Golden Voyage of Sinbad Movie Review

Sinbad (the Dangerously Diabolikal John Phillip Law) travels to Lemuria, a legendary pre-Atlantean continent that allegedly connected Africa to Australia. The Black Prince Koura (Tom Baker of Dr. Who fame) will stop at nothing to beat Sinbad to the Fountain of Destiny and to claim the beautiful slave girl Margiana (Hammer queen Caroline Munro) as his own. With symbolism and mysticism based on the Middle Eastern view of destiny, there may be more meat and subtleties than the usual Harryhausen adventure, but there's still loads of mythical creatures. Koura even gets to build a living homunculus for spying, brings a ship's figurehead to life for killing, and invisibly duels Sinbad with effects reminiscent of the rain sequence in The Invisible Man Returns. While the battle between the Griffin (good) and the one-eyed centaur (evil), with each being assisted by their human counterparts, seems to come out of nowhere, it somehow fits. The elaborate fight between Sinbad's men and the six-armed Kali is masterpiece of choreography. Of course, Miklos Rozsa's score doesn't hurt the flow at all.

1973 (G) 105m/C John Phillip Law, Caroline Munro, Tom Baker, Douglas Wilmer, Martin Shaw, John David Garfield, Gregoire Aslan; D: Gordon Hessler; W: Brian Clemens; M: Miklos Rozsa. VHS, Beta, LV COL, MLB