Weirdhouse Cinema: Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1977 Ray Harryhausen adventure film “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger,” starring Patrick Wayne, Taryn Power, Margaret Whiting, Jane Seymour, Patrick Troughton and scores of amazing stop-motion creatures.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
today on Weird House Cinema, we are going to be
talking about the nineteen seventy seven fantasy adventure film Sinbad
and the Eye of the Tiger, directed by Sam Wanamaker
and starring I would say, the most deliciously crunchy stop
motion monster effects by the great Ray Harryhausen, including but

(00:37):
not limited too, a gang of saber wielding ghoules that
rise up out of a fire, A giant hyperborean walrus,
a one horned troglodide who just wants to love. Really
a I was going to say a demon wasp, but
I think more accurately it is a bee, even though
in it's an enlarged form, it looks kind of wasp like.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
And then I would say, most importantly, the minoton, a
magical bronze robot or automaton in the shape of a silent, frowning,
bull headed minotaur.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah. Kind of a mashup of telous and the minotaur. Ye.
Like everything in this film, everything is a mash up here.
There's nothing really there's nothing really authentic aus we'll be discussing.
But via the magic of Ray Harry House and special
effects and filmmaking in general, it becomes its own thing.
It becomes this ridiculously fun flick.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Sinbad in the Eye of the Tiger has a special
significance for me because somehow I had a bootleg VHS
tape of this movie when I was growing up, and
I watched it a lot. I've seen this many many times,
but less so in recent years. I was mesmerized by
the monsters when I was growing up, especially the Minotan
that when I found very scary and captivating. I think

(01:57):
in part because of the you know, none of the
monsters in this movie talk, but there's something about the
silence of the minoton that feels especially significant, just that
that closed, frowning mouth.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Absolutely, Ray Harry Housen was able to pour just somewmach
I mean, in general, Ray Hary houses and poured a
lot of life into the things that he brought to life,
these pieces of clay and other substances through stop motion.
But in this picture in particular, I feel like there's
a lot of heart and life and just you can

(02:30):
almost be out. We get into this sort of internal mindset,
limited as it might be with the Minoton, but you
still get a sense of like who this or what
this creature.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
Is animated by evil magic, but also somehow a little
bit sad, Like I feel a bit of pity for
the Minoton in the way he's just sort of bossed
around and then discarded towards the end of the film
when he has outlived his usefulness there. Yeah, so the
Minaton is a you know, soulless, soulless weapon, the tool

(03:01):
of evil magic, and I still somehow my heart breaks
for him.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, this I imagine. I didn't see this film when
I was a kid. I don't know how I avoided it, because,
as I've mentioned before, I watched Clash of the Titans
over and over on various Turner stations. It was just
always on. So I'm kind of surprised I'd never seen
this one. My wife had seen this one as a kid,
but I never did. And it's a shame because, I mean,
to a limited extent, it's a shame because this is

(03:27):
a great film to have seen as a kid, because
it is very much monsters and stop motion effects. First,
humans a distant second.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
Certainly the main humans a distant second. Yeah. So, while
I love so many things about this movie, one thing
I realized on coming back to it as an adult
is that this is an example of a type of
fantasy film that I think has not aged extremely well
in its portrayal of real life human cultures for a
couple of reasons. One thing is this is a Sinbad movie,

(03:58):
so it's based on the character of Sinbad the Sailor,
a hero who appears in later manuscripts of the Arabic
language folk tale collection one thousand and one Nights. Sindbad
is a brave and resourceful sailor from Baghdad who achieves
great fortune through his travels across the sea to foreign lands,
and he survives all these harrowing encounters along the way

(04:18):
and comes back with great stories to tell. From what
I can deduce this story, the story in Sinbad and
the Eye of the Tiger is not based on any
particular story appearing in the Sinbad hero cycle, and it
should not be taken as a faithful or authentic representation
of the Sinbad folklore.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, I think it was based entirely on sort of
the vibe of the past Sindad films. Yeah, and also
what Ray Harry Housen wanted to do special effects wise,
he said he'd always wanted to do a smile of
don you know, a saber tooth cat, and so it's
in the picture. I guess it was left to the screen.

