Thiel-a-Vision Review: Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

Special-effects master Ray Harryhausen was among the greatest of my childhood influences. A fan of sci-fi and fantasy films, especially those featuring monsters, I was drawn to both the quality of his stop-motion animation techniques and to his choice of subject matter. 

After a string of box-office misfires, Harryhausen had a hit in 1974 with the release of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Therefore, it wasn't much of a surprise when his next project again featured the heroic sailor. 

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger is only a semi-sequel to Harryhausen's previous Arabian Nights stories. This time, Patrick Wayne (son of John) is the star, and a young, luscious Jane Seymour is the scantily-garbed princess whom he hopes to wed. (Were Sinbad's previous wives eaten by cyclopses?)

Having exhausted the standard catalog of Arabian-inspired creatures, Harryhausen throws reason to the sea winds and pits this bold duo against a trio of demons, an oversized wasp, a bronze minotaur, a giant walrus, a horned troglodyte and a saber-toothed tiger. Yes, Sinbad fights a saber-toothed tiger. I suspect that at this point in Harryhausen's career, Ray was thinking "Well, what haven't I already animated?" This odd menagerie works against the turbans-and-harem-girls setting.

The story involves a prince (Jane Seymour's brother) who was transformed into a baboon in the midst of his own coronation ceremony. His stepmother, the evil sorceress Zenobia, has enchanted him in order to place her own son on the throne. Sinbad therefore must race against time to restore the prince before he loses the right to the monarchy, according to the laws of the land.

The quest includes a sidetrip to a ruined temple (filmed on location in Jordan) to consult with the sage Melanthius, played by former "Doctor Who" Patrick Troughton. Ultimately, they set off for a lost civilization at the frozen edge of the world, where a temple holds the power to transmute matter.

The poster for Eye of the Tiger depicted the witch Zenobia with a huge, taloned bird's foot. In the film, she acquires this during a partially unsuccessful attempt to spy on Sinbad in the form of a seagull. As a kid, I was disappointed to find that the scary claw featured in the poster artwork was a pathetic club foot on screen.

Another image that failed to live up to its potential was the bronze Minoton animated by Zenobia to serve as oarsman (oarsbeast?) for her ship. Surely Sinbad would have to fight this terror, as he did the six-armed statue of Kali in Golden Voyage? No, for as it turns out, the Minoton is little more than window-dressing, and is destroyed before our heroes have a chance to encounter it.

Several of the creatures seem to be rehashed from earlier Harryhausen films: the Minoton invokes Talos from Jason and the Argonauts, the demons are little more than Jason's skeletons with a bit of meat on their bones, the wasp would have been at home on Mysterious Island and the troglodyte resembles the famous cyclops from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad.

Furthermore, the effects work is not Ray's best, though at least the fight between the troglodyte and the tiger is energetic. The rear projection is especially shoddy, particularly during the introduction of Melanthius. It's painfully obvious that none of the principal actors traveled to Jordan for the shoot, and are instead performing in front of a blue screen.

The film seemed slow-paced when it premiered back in 1977, and feels even longer than its nearly two-hour running time. Mostly, there's a lot of sailing and talking, and not nearly enough monster-fighting.

That said, it does have its charms, not the least of which is the aforementioned Miss Seymour, who even appears in a brief nude scene. True, both she and fellow nudist Taryn Power (daughter of Tyrone) are artfully arranged to avoid nipplage, but there's a lot more of her on display than one might expect to see in a G-rated film.

Unfortunately, Eye of the Tiger marked the beginning of the end of Harryhausen's long career, coming as it did the same year as another little special-effects film...called Star Wars.

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