As the original 1947 Sinbad The Sailor movie proved, you can make an excellent Sinbad film without Harryhausen effects as long as you have a great cast and script - Sinbad Of The Seven Seas has none of these.
I guess my spidey-sense should have been tingling by the mere sight of Lou 'Incredible Hulk' Ferrigno grinning on the cover of the DVD case.
And if not then, by the fact that the film opens with a contemporary framing device of an annoying mother (Daria Nicolodi) reading her equally annoying daughter (Giada Cozzi), Edgar Allan Poe's The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade (although Poe's story bears no similarity to this sorry affair).
So far, so Princess Bride. But the narration continues, even as the scene shifts to Sinbad and his multi-racial crew, and then it continues some more and it pretty much never stops throughout the whole movie!
And if that wasn't bad enough, all the dialogue by the main characters has been rerecorded and dubbed over - quite badly and quite obviously.
Not that the actors are that good anyway, nor do they have quality material to work with and little apparent direction from Enzo Castellari, master of the spaghetti western and director of the original Inglorious Bastards.
From start to finish, Sinbad Of The Seven Seas is a dreadful script performed by dreadful actors, with the only comparison I can make being the distinctly British tradition of pantomime. And like pantomime, unless you are under six, Sinbad The Sailor is - in equal parts - likely to bore you to distraction and have you laughing out loud at its awfulness.
The only performer to come out of this with any kudos is John Steiner as villainous vizier Jaffar, clearly the only one in on the joke, who is gloriously over-the-top and arch, switching between delightful smugness and being his own worse enemy. Not only does he tell Sinbad where he has hidden the magic crystals that Sinbad must track down but then, having summoned a magical storm to batter Sinbad's ship, he runs it ashore on one of the islands where some of the crystals are hidden!
Inexplicably Sinbad is joined on his adventures by a Viking (Ennio Girolami), a Chinese soldier of fortune called Samurai (!!!) (Hal Yamanouchi), effete prince Ali (Roland Wybenga) - who is to marry the caliph of Basra's cute daughter, Alina (Alessandra Martines) - as well as a bald chef and a cowardly dwarf called Poochie (Cork Hubbert).
While chasing after the magic jewels that Jaffar has scattered - like a pointless video game - they encounter a number of ludicrous obstacles, most of which are overcome by very bad fight sequences (Sinbad has an odd habit of throwing his sword away and simply wrestling whatever he is facing).
The only scenario that shows a bit of initiative is Sinbad's seduction by Amazon Queen Farida (Melonee Rodgers) and her ultimate comeuppance.
I can't even bring myself to discuss the surreal cameo by bodybuilder Teagan Clive as Jaffar's co-conspirator, Soukra, the S&M dominatrix witch, except to say, like the rest of the film, it will leave you perplexed, bemused and possibly in need of counselling.
Unless you are in a particularly masochistic mood, really love ultra-low budget bad movies or are aged under six, Sinbad Of The Seven Seas is best steered clear of.