(05:00):
Oh and also Ray has a story credit on this,
so you know, I guess it was like, I want
to smile it on in the picture. Let's figure out
how to make it.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Work, rippling furry muscly beast of it. I love the
smile it on in here, but yeah, I don't think
you'll find that in any of the Sindbad folklore or
in the versions appearing in one thousand and one Nights.
Another thing I will say is that although this movie
is I think not as offensive as it could have
been in this manner, it is a movie depicting a

(05:27):
historical Middle Eastern culture that was made mostly by Europeans
and European Americans, and to me looking at it now,
this movie comes across as bringing some level of ethnic
caricature and some implicit orientalism. Orientalism meaning like a view
held by some people from Western cultures. That people of
Eastern cultures are maybe less sophisticated, less refined, maybe more

(05:51):
treacherous and barbaric, and there I think there are currents
of that running through the story here. It also probably
goes without saying that the movie does not seem very
concerned with historical or cultural authenticity, and like trying to
depict the environment of the Abbasid Empire in the you know,
in which this story is originally set in the folklore version.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, yeah, we're pretty far removed from any any manner
of historic or literary reality here.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
And I think this is one of the difficulties of
adapting fantasy that is more grounded in the real world.
Like the more you try to root a fantasy story
in real times and places, or to base it faithfully
on real literature, the more difficult of a job you have.
Though I guess that makes me respect it even more
when it's done well, you know. And I can think

(06:40):
about good fantasy films that are very rooted in history
and are informed by what we know now about the
culture of the time and stuff. So there are good
examples of that. But you know, when you set out
to do something like that historical in the real world.
It's just harder to do. So I would say, of course,
don't form your opinions about the Synbad folklore, or about

(07:01):
the historical culture and people of the opposite empire from
this movie.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, nor should you base much concerning you know, prehistoric organisms.
You know, there's nothing particularly accurate about this film.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
But with all those caveats, I would like to speak
for this movie's great virtues. It is a robust, swashbuck
len adventure story set in an interesting and weird world.
It's got wonderful monster and creature effects, like give me
all the minoton you got. I wish. In fact, on
coming back and watching this as an adult, there was

(07:37):
less minoton than I remembered. The minoton looms larger in
my memory than it actually does in the story, and
so I almost wish I could could have had more
of it. But I guess that's a good thing to
feel a story. After a story, it's better to feel
that you wish there had been more of something than
that there was too much and you got tired of it.

Speaker 4 (07:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, they're strong comparison to be made here too, Boba
Fett and Return of the Jedi. You know, we didn't
see as much of him as we wanted, and that
led everyone to just dream about what was possible and
to obsess over this minor character, and likewise the menton here.
I don't know. I also kind of feel like this
movie did the Menaton dirty, but it's also so memorable

(08:19):
and I end up feeling for him so much, even
though he has discarded like a used tool.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
I also, in different ways, enjoy a lot of the
acting in this movie. I'm gonna say I don't want
to be mean, but I think our main actor is
in this particularly Patrick Wayne in the role of sindbad
Or has got to go on some kind of leaderboard
of big budget movie wooden performances. He is not spellbinding,

(08:46):
but he is very funny. But I genuinely do love
some of the character actor performances, and it particularly Patrick
Trauton as Melanthius, the Alchemist and the wizard, you know
that the Greek sage. He's a lot of fun and
there's some good color like that in there. Another thing
that I thought was funny about sindbad in the Eye

(09:09):
of the Tiger is that I never knew this before
researching before this episode, but it was released in the
summer of nineteen seventy seven, same season as a little
movie called Star Wars. So I think it was facing
some competition.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, yeah, So this was the third Columbia Sinbad film
with effects by Ray Harry Howsen, following up on nineteen
fifty eight's The Seventh Voyage of Sindbad. In seventy three
is The Golden Voyage of Sindbad. The previous two films
had been hits. But yeah, as lovingly crafted as this
film is and as much as we love it now,
it surely looked pretty long in the tooth compared to

(09:44):
just the newness of Star Wars.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah, and Rob, I think you'll know what I mean
about this. There are some weird mismatches in the level
of competence with the effects in the movie. Like it
has some of the best stop motion effects ever done
in a lot of the monsters, but there are other
parts of it where little just like matt shots and
stuff feel very clunky and amateurish to me.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, there's some yeah, some mat shots and or some
day for night. I don't know if there are a
few shots here. I couldn't tell if I was looking
at Bad or not. I don't want to say bad but
maybe less effective matt work or if I was looking
at less effective day for night. But and I also
wasn't entirely sure how to view it, because, as I'll
discussed in a minute, I saw this on the big screen,

(10:29):
so I wasn't sure if I was looking. I mean,
the effects looked amazing, but I wasn't sure, Well, is
this the Is this a fully restored version of it?
I'm not sure, but yes, I definitely got a sense
of that mismatch in the visuals.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
I mean, on my Blu ray A lot of the
scenes look great, but particularly the scenes set at night
just did not look right to me. They are too dark.
I can't tell who anybody is.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah, they're very blue.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
It's yeah, something's not working right there. But another thing
I wanted to talk about with Ia the Tiger is
a note on genre. This rewatching this movie got me
thinking about how Sindbad and the Eye of the Tiger
is kind of a paragon of the adventure genre. This
is the kind of classic film people are thinking about

