Starring Kerwin Mathews, Kathryn Grant, Richard Eyer, Torin Thatcher, Alec Mango
Directed by Nathan Juran
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
The brave hero Sinbad battles fantastic creatures in order to save the princess he loves, who has been shrunk to a tiny size by an evil magician.
Ray Harryhausen's stop motion effects enliven this production, with the talented craftsman expertly animating a giant cyclops, a fearsome dragon, an immense two-headed roc, a dancing snake woman, and a sword-fighting skeleton. It's also impressively mounted in other areas, with a classic Bernard Herrmann score, an engaging cast including Mathews' stalwart hero and Thatcher's sinister magician, poetic dialogue which brings a classical feel, and bright color photography by Wilkie Cooper, all befitting this memorable fantasy adventure. The skeleton sequence is a favorite with Mathews battling Harryhausen's creation with Herrmann's bone-jangling accompaniment, but there are so many memorable images and sonics, from the eerie shrinking of the princess, to the bellowing cyclops. Modern envisionings of the story would rightly employ a more ethnically diverse cast, but the picture still feels like a vivid imagining of an Arabian Nights classic.
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