SINBAD WEEK: The Lost World of Sinbad (1963)

Today's entry in this week of early Sinbad movies is a little known chanbara excursion  from that brief period in the Arabian sailor's storied career when he was, in fact, Japanese.

In this well-dubbed reworking of the Japanese movie, The Great Bandit, about the semi-mythical 16th Century Japanese merchant and pirate Sukezaemon Luzon. the legendary Toshirô Mifune (of Seven Samurai fame, as well as many other movies) takes the role of Sinbad.

The film begins with him inexplicably (in that it's never explained) escaping from being burned alive for the crime of piracy.

Back on his ship, however, in no time at all, Sinbad and his crew are caught in a massive storm and their vessel destroyed.

Sinbad and a couple of survivors are adrift, with a large chest of jewels, when they are set upon by the dread Black Pirate (Makoto Satô) who makes off with the treasure, leaving Sinbad for dead.

Our hero washes up on a beach, where he meets horny wizard Sennin (Ichirô Arishima) who carries his family curse of becoming paralysed whenever he sees the exposed flesh of a woman's cleavage!

Through a series of misadventures in the nearby town, Sinbad eventually falls in with a bandit queen and would-be rebel leader, the rather lovely Miwa (Kumi Mizuno, who crops up in several well-known kaiju films of the 1960s), and learns that the local ruler is taking peasants' daughters, in lieu of taxes, to bolster his harem.

Meanwhile, there's shenanigans at the nearby palace, where the sickly king (Takashi Shimura) remains out of sight.

The king's conniving Chancellor (Tadao Nakamaru) is trying to engineer a coup by getting himself hitched to Princess Yaya (Mie Hama, who appeared alongside Sean Connery in You Only Live Twice), with the help of his cackling pantomime demon-witch ally Granny (Hideyo Amamoto), whose skills include brewing poisons and turning people to stone with her gaze.

The princess, however, is betrothed to the Prince of Thailand (Jun Funato), who is due to arrive any day now for their wedding, which would scupper the Chancellor's ambitions.

Sinbad begins to suspect what is going on when he realises the jewels the kindly princess is wearing come from his own treasure haul (their original provenance is never truly discussed, but I like to think it's booty from a previous adventure of the "I'm not really a pirate" Sinbad).

Unsurprisingly, the lurid claims made in the movie poster (above) are gross exaggerations (the 'giant', for instance, is just a tall bloke, like Bernard Bresslaw in Hawk The Slayer or Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson in Game of Thrones) and there is no "lost world".

Nevertheless, The Lost World of Sinbad is a damn fine romp.

There's even some nice misdirection through the Chancellor's double-dealings that adds a surprising degree of complexity to the central plot.

Mitsukô Kusabue turns in a particularly good performance as Sobei, the Chancellor's overlooked consort, who definitely delivers some of the best snark .. before running afoul of Granny.

While the film boasts no monsters, there's plenty of magic on display, even if Sennin and Granny only have a handful of spells each in their repertoire.

Sennin's main trick is transforming himself into a fly, primarily to get around (including landing on a dancer's breast at one point... because family curse!), while Granny leans heavily on her petrifying gaze.

Towards the climax of the movie, a peculiar sequence sees Sinbad strapped to a giant kite to evade the enemy guards, when he and the rebels are storming the castle,.

He's not riding the kite like a magic carpet, as shown in the (again misleading) poster, but for some reason strapped on its back - facing the sky - so I have no clue as to how he was supposed to guide it.

Sinbad eventually gets into the castle entirely by chance!

Otherwise, the plot - for a dubbed effort that changed so much from the original and unfolds in a setting you'd never associate with Sinbad - is solid, has some good politicking in the court scenes, a cast of interesting and memorable characters, and, as you might expect with Toshirô Mifune involved, pretty decent fight scenes.