(11:18):
when they use the word adventure for a movie genre,
And so I was thinking, why, what exactly is adventure
and especially what distinguishes adventure from similar genres like action.
The first idea I had about this was about travel.
Adventure stories seem to necessarily involve travel or a journey,

(11:41):
whereas action stories may or may not include travel and
a journey. But I think this is not good enough
as a distinction, like it certainly doesn't capture the whole
difference because, for example, every James Bond movie, every Mission
Impossible movie, those all involve travel to interesting new locations.
So like making a journey to an interesting new place

(12:03):
doesn't make a movie an adventure, and I'm never tempted
to think about these other movie series as adventure stories.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
I think maybe part of it comes down to the
presumed or implied mastery over travel. You know, like a
modern film you've just been have characters just zipping around
the world, and it doesn't seem like it takes any
effort or even expense to do so. It's just you're
one place one second or another the next, Whereas if

(12:30):
a film either gives you if a film gives you
something to go on, that implies like a more historical
difficulty in travel, or even maybe goes to the links
of just showing you how far the character is traveling.
I'm thinking of like the map sequences in Indiana Jones.
You know, you get more of that sense of globe

(12:52):
trotting adventure.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
I think that's a really good observation. Yeah, something about
the difficulty of travel, the sense of going somewhere, going
somewhere new, or going somewhere dangerous or unique. That is
different than just like going to an airport somewhere, you know,
flying in. Another thing I was thinking about is that
adventure I think way more often includes fantasy or fantastical elements.

(13:19):
Of course, it doesn't have to. There are totally realistic
adventure stories, and action can also have fantasy elements too,
Like there's a whole subgenre people call action fantasy. Big example,
there is Highlander, and so again that doesn't fully capture
the distinction, but that's kind of a tendency. Action I
think is more likely to have what feels like a

(13:39):
focus on physical conflict, fight scenes and chase scenes. But
of course you will find these elements in most adventure
stories as well. The adventure movie we're talking about today
has lots of action scenes. They both of these genres
have thrills based on a sense of danger and risk.
But ultimately, I think the most important conclusion I came

(13:59):
to was that, unlike action, adventure necessarily involves a feeling
of discovery or amazement, which is tied up in the
central goal of the protagonists. So like in an action movie,
in the end, the thing you have to do is
beat the bad guy, and in an adventure movie, the

(14:20):
thing you have to do is uncover the great secret
or reach the hidden place. So they're like fundamentally sort
of amazement entangled goals.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, you may have a few fistfights on top of
some trains and so forth on the way there, but yeah,
it's about that destination. It's about that great discovery.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
Yeah, And so I think this is why a lot
of my favorite action oriented stories are more action adventure.
You know. I like stories about a quest to unveil
something hidden more than just stories about conflict with an adversary,
though there are plenty of great examples of the latter.
Two Yeah, all right, did you have an elevator pitch
for this?

Speaker 2 (14:58):
I would say Syndbad's Voyage to Hyperborea, Like that would
be a more accurate title, because I of the Tiger,
there's there are some cat eyes going on in the film,
but it's it's less overt. I don't know. And it
also doesn't fit the title the title style of the
previous two films.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
It feels like Harry Housen's motivation to make a stop
motion Sabertooth Tiger is infecting the themes of the title.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Yeah, he had I of the Tiger. Yes, that's what
dictated everything else. Yeah, also I of the Walrus.

Speaker 3 (15:32):
Wait, when when was Rocky did Rocky do we have
Eye of the Tiger? Did that only come with Rocky two?
I don't remember when was When was that song.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
I Have the Tiger by Survivor? Yeah? That was eighty two. Okay,
but maybe maybe you know, I'm not entirely sure. I've
never researched this. Maybe it has its roots in this film.
Why not, That's something.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
To look up. Okay, should we get some trailer audio?

Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah, let's listen to a little bit of trailer audio.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
Here.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
These eyes peer out through time, through space to a
land beyond imagination.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
These are the Eyes of the Tiger.

