlson, and Gila Golan.
20 Million Miles to Earth is a 1957 American horror science fiction monster film directed by Nathan Juran and starring William Hopper, Joan Taylor, and Frank Puglia. It was produced by Charles H. Schneer's Morningside Productions for Columbia Pictures. The screenplay was written by Bob Williams and Christopher Knopf from an original treatment by Charlott Knight. As with several other Schneer-Columbia collaborations, the film was developed to showcase the stop-motion animation of Ray Harryhausen.
Caroline Jane Munro is an English actress, model and singer known for her many appearances in horror, science fiction and action films of the 1970s and 1980s. She gained prominence within Hammer and horror circles, starring in Dracula AD 1972 and Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter (1974), garnering a cult following for the numerous films that she starred in. She also acted in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), and in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). In 2019, she was inducted into the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards' Monster Kid Hall of Fame.
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger is a 1977 fantasy adventure film directed by Sam Wanamaker and featuring stop-motion effects by Ray Harryhausen. The film stars Patrick Wayne, Taryn Power, Jane Seymour and Patrick Troughton. The third and final Sinbad film released by Columbia Pictures, it follows The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973).
The 3 Worlds of Gulliver is a 1960 American Eastmancolor fantasy adventure film loosely based upon the 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. The film stars Kerwin Mathews as the title character, June Thorburn as his fiancée Elizabeth, and child actress Sherry Alberoni as Glumdalclitch.
Mysterious Island is a 1961 science fiction adventure film about prisoners in the American Civil War who escape in a balloon and then find themselves stranded on a remote island populated by giant and tiny animals.
Model animation is a form of stop motion animation designed to merge with live-action footage to create the illusion of a real-world fantasy sequence.
Naftuli Hertz "Nathan" Juran was an Austrian-born film art director, and later film and television director. As an art director, he won the Oscar for Best Art Direction in 1942 for How Green Was My Valley, along with Richard Day and Thomas Little. His work on The Razor's Edge in 1946 also received an Academy nomination. In the 1950s, he began to direct, and was known for science fiction and fantasy films such as Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. He was also the brother of quality guru Joseph M. Juran.
Kerwin Mathews was an American actor best known for playing the titular heroes in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1960), and Jack the Giant Killer (1962).
Charles Hirsch Schneer was an American film producer, best known for working with Ray Harryhausen, the specialist known for his work in stop motion model animation.
TidalWave Productions is an independent production studio of comic books and graphic novels. Based in Portland, Oregon, United States, Bluewater publishes biographical comics, adaptations from films, and original titles with self-created characters.
Kurt Christian is an English actor. He is known for his main roles in two fantasy movies by Ray Harryhausen, as Haroun in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) and as Rafi in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977).
↑ Howe, David J.; Stammers, Mark; Walker, Stephen James (1992). Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor. Dr Who Handbooks. London: Carol Pub Group. p.43. ISBN978-0-426-20369-8. OCLC31709926.
1 2 3 Swires, Steve (March 1990). "Merchant of the Magicks Part Three". Starlog. New York, N.Y.: Starlog Group Inc.: 67. ISSN0191-4626. OCLC1191084949.
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