Game For A Laugh

Looney Tunes Monopoly, which we played earlier this month, was one of the best

What some of you may not realise about me is that my gaming interests aren't limited to just roleplaying games and skirmish wargames. Rachel and I also host an (almost) monthly Monopoly Club.

Joining us at the table are Clare and Pete, making this a kind of spin-off from the Tuesday Knights (our roleplaying group).

Pete is a collector of the many, many themed-Monopoly sets and so every time we get together we play a different iteration of Monopoly.

In the two-and-a-half years we've been going, we've traded property and bankrupted each other in the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons to Harry Potter, James Bond to The Simpsons, and Indiana Jones to Scooby-Doo.

Our little group not only keeps a running league table of our various victories but also a table of our gradings of how well produced and how innovative these reskins of the classic game are. 

If you want to learn more about our adventures in board gaming (or just check out some of the eccentric hacks of the classic original board game), then please visit Don't Talk About Monopoly Club (it's the first rule of Monopoly Club).

All this talk of board gaming, reminds me of the recently announced documentary: The Hobby - Tales From The Tabletop.

This fascinating dive into the culture of board gamers "explores the passionate world of modern board gaming, following enthusiasts who find community and meaning through games".

PULP PICTURE OF THE MONTH: The Legend Of Tarzan (2016)

To cut a long story short, The Legend Of Tarzan wasn't just the best action movie of the year it was released, but also found a place as one of my all-time favourites.

Director David Yates' period piece is as near perfect a Tarzan tale as I could have hoped for, drawing on Edgar Rice Burroughs' source material (as well as the popular pulp era movies) to serve up a true edge-of-the-seat, straight-forward, non-stop, roller coaster of an old school, ripping yarns adventure.

Simply put, they don't make films like this any more... more's the pity.

It's Africa in the late 19th Century and Belgium emissary Leon Rom (Spectre's Christoph Waltz) is the sole survivor of a diamond-hunting raid on the mythical city of Opar. Captured by Chief Mbonga (Guardians Of The Galaxy's Djimon Hounsou), Rom is offered a deal for access to the city's diamond supply: he must bring the chief's arch-enemy to him. This being Tarzan!

Tarzan aka Lord John Clayton III (True Blood's Alexander Skarsgård) has returned to England and is living the life of a lord with his lovely wife, Jane (Suicide Squad's Margot Robbie).

He receives an invitation from King Leopold of Belgium to visit the Congo and is reluctantly persuaded by American George Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson) to take up the offer, as George wants to follow up rumours of illegal slavery in the country.

Along with Jane, the two men head to Africa, and the pretence of John Clayton's invitation being a diplomatic issue is quickly torn asunder when Rom and his mercenaries attack the village where our heroes are staying, kidnapping Jane in the process.

The Legend Of Tarzan then becomes a race against time, not only to rescue Jane, but then to prevent Rom getting the diamonds to the coast to pay off a huge mercenary army that will soon be landing to enslave the country's entire native population to work for King Leopold.

As well as drawing on the traditional source material, both Burroughs' novels and the early films (there's a couple of Weissmuller yodels - but given a more bestial remix - as well as visual nods to my favourite Johnny Weissmuller outing as Tarzan: 1946's Tarzan And The Leopard Woman), The Legend Of Tarzan also draws heavily in tone and style from another of my all-time favourite pulp action films: Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

Waltz, while playing a variation of his usual deadpan arrogance, is essentially a different take on Paul Freeman's Belloq. The dinner scene between Rom and Jane is a clear homage - down to the knife-stealing - of the similar scene in Raiders, between Belloq and Marion.

The Raiders' tone is also reflected in the moments of levity that slip seamlessly between the darker, more violent, episodes (I'd cite the fight between Tarzan and a train carriage full of soldiers as a particularly strong example of the balance of action and humour).

The CGI effects are slick, dynamic, and beautiful, sucking you into the film rather than shattering any suspension of belief you may require for Tarzan's magnificent, superhuman, displays of strength, endurance, and agility, or his - and others- interactions with the fearsome wild life of Africa.