Speaker 4 (16:18):
Follow their gaze back back to where legends first began,
where fantasy is real and the land of the Lost
is rediscovered. Journey across the oceans of antiquity to the
northern edge of the ancient world. As Sindbad battles with
both human depths of the Earth, I command you Arise

(16:39):
and supernatural even filmed in the Miracle of Dynorama. Come
face to face with the prehistoric Trogue. See the Sorceress
bring life to the all powerful Minoton. See Sinbad battle

(17:00):
saber Tooth Tiger, Regardian of the Secret Shrine. Join Sindbad,
the greatest of all adventurers, in his biggest adventure of all,
Sindbad and the Eye.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
Of the Tiger.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
All right, well, you may be wondering at this point,
how can I watch Sindbad and the Eye of the Tiger. Well,
I mean, unless you have the same bootleg VHS that
Joe had in his childhood, you're gonna have to find
some other way to watch it. I had the pleasure
of seeing this one on the big screen at Atlanta's
Historic Plaza Theater as part of the Silver Screams Spook

(17:39):
Show series. Look it up. Their next show is going
to be Frankenstein Meets the wolf Man on October third.
But there's also a great looking indicator Blu Ray that
has tons of extras that seems to be a great
physical media choice. It's region free as well. You can
also get this one as part of Ray Harryhausen The
Ultimate Collection, which also looks great. And there may be

(18:01):
other Harry Housen box sets out there as well.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
Let me look and see what mine is. I watched
it on a four disc Blu Ray set called The
Fantastic Films of Ray Harry Housen, and this set comes
with Jason and the Argonauts, Golden Voyage of Sinbad, Seventh
Voyage of Sinbad, and this one.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
That's a nice collection right here.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
Yeah, we could come back and do Golden Voyage sometime
as well, because that one, I think is also a hit.
Also has amazing monsters and has Tom Baker in it
as the villain.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yes, Tom Baker. And that's one that I saw many
years ago at a drive in movie theater here in
the Atlanta area, So it's been a long time since
I've seen it at this point, but I remember it's
a nice, sweaty movie. I think of it as an
outdoor viewing experience in the summer totally. All right, let's

(18:57):
talk about the folks behind this picture. Will start with
the director Sam Wannamaker, who we mentioned earlier, lived nineteen
nineteen through nineteen ninety three a veteran American actor and
director who spent most of his career in the UK
to avoid the blacklist in America during the nineteen fifties.
He had Broadway roots in the US and then played
an important role revitalizing the Globe Theater in London during

(19:21):
his time there. His TV and screen credits go back
to nineteen forty eight and include nineteen sixty five, The
Spy Who Came In from the Cold, nineteen seventy eight's
Death on the Nile, nineteen eighty six is raw Deal?
Oh Oh, nineteen eighty seven Superman for the Quest for Peace.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
Raw Deal. That's a Schwarzenegger film, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yeah. I don't know if that's one I've seen, but
that I'm very familiar with the cover art for that one,
where it's like Schwarzenegger holding a shotgun.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
Yeah, and the tagline is I think it is they
gave him a raw deal. No one gives him a
raw deal.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
Wanta Maker's TV credits include a role on the original
Outer Limits, A feasibility study is the episode, and he
was also nominated for an Emmy Award for his performance
in the nineteen seventy eight Holocaust mini series. As a director,
he worked on various TV shows and directed such films
as nineteen seventies The Executioner, seventy one's Cat Low, and Owen.

(20:15):
He is also father of British actress Zoey Wanta Maker,
some of you might remember from the Harry Potter movies.
So I was reading a little bit about this. Apparently,
given his skills as both an actor and a director,
the studio brought him on expressly to perhaps pull a
good performance out of some of the maybe stiffer members

(20:35):
of the cast. Was he successful, Maybe not. But I
think also, as we'll discuss, maybe this just isn't the
sort of movie where you're going to be able to
do that, Like you're kind of setting anybody up for
a challenge given some of the constraints involved here.

Speaker 3 (20:53):
Yeah, and as I think I said earlier, I mean
Patrick Wayne's wood in this achieves a kind of excellence
of its Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, Like at the end of the day, do I
want someone more convincing in the role? Well, yes in
some ways, but in other ways absolutely not. Like it
was he's given it is all and we'll talk about
him in a minute, but yeah, I enjoy his performance.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
Yeah me too.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Also worth noting, apparently, you know, you look at his
other films, he did not direct films like this, He
didn't direct big fantasy adventure films. He apparently took this
project in large part to help finance his work with
the Globe Theater. So you know, even if the acting
in this film is not always top notch, well you know,

(21:40):
maybe the end result is the money involved here helped
support some great theater in London. All right, now, story credit,
producer credit, and of course creator of visual effects. We
have the great Ray Harry Howsen, who we've talked about
on the show before, because of course we talked about
Clash of the Titans, which was the film that he
did right after this one. Harry Housen lived nineteen twenty

