The 7th Voyage of Sinbad was selected in 2008 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[4][5]
Plot
Sinbad the Sailor and his ship's crew make landfall on the island of Colossa, where they encounter Sokurah the magician fleeing a giant cyclops. Though he escapes, Sokurah loses a magic lamp to the creature. Sinbad refuses his desperate pleas to return to Colossa because Parisa, Princess of Chandra, is aboard. Their coming marriage is meant to secure peace between her father's realm and Sinbad's homeland, Baghdad.
After reaching Baghdad, Sokurah performs magic at the pre-wedding festivities, temporarily turning Parisa's handmaiden into a snake-like being. Despite his prowess and a dark prophecy about war between Baghdad and Chandra, the Caliph of Baghdad refuses to help the magician return to Colossa. Later that night, Sokurah secretly shrinks the princess, enraging her father, the Sultan of Chandra, who declares war on Baghdad. Sinbad and the Caliph give in to Sokurah, who explains that the eggshell of a Roc is needed for the potion that will restore Parisa, and it can be found only on Colossa. Sokurah provides Sinbad with the plans for a giant crossbow for protection against the island's giant creatures.
Sinbad recruits additional crewmen from among the convicts in the Caliph's prisons. Before they reach Colossa, the cutthroats are inspired to mutiny by the treacherous Karim and capture Sokurah, Sinbad, and his men. During a violent storm, the sounds of keening demons from a nearby island drives the crew nearly mad, endangering the ship. One of the men releases Sinbad so he can save them, after Karim falls to his death from the crow's nest.
On Colossa, Sinbad, Sokurah, and six of his crew enter the valley of the cyclops, followed by Sinbad's loyal aide Harufa. Sinbad and Sokurah split their forces. Sinbad and his men find the cyclops' treasure cave, but are captured by one of the creatures and locked in a wooden cage. Instead of helping them, Sokurah retrieves the magic lamp, but is chased by the cyclops, who kills three of the men. With Parisa's aid, Sinbad manages to escape, then blinds the one-eyed creature and lures it off the edge of a cliff to its death. Sinbad decides to hold on to the lamp until Parisa is returned to normal size.
Sokurah leads Sinbad and his starving men to the nesting place of the giant Rocs. Out of hunger, Sinbad's men try to break open a Roc egg, causing it to hatch, but the newborn chick is killed by the men and roasted for food. While the men are eating, Parisa enters the magic lamp and befriends Barani, the childlike genie inside, who tells her how to summon him in exchange for her promise of his freedom. The parent Roc returns and slays the men. Sinbad tries to summon the genie, but he is grabbed by the Roc, who takes flight, and drops him, unconscious, into its nearby nest. Sokurah kills Harufa and abducts the princess, taking her to his underground fortress.
Sinbad awakens and rubs the magic lamp, summoning Barani, who takes Sinbad to Sokurah's fortress and helps him evade the chained dragon that stands guard. Sinbad reaches Sokurah, who restores the princess to normal. When Sinbad refuses to hand over the lamp, the magician animates a skeleton warrior, which Sinbad fights and destroys. With the help of the genie, Sinbad and Parisa make their way out of the cave, stopping to destroy the lamp by throwing it into a pool of lava, thus freeing Barani.
Leaving the cave, they encounter another cyclops. Sinbad releases the dragon, which fights and kills the creature. Sinbad and Parisa make their escape, but Sokurah orders the dragon to hunt them down. Sinbad heads to the beach, where his men have readied the giant crossbow, and they use it to kill the dragon. The dying dragon collapses on Sokurah, crushing him to death. Sinbad, Parisa, and the remaining crew depart for Baghdad. They are joined by Barani, now human, who has appointed himself Sinbad's cabin boy. In a final act of magic as he was being freed, Barani filled the captain's cabin with the treasure from the cyclops' cave, a wedding gift to Sinbad and Parisa.
The cyclops and dragon battle sequence from the film.
