The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (50th Anniversary Edition) (1958) | 7th Voyage of Sinbad

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (50th Anniversary Edition) (1958) | 7th Voyage of Sinbad | Some of the best of Harryhausen's creatures

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The 7th Voyage of ...

	The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (50th Anniversary Edition) (1958) 7th Voyage of Sinbad Sony Pictures, 2008 average customer review:based on 80 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Best of the Best!

Although I don't have this restored 50th anniversary disc yet, I can say it's going to be wonderful! 50 years ago, when "7th Voyage" was released, I was a ten year old, just discovering Ray Harryhausen, and boy, this was THE MOVIE to discover him by! Today, this remastered version--in the original 1:66/1 aspect ratio--is the ONLY way to watch it: bye bye 'widescreen'!! Although I once had a 16mm print, it surely pales in comparison to the Blu-Ray and DVD versions now available at the 50th anniversary. Can't wait to lay my hands on this 'classic done right'; been waiting 50 years! Thanks Ray for all your hard work on this, then AND now!

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Some of the best of Harryhausen's creatures

I certainly hope this lives up to the 50th anniversary tradition of most dvd releases and is not just the same flat sounding and not very good so-called re-mastering that supposedly the first issue of this dvd was said to have, and didn't. My video versions from Columbia were alot better in sound, picture and quality and if the 50th anniversary dvd is done like this as I expect it will, it will be a great dvd as its not released yet. Now if ," The Mysterious Island, 3 Worlds Of Gulliver," and "Jason And The Argonauts",get the Dolby sound experience that is said to be on this dvd, these classics will really come alive in sight and sound, but we'll know around October 7.

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Classic

Perhaps I was five or six when I first snuck into one of the cheapo movie theaters off of Myrtle Ave, in Queens, to see The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad. Or, perhaps I saw it first on WABC-TV's The 4:30 Movie, or late night, on Chiller Theater or Creature Feature. Regardless of when I first saw it, I was immediately hooked on the Ray Harryhausen special effects. Even in this day of CGI effects, I still prefer the older films, replete with blue screens that outlined actors against projected wonders, matte paintings, and stop motion photography. No, this is not a typical middle age belief that things were better in `ye olden days.' The computer graphics these days are far better and smoother than Harryhausen's antiquated system. But, it was the very artificiality of those effects that made them all the more scary, for dreams and nightmares are not mere reflections of reality, but refractions or distortions of reality, where things ripple, don't quite make sense, and are just a bit off. This more aptly describes the Harryhausen monsters, whose movements are a bit more herky-jerky (technically known as strobing) than those conjured up in the cyberworld for the screen. Thus, for me, those films will always be truer and scarier nightmares because of their very artifice.
There is no logic to much of the film, but it is a hoot, and has not an ounce of pretension in it. Who cares if the magician, who can animate skeletons, would seem to have no real use for a genie? Who cares if the genie could have wiped out the monsters and magician easily, if commanded, since he so easily moves the prolific Cyclops' treasure? Who cares if the Princess's father is ready to declare war on the Caliph of Baghdad for shrinking his daughter, when clearly the magician is to blame? And, who cares if the acting is all 100% cheeseball? B film hunk Kerwin Mathews, as Sinbad, is vapid and hammy, spouting off silly apothegms like, `Allah knows many ways of dealing with hungry men.' Perfect. Sexy Kathryn Grant- soon to marry Bing Crosby, is also perfectly ridiculous as an All-American Arab Princess Parisa. The only one of the three main characters that comes off with a modicum of respectability for his art is Torin Thatcher, as Sokurah the bald cross-eyed magician.
Yet, the real star of the 87 minute film, aside from Harryhausen's monsters, is the fantastic blaring brass score by Bernard Herrmann, in one of his best non-Hitchcock projects. From the first scene of the film, the viewer is sent on a thrill ride which, aside from a twenty or so minute lull in Baghdad, before the return Colossa, is truly non-stop. The soundtrack to the film even became a bestselling album in its day. Yet, the most frightening moment in the film comes not from anything actually seen onscreen, but when a storm rages at sea and the shrill chirping of unseen monsters drives Sinbad's criminal mutineers insane. Oddly enough, the sound seems to have been recapitulated a decade later by Stanley Kubrick in his coda for 2001: A Space Odyssey, after astronaut Dave Bowman descends into the infinite black obelisk around Jupiter, and has a phantasmagoric experience.
Movies such as this are terrific precisely because they are not great and they are not `cinema.' They are brief excursions from the dullness and frustrations of reality, and nothing more. As such, and almost half a century on, The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad still succeeds in that mission as well as any other film ever to lighten human eyes. There are certainly far worse claims one could make for Arabs these days.

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Classic

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