(22:03):
through twenty thirteen. He was an American British Oscar winning
animator and special effects creator. Who I mean, it's really
hard to overstress his importance. He just a major pioneer
in the industry. So thinking for instance, about Star Wars
coming along and sort of pushing films like this into

(22:24):
the past and making films like this seem increasingly old fashioned.
Like everyone involved in the special effects on Star Wars
was inevitably inspired by Ray Harry Housen, like he is
just he is a legend, and everything that came after him,
everything that kind of two varying degrees replaced the style
of old fashioned stop motion that he was bringing to

(22:46):
the screen, like they wouldn't exist without his work.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
And genuinely, Ray Harry Housen's stop motion work does not
look old and dated to me. I mean it always
looks fresh and exciting in a way that a lot
of more cutting edge techniques don't hold up as well.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
Right, Yeah, particularly like early CGI or even like really
cutting edge CGI, because I think, as we've talked about before,
a lot of it, as you can say this about
a lot of practical effects, but I think especially about
really well done stop motion, is that you feel like
you can touch it. It has this tangible quality to it.
It really does come alive in the way that I

(23:22):
mean it gets down down to the medium and art
of puppetry throughout human history, like the basic twin powers
of human artistry and imagination to make that which is
lifeless take on.

Speaker 3 (23:32):
Life, beautifully said, and I agree. And again, when I'm
looking at stop motion effects, I'm also enjoying them for
more than just a desire that they look realistic. You know,
it's not just I want to believe this is a
real monster on the scene. I mean, stop motion to
me feels like an art form and I can appreciate
its own dimensions of esthetic virtue. It is an art

(23:56):
unto itself, and it's beautiful in that way.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
Like you want to see the slight flaws in it,
in the same way that you want to see the puppeteer.
You know, you don't have to hide the puppeteer. With puppetry,
a lot of the time, the puppeteer is visible, and
it's just it's part of the performance. And you know,
we're going to suspend disbelief and we're going to also,
you know, see life and what has been created theatrically
for us.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
Right in the same way that like if I'm looking
at a great sculpture, I'm not bothered by the fact
that it's not indistinguishable from a living human being. Like
I'm enjoying it for what it looks like as a
piece of marble or rock, that has been made into
an image that that is its own thing.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
Absolutely. So I'm not going to list all the different
films that Ray Harry Housen was involved in, but just
to mention a few. You've got films like Mighty Joe
Young from forty nine. You have twenty Million Miles to
Earth from fifty seven against seven, Voyage of Sindbad from
fifty eight, Mysterious Island from sixty one, one Million Years

(24:56):
BC from nineteen sixty six. I want to say that
was a hammer picture. I may be misremembering the Golden
Voyage of Sindbad from seventy three. The predecessor did this film,
and then Sinbad in the Eye of the Tiger from
seventy seven, and then eighty one's Clash of the Titans,
which we previously talked about in the show. That was
his swan song essentially, and that one features I think

(25:16):
eight different stop motion creatures. Tied with one Million Years
BC for the most creatures in a Harry Housen film.
I believe today's selection is pretty close. There are a
lot of a lot of creatures in here.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
Yeah, I didn't count them. Do you count the ghouls
as three creatures or as one because it's one sequence.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
I think they're an act right, Okay.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
Yeah, but I agree, I think just as for Raw Virtues.
As a film, this is not the best Ray Harryhausen
movie I've seen. I think I like Golden Voyage of
Sindbad better, and I might like I might ultimately like
Clash of the Titans better. But this is some of
the best stop motion work. Like the monsters in here
are you know, on the top shelf with the other ones.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yeah, And it's what you come to this film to see.
These are the stars of the film, without a doubt,
all right. The screenwriter on this picture was Beverly Cross.
That's the British Beverly, the masculine Beverly name Beverly Cross,
who lived nineteen thirty one through nineteen ninety eight English
playwright and screenwriter, longtime husband of the actress Maggie Smith

(26:23):
till Beverly's death. His screenplays include nineteen sixty three's Jason
and the Argonauts, nineteen sixty five's Ginghis Khan That would
started with marsha Reef.

Speaker 3 (26:32):
When I first saw that credit, by the way, I
was briefly terrified that this was the screenplay for the
movie where John Wayne plays Jingis.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
Khan, thankfully not this one released ted O Marshariff, and
then of course Today's film, as well as Clash of
the Titans. So we briefly mentioned Beverly Cross before in
our Clash of the Titans episode.

