SINBAD WEEK: Sinbad of The Seven Seas (1989)

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.

From Hulk To Hermit

In his first creature role since CBS’s The Incredible Hulk, global icon Lou Ferrigno returns to the screen, and steps into the horror genre for the first time, in the cannibal horror/thriller The Hermit.

Uncork’d Entertainment will release the film on Digital and On Demand platforms March 3.

In this dark horror tale with a quirky edge, Ferrigno plays a cannibalistic pig farmer who makes and sells jerky made from human flesh.

The film is also led by Malina Weissman (Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events) and Anthony Turpel (Hulu’s Love, Victor), two familiar faces for younger genre fans.

This is destined to become a cult classic - either for the right reasons or the wrong ones.

I'm loving the Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets Halloween vibe of the set-up, but the trailer doesn't wholly convince me that they stick the landing.

But it's Lou Ferrigno...

The Adventures Of Hercules II (1985)

Lou Ferrigno (aka The Incredible Hulk) returns as Hercules in this kinda-sequel to 1983's Hercules.

In this rather Xena: Warrior Princess-meets-2001: A Space Odyssey rambling affair, the Earth and Universe is given a fresh origin story for no readily apparent reason, then we learn that a quartet of rebellious gods have stolen the Seven Thunderbolts of Zeus, which give the top god dominion over all.

This disruption in the eternal balance causes the Moon to - very slowly - fall out of its orbit and threaten the existence of Earth.

Sonia Viviani

To recover his thunderbolts, Zeus calls Hercules back from the stars, however, to thwart this plan, the rebel gods resurrect mad scientist King Minos (William Berger)... who promptly rushes off to do his own thing.

The thunderbolts, it turns out, have been hidden inside monsters, which Hercules must track down and defeat (or simply bump into as random encounters).

It just so happens that he is also drawn into a side-adventure by the lovely Gabrielle-like Urania (Milly Carlucci) to save her sister, Glaucia (Sonia Viviani), and village from the fire demon Antaeus (which bears more than a passing resemblance to the Id monster from Forbidden Planet).

This entails finding a balm that will protect Hercules from "the fire monster's radiant heat", that's another side-quest, but all, eventually, somehow, ties back into the main plot.

Urania has some kind of prophetic ability, which involves communing "with the Little People" (a pair of identical spirits) at random shrines around the country, who put her in touch with the gods and warn of her fate.

Meanwhile, Minos teams up with his old pal, Dedalos (Eva Robin), who gives him a very unscientific magic sword of ice, with the power to slay gods, before granting him superpowers.

Milly Carlucci

After a series of monster battles, bizarre set-pieces full of psychedelic light shows, gorgeous stage sets and cheesy costumes, events culminate in an astral battle between Hercules and Minos (that doesn't actually feature the actors... but does feature an appearance by Space Kong and Space T Rex!), before moving on to Hercules' mythological method of preventing the Moon destroying the Earth.

On a positive note, at least the rubbish bargain-basement robot monsters from the first film have been replaced by "men in rubber suits" and slightly more mythologically accurate models (although neither are exactly top quality).

The story rambles all over the place, managing to add an intriguing level of surreality and deviousness to events that this low-budget swords-and-sandals fantasy/sci-fi mash-up probably doesn't truly deserve.

Ferrigno is great as Hercules (when he's actually onscreen), but I've read that he didn't even know he was filming this sequel.

Writer/director Luigi Cozzi had actually been tasked by producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus to film extra scenes for Ferrigno's The Seven Magnificent Gladiators, but then they decided to use this material as the basis of a new film (Hercules II) instead... without telling their lead actor!

Which would explain his physical absence from so much of the movie.

And the patchy nature of the bonkers plot.

Hercules (1983)

In a nutshell, the Lou Ferrigno-fronted 1980's Hercules does for Greek mythology what Battle Beyond The Stars did for space opera.

It is similarly cheap, cheerful, camp, and cheesy, with gloriously wonky special effects - as you would hope for from sci-fi fantasy of the era.

Ingrid Anderson

The 104-minute romp opens with a bizarre and jumbled retelling of a creation myth, that cherry picks various mythological elements (as does the entire story) and mixes them in as it sees fit.

This then segues into Hercules backstory - which borrows heavily from Superman's origin - with baby Herc being smuggled away from a palace coup that saw his parents murdered, then cast adrift in a spaceship small boat, before washing up on a riverbank in Kansas and immediately adopted by a friendly pair of childless farming folk The Kents.

Time wibble-wobbles forward and Hercules has grown into oiled-up beefcake Lou Ferrigno, just in time for his adopted parents to be killed off and for him to seek his destiny in the big city.

Having competed in a series of tasks, he is supposed to serve as a bodyguard to the stunningly gorgeous Cassiopea (Ingrid Anderson), but before Hercules can begin, Cassiopea gets kidnapped by the wicked King Minos of Thera (William Berger) and his daughter, Adriana, played with bosom-heaving brilliance by the ever-reliable Queen of Scream Queens Sybil Danning.

Sybil Danning

Hercules is dropped in the ocean, but manages to swim for a week to the shore of the island home of the witch Circe (Mirella D'Angelo), yet another breathtakingly appealing woman falling into Hercules' lap.

Teaming up with Circe, our hero has to descend into Hell to retrieve her stolen amulet, which will supposedly help them get to The Green Island of Thera, where Minos is holding Cassiopea captive, under the spell of the dreaded black lotus.

I think this take on Hercules is possibly a meditation on the battle between science and faith, with Hercules being helped (and hindered) by the gods and their agents, while Minos, with the aid of a funky (possibly alien) entity called Dedalos (Eva Robins), represents the advancement of technology and science.

But it's a very weird science - that, at times, relies on the power of human sacrifice as well as other clearly magical shortcuts.

Yes, I know, the general take on Arthur C Clarke's third law, but I suspect writer/director Luigi Cozzi was more influenced by Erich von Däniken's Chariots Of The Gods pseudoscience than Clarke's hard sci-fi.

Mirella D'Angelo

There's definitely a strong whiff of Ancient Aliens madness at work in the mythology of Hercules.

And a large part of the film's appeal to me (along with its central trinity of beautiful actresses) is that it takes this quirky spin on Greek myths, while still employing a very fantastical over-the-top approach that doesn't bother too much with rules and structure.

The movie certainly plays fast-and-loose with the idea of verisimilitude, refusing to let this hero's journey be grounded in any shape or form.

It's one of those films where ideas were obviously thrown at the screen, then forgotten as the production team moved on - for instance, in some of his early fights, Hercules (who we've learned was originally created as a being of light by Zeus, to be mankind's protector) gives off flashes of light when he hits people.

But then later on, you realise this just isn't happening any more.

Which is a shame, because it was an oddly comic book-like effect.

There's a lot of model use in the film, again as you would expect, and while the creatures (mainly mechanical robots of various shapes and designs) are quite raw and basic (and ultimately ineffectual), the set designs - although obviously models - are interesting and evocative of the strange world Cozzi is creating for his characters to exist in.