Schneer announced the production in June 1957. It was a co-production between his company, Morningstar, and Columbia Pictures.[6]
The leads, Kerwin Mathews and Kathryn Grant were under contract to Columbia. Schneer left for Europe to scout locations on 15 July. Filming started the following month in Granada, Spain.[7]
It took Ray Harryhausen 11 months to complete the full color, widescreen stop-motion animation sequences for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Harryhausen's "Dynamation" label was used for the first time on this film.[8]
Harryhausen gave the cyclops a horn, goat legs, and cloven hooves, an idea based upon the concept of the Greek godPan. He lifted much of the creature's design (for example the torso, chest, arms, poise and style of movement) from his concept of the Ymir (the Venusian creature from his earlier 20 Million Miles to Earth). He used the same armature for both figures; to do this, he had to cannibalize the Ymir, removing the latter's latex body.[9]
Harryhausen researched the cobra-woman sequence (when Sakourah entertains the Caliph and the Sultan) by watching a belly dancer in Beirut, Lebanon. During the performance, Harryhausen says, "smoke was coming up my jacket. I thought I was on fire! It turned out the gentleman behind me was smoking a hookah!" The cyclops is the film's most popular character, but Harryhausen's personal favorite was the cobra-woman, a combination of Princess Parisa's maid, Sadi, and a cobra.[10]
Skeleton model used in the film
The film's original script had a climax that involved two cyclops fighting. In the final version, however, the climactic battle featured a single cyclops versus a dragon. The model of the dragon was more than three feet long and was very difficult to animate; the fight sequence took nearly three weeks for Harryhausen to complete. Originally, it was planned to have the dragon breathing fire from its mouth during the entire sequence, but the cost was deemed too high. So the scenes where it does breathe fire, Harryhausen used a flamethrower, shooting out flames 30 to 40 feet against a night sky, then superimposed the filmed fire very near the dragon's mouth.[11] The dragon model used parts of the model of the Rhedosaurus from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.[12]
The sword fight scene between Sinbad and the skeleton proved so popular with audiences that Harryhausen recreated and expanded the scene five years later, this time having a group of seven armed skeletons fight the Greek hero Jason and his men in 1963's Jason and the Argonauts.[13]
The stop-motion cobra-woman figure used for the film was cannibalized 20 years later in order to make the Medusa figure in Harryhausen's final film, Clash of the Titans.[citation needed]
Film score
The music score for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad was composed by Bernard Herrmann, better known at the time for his collaboration with the director Alfred Hitchcock, and composing the film score to Citizen Kane. Herrmann went on to write the scores for three other Harryhausen films: Mysterious Island, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, and Jason and the Argonauts. Of the four, Harryhausen regarded the score for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad as being the finest, due to the empathy Herrmann's main title composition evoked for the subject matter.[citation needed]
The soundtrack producer Robert Townson, who re-recorded the score in 1998 with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, described the music as rich and vibrant, commenting: "I would cite The 7th Voyage of Sinbad as one of the scores which most validates film music as an art form and a forum where a great composer can write a great piece of music. As pure composition, I would place Sinbad beside anything else written this century and not worry about it being able to stand on its own".[14]
Reception
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad continues to be well-reviewed, with many critics holding the opinion that it is the best film of the "Sinbad" trilogy. The film carries a 100% approval rating at the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 16 reviews with a weighted average score of 7.7/10,[15] with several reviewers citing its nostalgic value. Mountain Xpress critic Ken Hanke, for example, calls it "childhood memory stuff of the most compelling kind".[15]
The film was released during Christmas 1958 to cash-in during the family holiday, but it continued to do well following the holiday period, becoming a sleeper hit.[19] In its first three weeks the film grossed $3.5 million, including $500,000 at the Roxy Theatre in New York City.[19] Its total rentals were more than $6 million worldwide.
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.
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 from filmmaking.
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.
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 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 science-fiction monster film directed by Nathan Juran and featuring stop-motion animation by Ray Harryhausen. It stars William Hopper, Joan Taylor, and Frank Puglia. Set in Italy, the film centers on an alien lifeform from Venus that arrives via a crashed rocket, and begins rapidly growing.
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).
James Danforth is an American stop-motion animator, known for model-animation, matte painting, and for his work on When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970), a theme-sequel to Ray Harryhausen's One Million Years B.C. (1967). He later went on to work with Ray Harryhausen on the film Clash of the Titans (1981) to mainly do the animation of the winged horse Pegasus.
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is a 1973 fantasy adventure film directed by Gordon Hessler, featuring stop-motion effects by Ray Harryhausen. The film stars John Phillip Law, Tom Baker, Takis Emmanuel, and Caroline Munro. Based on the Arabian Nights tales of Sinbad the Sailor, it is the second of three Sinbad films released by Columbia Pictures, following The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and preceding Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977).
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 Austro-Hungarian-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).
Jack the Giant Killer is a 1962 American heroic fantasy adventure film starring Kerwin Mathews in a fairy tale story about a young man who defends a princess against a sorcerer's giants and demons.
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.
Sadko is a 1953 Soviet adventure fantasy film directed by Aleksandr Ptushko and adapted by Konstantin Isayev, from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's eponymous opera, which was based on a Russian bylina with the same name. The music is Rimsky-Korsakov's score.
Sinbad and the Minotaur is a 2011 Australian fantasy B movie directed by Karl Zwicky serving as an unofficial sequel to the 1947 Douglas Fairbanks Jr. film and Harryhausen's Sinbad trilogy. It combines Arabian Nights hero Sinbad the Sailor with the Greek legend of the Minotaur.
Warren, Bill. Keep Watching the Skies: American Science Fiction Films of the Fifties, 21st Century Edition. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2009, (First edition 1982). ISBN0899500323.
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 ISBN0826429777, pages 549-550
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