Speaker 3 (26:52):
Okay, but no, I think the John Wayne Jingis Khan
movie was The Conqueror, which I've never seen but have
heard it is one of the most ludicrous films ever made.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, some notorious miscasting there, all right, Well, since we're
talking about the Duke, Yeah, let's talk about the son
of the Duke, Patrick Wayne, who plays Sindbad in this picture.
Born nineteen thirty nine. It is indeed the son of
John Wayne, the legendary American Western actor, here playing the

(27:25):
Middle Eastern mariner from Arabic literature.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
This casting choice one of the elements I alluded to
earlier that has not aged well.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
Right, This would not be the last time by far
that a white actor would play a Middle Eastern character.
But I think you'd be hard pressed to find a
wider actor portraying such a character in a film. It's
just such a mispatch. Wayne's screen credits here go back
to I believe nineteen fifty when he started doing kid

(27:54):
cameos in his father's pictures, which eventually led to larger
roles in these productions, including nineteen fifty eighth The Searchers,
for which he won a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer.
His first starring role came with nineteen fifty nine's The
Young Land That One co starred Dennis Hopper and Dan O'Hurley,
and yet, needless to say, I should come as a

(28:16):
shock to nobody. Patrick Wayne mostly worked in westerns. His
filmography is mostly westerns, following the footsteps of his dad,
but in the nineteen seventies he did branch out more
and appeared in a trio of sci fi films. Oh
there's nineteen seventy threes Beyond Atlantis, which is just stupendous.
It's an outrageous movie co stars Sid Hague. Definitely check

(28:41):
that one out if you haven't, There's this film, And
there's also nineteen seventy seven's The People at the Time
Forgot co starring Doug McClure.

Speaker 3 (28:48):
I haven't seen either of those other ones. I kind
of feel a calling to I wonder, is I think
this is the only Patrick Wayne movie I've seen is
he always like he is here?

Speaker 2 (29:00):
You know, well, I guess so, so I barely remember
him at all from Beyond Atlantis. I was a little
shocked that he was in it. But he's like the star,
so he's okay. I mainly remembered said, hey, getting munched
on by crabs. Oh okay. But it seems like he
probably has a good co star and Doug McClure from
the People the Time for Good. Haven't seen that one yet.

(29:23):
That things that I've never seen any of his westerns.
I'm I'm gonna give him benefit of the doubt and
say that maybe he's more at home in a Western,
you know, maybe he fits there better.

Speaker 3 (29:32):
I mean, if this makes any sense, even though he's
very wooden in the role of Sindbad, he does feel comfortable.
It doesn't feel like there's anything like really like catching
or twanging or sticking out at you. Instead, it's just
these very stiff, kind of uninflected line deliveries and just
general beef slab energy. It's he's it doesn't feel like

(29:56):
he's doing a lot of acting, if that makes any sense.
He's just sort of a presence.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's I don't know, there's there's
a hamminess to it. Yeah, and there's a there are
plenty of moments where I kind of giggled or laughed,
you know. It's just as it's it's fun if you
like these kind of performances. But yeah, but yeah, I mean,
on the other hand, there are a lot of other
great actors that I would not even begin to cast

(30:21):
as Sindbad the Sailor. Like, I mean, Harry Dean Stanton
is great, but can you imagine harryding Stanton playing Sinbad.
I can't really wouldn't do that either. Yeah, yeah, And
it's also worth noting that Wayne he had pretty big
boots to fill here because John Phillip Law played Sindbad
in the previous film. You know, seventy three is the
Golden Voyage of Sindbad, and John Phillip Law, of course,

(30:42):
was also an American non Arabic actor, but much more established,
I think, in many ways, more experienced at least without
like a different sorts of genre films anyway, and arguably
a more charismatic performer.

Speaker 3 (30:57):
Yeah. Not trying to beat up on Patrick Wayne, but yeah, yeah,
I agree.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
All right, moving on to Sindbad's love interest. We have
this character.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
Farah, princess they call they pronounce her name different ways
throughout the movie. Some characters call her Farah, some call
her Farrah, but she's Princess Farah or Farrah far Ah.
This is the character played by Jane Seymour.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yes born nineteen fifty one, British actress, probably best known
for her roles first of all, in the James Bond
film Live and Let Die from seventy three. For those
of you who don't remember it, this is the sort
of blaxploitation inspired Bond film which featured Yafit Koto Haryding
Stanton's co star from Alien as the villain doctor Kanaga

(31:44):
Kang Kananga. I'm sorry, Kananga. Been a while since I've
seen this one. Also, of course, it had an amazing
theme song as well, Live and Let dyings. Yeah, yeah,
that's gotta be one of my tops right there.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
You mean, as far as Bond songs go.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
As long as yeah, as far as Bond songs go,
I would put that up with you know, Duran, Duran's
a view to a kill.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Yeah yeah. Livin Let Die was the first Roger Moore
James Bond movie.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
I need to receive it. I feel like it's a
weird one. It is. But Jane Seymour is also known
to many of you for her role on her title
role on the TV series Doctor Quinn Medicine Woman from
nineteen ninety three through nineteen ninety eight. Other genre credits
include nineteen seventy three's Frankenstein The True Story and nineteen
eighty three is The Phantom of the Opera, among many others.

