1977 Sinbad adventure tale
Rating: 12/20
Plot: Sinbad wants to marry Jane Seymour, but he isn't able to do it until he breaks the witch's spell that turned her brother into a baboon. He ventures to an island to look for an old man who can help out.
We'll count this as a Peter Mayhew tribute since this was technically his first film. Star Wars came out before this third Harryhausen Sinbad movie, but Mayhew filmed his scenes as a stand-in for the Minoton a couple years prior. In case you don't know what the hell a Minoton is, it's a bronze minotaur. He doesn't do much even though he's in almost the entire movie. He rows a boat ad nauseam and provides a weapon for another character.
With this final chapter in the Sinbad movies, you come for the Ray Harryhausen effects and stay for. . .well, the Ray Harryhausen effects. The stop-motion creatures he brings to life in this one are a trio of alien-eyed demon guys who can't stop cackling, a mostly-agitated baboon that plays chess while scratching his butt, the Minoton and a guy who the Minoton impales, a giant bee, a gigantic deadly walrus, a horny troglodyte, and the saber-toothed tiger which I imagine is why the movie's title as a reference to a tiger eye. The horny troglodyte is upper-echelon Harryhausen, the kind of animated puppet that just feels alive and part of everything that is going on. This was Harryhausen's penultimate movie, and even though the movie itself isn't all that good, the stop-motion effects are among his best.
The "horny" description for the troglodyte has two meanings, by the way. He literally has a single horn, but his first appearance in the movie comes after he's very obviously watched Jane Seymour and Taryn Power skinny dipping. You don't even have to watch that closely to see brief buttocks flashes during that skinny dip, and I was surprised but not entirely disappointed in the amount of skin shown during a G-rated film. There's probably a little too much blood for a G-rated movie, too. And belly dancing.
The inciting incident of our story actually only happens because Sinbad is horny. This really is a movie about how far a man will go in order to have sex with Jane Seymour.
The acting in this pretty terrible from top to bottom. Patrick Wayne plays the titular sailor, and he does it with almost a complete lack of charisma. They must have hired him because of his sailing abilities. He's so bad in his initial scenes that I thought he was dubbed, and when he finally gets to display some action-hero sword play, his movements are slow and clumsy. He can't get that right either. I guess that troglodyte wasn't originally going to be animated, and then Harryhausen didn't like the look of the guy in make-up playing him and stop-animated one instead. He should have animated Sinbad, too. Jane Seymour is really overdoing things, but she's fetching and has a cute bellybutton.
The worst performer is probably Patrick Troughton, one of the doctors on Doctor Who. I haven't seen any of his episodes, and I'm sure he's a charming incarnation of that beloved character, but in this movie, he seems confused. It probably doesn't help that his character, proclaimed as some sort of mystic sage, is a bit of a dumbass.
This is poorly edited with all these reaction shots that are completely unnecessary, and the story kind of stumbles throughout and isn't paced all that well. But the effects are top notch and a lot of fun. Harryhausen completists definitely won't be disappointed.
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