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.

SINBAD WEEK: Sinbad and The Caliph of Baghdad (1973)

Today's Sinbad movie is an obscure Italian peplum yarn, totally devoid of magic and monsters I'm sorry to say.

Tucked away in the recesses of Amazon's Prime Video vault, 1973's Sinbad and the Caliph of Baghdad has the titular sailor (Robert Malcolm) returning to Baghdad after years of exile, only to find his foster mother has died and all their family property seized by the state.

Falling in with two of the most annoying "comedy relief" characters in cinematic history - Firùz (Luigi Bonos) and Bamàn (Leo Valeriano) - all three are shanghaied to crew a ship that is supposed to deliver the gorgeous Princess Sherazade (Sonia Wilson) to Baghdad for an arranged marriage to the insane caliph (also Robert Malcolm, so you can see where this is going).

Sonia Wilson as Sherazade 

Sinbad, of course, falls madly in love with the princess, but she realises their romance is doomed and dobs him in.

Our hirsute hero and the two comedy stooges are cast adrift in a row boat and end up marooned on a lifeless island, populated only by other shipwrecks.

However, they manage to salvage a hot air balloon, and a cargo of explosives, and head back to the ship they were thrown off of.

By the time they arrive, and take it over with their cache of bombs, Sherazade has already left.

Sinbad and his "pals" head back to the city with the wealth they looted from the ship, and start living the high life, and it's at this point that a couple of muckity-mucks from the palace spot Sinbad and suddenly realise that, without his beard, he is the spitting image of the caliph that they have been thinking of overthrowing.

The mad caliph has been making sport of murdering dancers from his harem, is instigating plans to publicly impale criminals (à la Vlad The Impaler and Cannibal Holocaust), and is generally blowing the palace's budget as he goes full Caligula.

So naturally, factions in the court are seeking to depose him.

Besides being strangely obsessed with male grooming, Sinbad and the Caliph of Baghdad has a pretty mundane plot - bolstered only by the all-too infrequent appearances of the lovely Sherazade in a variety of skimpy outfits.

Matters aren't helped by the fact that the actors have been dubbed with voices that have near-impenetrably thick accents, making much of the dialogue incomprehensible.

That said, I don't think there are any deep sub-plots or complex, Machiavellian political machinations in play here.

Although there's a sort of mystery involving a torn scroll as well as a booby-trapped treasure chest (protected by a concealed watery pit trap), there's nothing really here that could inspire gamers looking to add some Arabian Nights magic to their campaigns.

The introduction of the hot air balloon is an interesting gimmick, I guess, so it's a bit unfortunate that on at least one occasion you can see clearly see the rope above the balloon holding it up (presumably from a giant crane).

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.

SINBAD WEEK: Captain Sindbad (1963)

Today's Sinbad movie not only boasts a wonderful selection of low-budget magic but also an array of cheesy monsters, and a variant spelling of the protagonist's name.

Heading home to the city-state of Baristan after years of clearly successful "adventuring", the charismatic Captain Sindbad (Guy Williams, better known as Professor John Robinson from the original Lost in Spaces series) is looking forward to marrying the Princess Jana (Heidi Brühl).

However, he is unaware that, since he has been away, the wicked warlord El Kerim (Pedro Armendariz) has seized control and is holding the princess and the king, her father (Rolf Wanka) hostage, with the reluctant assistance of alcoholic court magician Galgo (Abraham Sofaer).

The change in Baristan's power dynamics is graphically demonstrated to Sindbad though when his ship is dive-bombed by a squadron of rock-bearing rocs.

He is rescued by passing fishermen, and eventually makes his way to the city where he reunites with his surviving crew members.

Gaining an "audience" with El Kerim, Sindbad runs the villain through with his sabre, only to discover that the usurper can't be killed!

Forced to fight an invisible beast in the city's arena (possibly the biggest anti-climax of the otherwise fun picture), Sindbad slips free and eventually learns that the secret to El Karim's invulnerability lies at the top of a tower on the far side of the desert.

He, and his men, must then race there to solve the mystery before El Karim executes the princess, who has chosen death over a forced marriage to the wicked barbarian.

Captain Sindbad is a fantastical romp that never really lets its foot off the accelerator.

Considering the limitations of low budget special effects, the sorcerer Galgo utilises a wide variety of magic through the 85 minute movie, mainly leaning towards shape-changing spells, and the monsters - if you are willing to suspend your disbelief - are generally fun.