(32:30):
She was also a Broadway actress, having performed in Amadeus
during its original Broadway run from nineteen eighty through nineteen
eighty three.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
I'm gonna say, as with Patrick Quayne, I'm not trying
to beat up on anybody here, but Jane Seymour is
not spellbinding in this role. She's kind of she feels
like she's kind of just wandering through it.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yeah, and you know, I granted they brought a director
on to, you know, to help the human actors, but
it's hard to deny that a film like this was
not created with the human actors in mind. Yeah. So,
unless you're a stop motion effect or a villain or
an interesting side character, I don't know, you're kind of

(33:10):
facing an uphill battle. I think in a picture like this, Yes.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
And sometimes sometimes Jane Seymour's most awkward moments are not
even her fault. There's one part I want to talk
about later where she something scary happens and she screams,
and they sample her scream twice in a row, like
they play her scream and then they cut to silence
and then they play the exact same scream again. So
that was not her choice to scream twice the same way.

(33:36):
The reason it's funny is an editing choice. I don't
know why they did that, but I'm kind of glad
it's left in. I mean, it's.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
Good, all right. Up next, we have another character by
the name of Diany. She is the daughter of the
wizard we'll get to him in a second, Melanthius, and

(34:03):
she is played by Tarran Power, who lived nineteen fifty
three through twenty twenty. Actress and a daughter of American
actor Tyrone Power and Mexican actress Linda Christian. Her acting
career was not extensive that it encompassed a string of credits,
mostly from the nineteen seventies, but they included a major
role in nineteen seventy six tracks. This starred Dennis Hopper

(34:26):
and a supporting role in the nineteen seventy five TP
adaptation of The Count of Money Christo.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
This is kind of a strange character. I think Tarren
Power does pretty well with this role, but it's a
weird character because they kind of introduce things about her
that then these plot threads are not paid off on later, Like, yeah,
the fact that she's telepathic that doesn't go anywhere, or
the fact that she's falling in love with the baboon
prince is only briefly. You only get the briefest little

(34:54):
glimpse that that might be going somewhere at the end.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah. Yeah, When they first introduced telepathy, I'm like, oh wow,
this is nice and weird. We're getting into some strange
territory here. But they're not really as much not really
much as made of it.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
Does it ever come up again after that scene?

Speaker 2 (35:11):
There may be one other scene of telepathy, but yeah,
for the most part, it's not a major plot point.
All right, Well, let's get to our central villain in
this picture. It is Zenobia, the Sorceress the Witch, played
by Margaret whitting who lived nineteen thirty three through twenty
twenty three, the British actress of stage, screen and TV, who, yeah,

(35:34):
really gets to witch it up big time here. It's
a I think it gets a completely over the top performance,
which is not a bad thing. In a movie like this.
You are competing with and acting alongside stop motion effects,
and you need to be an effect, a special effect
in your own right, and I believe that's what she

(35:55):
brings to the performance of Zenobia.

Speaker 3 (35:56):
You're correct, she does not hold back at all.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
She worked mostly in British television and her credits include
Artemis eighty one, which caught my eye. I have not
seen this, but apparently a weird British television play which
also features Dana Harley Sting and Daniel day Lewis. We'll
have more to say about this performance when we get
into the character in the plot, because this is a

(36:21):
pretty this is a pretty wild villain character and also
one that I don't know. There's a lot of bumbling
here from our magic users, yes, which will be fun
to talk about.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
From her and Malanthias. It's like our two smartest characters,
the ones who are supposed to be outsmarting everybody else,
make these really dumb mistakes.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yes, sometimes right on top of each other, like one
is like, ah, you messed up. Now allow me to
roll the natural one and they just do it back
and forth.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
That's a good metaphor. Yeah, well wait, so let's talk
about Malanthias also rolling ones right back at her.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
That's right. Played by Patrick Throutin, who lived nineteen twenty
through nineteen eighty seven, British actor, best remembered by a
lot of you as the second incarnation of the Doctor
on Doctor Who, so they followed up on the previous
picture by casting a previous Doctor Who in the movie.
He was the second incarnation of the Doctor from nineteen

