Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

How you respond to a film like Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger depends on how you approach it. If you’re looking for flaws and things that just don’t match the sleek effects of today you’ll find plenty. If you’re willing to indulge the entertainment of another age then you may find yourself enjoying the ride. Forty years old this year, the movie comes alongside the other two big screen Sinbad outings (reviewed last month) in a well presented box set including both DVD and Blu-ray versions.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad

Released this week is a limited edition box set with both DVD and blu-ray formats are three Ray Harryhausen Sinbad films together with lots of extras. The trio are undeniably popcorn classics with pioneering effects for the time they were made. I certainly remember seeing the second and third of these back in the day when we had a local cinema. The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad is the earliest and least familiar though it’s been on TV many times. By today’s standards this 1958 movie is rather creaky though its not the legendary special effects that have dated half as much as the acting and plot. Nonetheless it has the sort of thrills and spills that would have entertained audiences in a time when most comparable films tried things like superimposing ordinary sized lizards over the picture to make them look huge. Trouble was they just sort of sat there. By contrast Ray Harryhausen’s stop motion animation- known as Dynamation- makes the creatures much more entwined with the action and it is this aspect that ultimately makes the movie watchable.