It has to be acknowledged that the invisible "thing" is a major disappointment though, not because director Byron Haskin doesn't try to demonstrate its presence with green-sparking footprints in the arena sand, but because Ian McLellan Hunter and Guy Endore's script brushes it aside so quickly that it's not really the threat to Sindbad it could have been.

Overall, the effects certainly aren't up to Ray Harryhausen standard (for instance, Galgo, at one point, extends his arm magically... and I was reminded of the Mr Fantastic effects in Roger Corman's Fantastic Four), but at least they tried.

However, what sealed the deal for me was the amazing (if effects- and budget-challenging) final act, which, essentially sees the good captain and his crew thrust into an old school "fun house dungeon", complete with strangling vines, whirlpool traps, alligator ambushes, a 12-headed hydra, a massive tower to climb, and an enormous animated fist for Sindbad to fight as the "boss monster" of the dungeon.

Princess Jana, despite the spunk she shows in the face of El Karim's threats, is rather lacklustre.

The princess aside though, this film is filled with interesting supporting characters, from the assortment of rogues in Sindbad's crew, to El Kerim's number two (Henry Brandon), who tries to act as the voice of reason, curbing his commander's more brutal excesses when he can.

But the breathless pacing from War of the Worlds' director Haskin means that while this isn't exactly high-brow fare, it's certainly colourful and surprisingly good family entertainment.

SINBAD WEEK: Sinbad The Sailor (1947)

As well as being the first, live-action cinematic outing for Sinbad (after a couple of animations), Sinbad The Sailor is particularly notable as one of the rare stories in the "franchise" that doesn't actually feature monsters or magic.

Sinbad, as portrayed by the dashing Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, has never swashed as many buckles or been more charming and romantic. He is a master raconteur, thief, philosopher and trickster; his enemies call him a "magician" because of the tricks he uses to escape their grasp.

He is also the narrator of this tale, in the sense that the main story is bookended with scenes of Sinbad regaling a gathering of jaded sea-dogs with the tale of his "eighth voyage" - they are all bored of hearing, repeatedly, about his first seven.

While there is talk of djinn, rocs and cyclops, this is the story of Sinbad's discovery that he is actually - maybe - the long-lost son of the ruler of a lost treasure island, Deryabar, where Alexandar The Great is thought to have hidden  all his gold and jewels.

However, his plan to return there is thwarted constantly by the Emir of Daibul (Anthony Quinn), who enlists flame-haired beauty Shireen (Maureen O'Hara) to seduce Sinbad into revealing the location of this fabled isle. Sinbad, of course, doesn't know where it is and, in turn, hopes that the Emir knows!

There's also a third party after the treasure, a mysterious and elusive assassin called Jamel (who has his name engraved on all his swords - and presumably written inside his underpants as well!).

Aiding Sinbad is his trusty, comedy sidekick Abbu (George Tobias) - who doesn't turn out to be anywhere near as irritating as the phrase "comedy sidekick" suggests - and the ship's barber and resident sage Milek (Walter Slezak).

To a cynic such as I, watching this through modern eyes, the secret identity of Jamel isn't particularly hard to guess, and there's a bizarre moment when he (or she) reveals himself (or herself) to Sinbad and the Emir and his (or her) face is suddenly lit from below with a green light - for no other reason than to really hammer home the point that Jamel is not a nice person.

John Twist's screenplay is wordy but as smooth as silk, the Technicolour is glorious and Douglas Fairbanks Jnr makes Sinbad a very physical character, constantly gesturing with his arms, moving his body and throwing himself around acrobatically and with the grace of a trained dancer.

At almost two-hours duration, Sinbad The Sailor could seem a bit slow to some contemporary tastes, but the poetic script and outstanding performances - along with the requisite amount of stunt-filled fight scenes, chases, sea battles and even some mushy romance for the ladies - makes this such an engrossing adventure movie that you quickly forget that you're more used to seeing Sinbad fighting off Dynamation monsters!

The film's final act is a great meditation on the nature of real treasure, and although Sinbad does eventually claim his birth right he uses it to drive home the message of the story he has been telling his rapt audience... and obviously the post-war audiences in America and Europe.

Although the trope of the unreliable narrator isn't really played on, the movie does open with text posing the question of who made Sinbad the legend he was, how did he gain this level of immortality?

And the answer is very quickly given: "Who else, O Brother, but - Sinbad the Sailor!"

Thus leaving the audience also with the question that, given he is his own greatest publicist and how fanciful his previous adventures were, how much of what he said this time round was actually true?