Kudos also to scriptwriters Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer for a screenplay that continually escalates to a monumental showdown, while cleverly weaving in Tarzan's origin story - in flashbacks - without reducing The Legend Of Tarzan to being simply yet another retelling of the 'birth' of Tarzan Of The Apes.

If you like old school adventure movies, particularly those that inspired, or were inspired by, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, then this is the film for you. It's exciting, inventive, and thrilling, modern-yet-retro, and a must see for Tarzan fans new and old.

Black Adam (2022)

Thousands of years before Billy Batson was granted the power of Shazam, the Wizards chose a rebellious young slave in the kingdom of Kahndaq, where a corrupt king is forcing his citizens to mine for the magical Eternium metal necessary to forge the powerful Crown of Sabbac.

Flash forward 5,000 years and Kahndaq is now controlled by the mercenary army of Intergang (a major criminal organisation in the world of DC Comics), but archaeologist Adrianna Tomaz (Person of Interest's Sarah Shahi) has a lead on the location of the Crown of Sabbac.

However, her expedition is ambushed by Intergang soldiers and her only hope is call upon the land's mythical protector... and so ends up summoning Teth Adam aka Black Adam (Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson).

Black Adam makes short work of the Intergang army, but in the process attracts the attention of Suicide Squad's Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) who dispatches The Justice Society (the very first comic book superhero team, from the 1940s) to bring him in.

Without any fuss we are introduced to team leader Hawkman aka Carter Hall (Leverage's Aldis Hodge), powerful sorcerer Dr Fate aka Kent Nelson (James Bond himself, Pierce Brosnan), the delightfully clumsy and goofy Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo) and Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell).

Not only do the heroes find their hands full when they confront Black Adam, but they find the people of Kahndaq are against them as well, being more inclined to support their home-grown saviour than 'invading' Americans.

Directed by Orphan's Jaume Collet-Serra, Black Adam really caught me by surprise with its superb balance of action and character work.

One of the best recent DC superhero movies, and certainly better than both of Zack Snyder's first two Superman films, Black Adam finally presents a convincing justification for the harder edge that DC films are perceived to have over those of MCU. 

I've always had difficulty getting my head around the idea of Black Adam as a hero - or even anti-hero - because of one particular image that is forever burned into my brain from 2006's comic book series 52 (issue three) ... when he suddenly ripped the B-list villain Terra-Man in half.

The fate of Terra-Man at the hands of Black Adam

But the movie presents a genuinely rounded view of Adam, with his origin story turning out to not be as straight forward as we presumed, that goes out of its way to explain his complex character.

In fact, to my eyes, pretty much everything about Black Adam is perfect, from the set design to the costumes, creating a sense of verisimilitude that makes the film feel like a comic book brought to life.

The film only really goes off the rails slightly in the third act, with the introduction of the demonic villain Sabacc, a visually stunning entity that is sadly devoid of any personality and whose sole purpose is to serve as a punching bag for the protagonists.

There was also a suggestion quite early on that the only thing that could really hurt Adam was Eternium, but that seems to soon be forgotten in all the excitement.

Beyond the obvious Shazam! connection (check out the mid-credit scene in Shazam! Fury of The Gods where Waller tries to recruit Captain Marvel for the JSA), Black Adam has lots of Easter Eggs entwining it in the broader DC Universe of movies and there's even an awkward mid-credit scene here (clearly pieced together from shots of the two characters not in the same room) designed to further cement this.

It's almost a shame then that Warner Bros decided to reboot the whole cinematic shindig under the auspices of James Gunn because with Black Adam (and the far weaker Shazam! Fury of The Gods) you get the feeling that this particular cinematic universe was just starting to pull itself together.

I really want to see Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson's Black Adam in action again in the new Gunn'verse, perhaps fighting alongside (a recast) Captain Marvel and other more traditionally heroic comic book characters.

