Sinbad of the Seven Seas (1989)

Sinbad of the Seven Seas is a 1989 Cannon Films adventure fantasy with an interesting history. It was originally a Luigi Cozzi project. Cannon then decided it would be cool to do a series instead. Cozzi dropped out and Enzo G. Castellari came in as director. Cannon took a look at the huge amount of footage that Castellari had shot and decided it was totally unreleasable. Cozzi was brought back to try to rescue something from the disaster.

With those things in mind you’d expect this movie to be a trainwreck. In fact it’s magnificent.

Cozzi’s first step was to add a prologue which tells us that this is a story told by a mother to her little girl. That’s perfectly appropriate for an Arabian Nights tale since the Thousand and One Nights had a similar framing story, the tales being stories told by Scheherazade to the king.

The plot is stock standard stuff. The city of Basra is a joyous place ruled over by a kind and wise caliph until an evil wizard named Jaffar (John Steiner) casts a spell that turns the city into a cauldron of evil and misery. Jaffar also intends to force the caliph’s beautiful daughter Princess Alina (Alessandra Martines) to marry him. Alina is currently engaged to a prince named Ali who is a member of Sinbad’s crew.

Sinbad is off adventuring when all this happens. He is shocked and dismayed when he returns to Basra.

Naturally he is determined to thwart Jaffar’s plans but the problem is that Jaffar has used his magic to scatter the sacred jewels of Basra to the four corners of the Earth. Only the sacred jewels can restore peace, sanity and happiness to Basra. Sinbad and his brave crew set off to retrieve the jewels. That’s all there is to the plot.

What follows is a series of crazed action set-pieces as Sinbad and his men battle assorted monsters, ghostly knights and wicked sexy amazons. The amazons are particularly dangerous - their main weapon is seduction.

This is obviously not an expensive movie but it looks wonderful. Jaffar’s lair looks more like a mad scientist’s laboratory from a 1930s movie serial than a wizard’s haunt but that just adds more fun and craziness.

The very imaginative production design looks strange and exotic, as it should. There’s no real attempt to maintain the Arabian Nights look. The movie is like a mashup of elements from multiple fairy tales and adventure stories from lots of different historical periods and settings with a few science fiction elements thrown in as well. Anything that seems like it might be fun gets thrown into the mix. Vikings are cool, so let’s have a Viking in the movie. Mediæval knights are cool so we’ll have some of those as well. Mad scientists are fun so let’s make the villain a combination of a mad scientist and a sorcerer.

Some of the effects are cheesy but mostly the effects are clever, inspired and pretty convincing. The monsters are varied and they look terrific. The scenes with the ghostly knights are superb. The knights are just empty suits of armour but they’re very creepy.

All the action scenes are done with style and imagination.

The pacing doesn’t let up. The plot is so simple that there’s no need to waste time with boring exposition. The movie rushes from one frenetic action sequence to another. We know that Ali and Alina are in love so there’s no need for endless romantic buildups. When Sinbad encounters a crazy good wizard with a beautiful daughter we know that she and Sinbad will fall for each other so there’s no need to slow things down while they figure that out.

Muscle-bound bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno had starred in Cozzi’s wild insane Hercules movies. He makes a more than adequate hero. John Steiner chews every piece of scenery he can get his hands on. The actors playing Sinbad’s crew (which includes a dwarf, a Viking and a samurai) put everything into their performances. Alessandra Martines doesn’t have to do much more than look beautiful and frightened which she manages to do quite successfully. The amazon queen is suitably seductive.

Jaffar is an amusing villain. He’s very evil but very cowardly.

The violence is all cartoonish without any gore. There’s no nudity, there are no sex scenes. This is a fairy tale told to a kid.

Sinbad of the Seven Seas makes very little sense but it’s crazy fun from start to finish. Highly recommended.

The 101 Films DVD has no extras apart from the trailer but the transfer is excellent.

I’ve also reviewed Cozzi’s Hercules (1983) and Starcrash (1978). They’re both fabulous movies.