PULP PICTURE OF THE MONTH: Tarzan's Greatest Adventure (1959)

... Or "The One Where Tarzan Kills James Bond!"

Blacked up to pass as natives, four Western criminals raid an African settlement to steal explosives and supplies, killing a couple of people in the process.

The only lead the authorities and Tarzan (Gordon Scott) have is the name 'Slade', but it's a name Tarzan knows well as he has history with this ruthless, thrill-seeking, big game hunter.

Following Slade's boat upriver, Tarzan rescues gobsmackingly-gorgeous aviatrix Angie (Sara Shane) when her light plane crashes in the jungle (admittedly she was showing off, trying to attract the Ape Man's attention!).

Sara Shane as Angie

Slade (Anthony Quayle) and his compatriots - hard drinking and slightly moronic O'Bannion (Sean Connery); boat-master Dino (Al Mulock); and creepy German Kruger (Niall Macginnis); along with Slade's moll, Toni (Scilla Gabel) - are heading for a secret diamond mine that Slade knows about... so they can pocket the precious stones.

That is, as long as they don't kill each other before they get there.

And as long as they can evade Tarzan!

As well as actually being filmed in Africa (Kenya), Tarzan's Greatest Adventure is quite a grown-up take on the legend of Tarzan, sticking closer to the brutality of Edgar Rice Burroughs' original tales - even if Scott is still quite a well groomed and clean-shaven Lord of the Jungle.

The bulk of the movie focuses on Tarzan's manhunt for the murderous Westerners, as the villainous party is gradually whittled down ahead of the inevitable - but still rather impressive - climactic confrontation between Tarzan and Slade. 

As usual with a Tarzan flick of this era, the film features a fair amount of stock wild animal footage, but the bulk of the film rests on the shoulders of its two male leads - Scott and Quayle - who deliver powerful performances.

Without any reference to Jane in the film, Sara Shane, who has a certain Gillian Anderson quality to her, is not only a beautiful companion for the Lord of the Jungle, but is also - in her last cinematic role - clearly able to hold her own.

However, when - at the denouement, even after some off-screen rumpy pumpy - Tarzan has to choose between the woman and his life in the jungle, guess which he chooses?

Gordon Scott & Sara Shane as Tarzan & Angie in Tarzan's Greatest Adventure

Seraphim Falls (2006)

Mighty Mouse versus Superman, a polar bear versus a tiger, King Kong versus Godzilla... these are the fantasy match-ups that spark pub debates the length and breadth of the country. But who'd have thought of pitting James Bond against Qui-Gon Jinn?

Seraphim Falls is a revenge thriller and an epic chase set against the backdrop of the Old West in the years following the American Civil War.

Starring two of Ireland's finest actors, it follows Confederate Colonel Carver's (Liam Neeson) ceaseless hunt for Union Captain Gideon (Pierce Brosnan) for reasons that aren't made clear until about two-thirds of the way into the story.

The stunning scenery shifts from the snow-bound mountains, down through the flatlands and into the baking desert for a climax, assisted by the sudden appearance of Anjelica Huston's snake oil salesman Madame Louise Fair, that switches from the hyper-real to the slightly mystical and allegorical.

Brilliantly scripted by David Von Ancken (who also directed) and Abby Everett Jaques, Seraphim Falls isn't your run-of-the-mill gunfights and white hats/black hats Western but an examination of corrupting power of obsession (on one side) and a man trying to escape a past mistake (on the other). There is no definitive good guy or bad guy when it comes to the main characters.

The story also makes great use of its changing environment as man is first and foremost being pitted against the environment, rather than other men; particularly the extremes of cold or heat that you can feel from the screen safe and sound on your sofa. Star Wars fans should also look out for the interesting variation on the classic 'use of a dead tauntaun' sequence from The Empire Strikes Back.

Some have criticised the ending as a 'cop out' although, personally, I thought it was the only satisfying ending the tale could have.