(37:16):
sixty six through sixty nine, but then he would reprise
this a few times later in subsequent decades. He was
a fairly highly regarded actor whose many credits include a
delightful mix of Shakespearean drama in horror films, particularly Hammer horror.
So His credits generally supporting roles include nineteen fifty five's

(37:37):
Richard the Third That One starred Lawrence Olivier, nineteen sixty
two's The Phantom of the Opera starring Herbert Lohm, sixty
four is The Gorgon nineteen seventies The Scars of Dracula
nineteen seventy fours, Frankenstein in The Monster from Hell and
nineteen seventy six is the omen in which he played
Father Brennan, who has a very memorable death.

Speaker 3 (37:57):
Oh, is he the guy who gets the stake during
the storm?

Speaker 2 (38:01):
Yeah? It's like, what, like a lightning rod or something
falls off the top of a cathedral and like skewers
him standing up in the.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
Okay, I didn't. I didn't realize that was the same guy.
I really love Patrick Troughton as Melanthius. This is one
of the most fun performances in the film. He's a
nice combination of krusty and jovial.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Yes, and certainly bumbling. The character is a great bumbling vibe,
tremendous fun chewing it up there on the screen. Since
he is a previous doctor on Doctor Who. I checked
in with my uncle in law, who is a longtime
Doctor Who fan for his thoughts, and he said this
was his favorite Patrick Throtton movie and that his favorite

(38:43):
Doctor Who episode involved this plot where where he's playing
both the doctor and a character known as Salamander. The
episode is apparently titled The Enemy of the World, in
which quote, the doctor impersonates Salamander to spy on him,
and Salamander impersonates the doctor to steal the tartis. This

(39:04):
is apparently like a dual roles situation. I haven't seen it,
so I can't comment too much on it, but I
think the idea is that Salamander just happens to look
like the doctor and then that enables them to swap
places with each other. But I can imagine how that
would be a lot of fun, you know, from an
acting standpoint, and then as.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
A viewer that I'm sure doing it that way saves
on the makeup budget.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, all right. Up next we have Nudem Sowala playing
Hassan born nineteen thirty three, a Jordanian British actor who
also appeared in such films as nineteen seventy four as Vampira,
seventy five Is The Wind and the Lion, and also
Return of the Pink Panther from the same year, seventy
seven's The Spy Who Loved Me nineteen eighty five's Young
Sherlock Holmes nineteen eighty seven is The Living Daylight. So

(39:49):
that's two Bond films, and then later on he was
in such picture as this two thousand and five Syriana.

Speaker 3 (39:54):
So this guy is I would say Sinbad's main like
lieutenant sort of on his boat. Maybe the I don't
know if they actually ever announced their offices, so I
don't think they say he's first made or anything. But
he's like one of the crew members we see most
often doing things along with Maroof, and all of the
crew members are sort of buffoonish in this movie. They're
sort of like Bottoms Gang in Midsommer Night's stream. You know,

(40:17):
they are often there for comedy. But I like Nadim
Suwala in his scenes and he, you know, he leans
into the buffoonery in a pleasant way.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a fun supporting role that, along with
the character of Maroof, brings some much needed but not
nearly enough diversity to a very whitewashed film. And clearly
he's a charismatic actor. You want to see more from him,
but you know, given what little he's allowed to do
in the picture, he still does a great job. Now
turning to Maroof. Maroof was played by Salami Kocher, who

(40:47):
lived nineteen forty five through nineteen ninety two. Again small
supporting role, but memorable screen presence a lot of the time. Yeah,
where like Patrick Wayne is in the forefront, But we're
really more interested in, well, what are a Hassan and
Maroof doing? Would love to see more of their antics.
Coker Woods the Sierra Leone born actor who trained in

(41:10):
the UK and was part of the cast for a
nineteen seventy two production of Macbeth titled The Black Macbeth
at the Roundhouse Theater. I looked up some information on this.
He played that production's version of McDuff.

Speaker 3 (41:24):
Oh okay.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
He also wrote and directed plays and appeared in the
TV series Born Free in nineteen seventy four. He died
during the Sierra Leonian Civil War. All right, This movie
is a lot of the plot centers around the character
of Cassine, who, in his human form is played by
Damian Thomas, who lived nineteen forty two through twenty twenty five.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
Oh my god, it's Count Carnstein. If we've talked about
I'm sure he's come up on Weird House before, but
I know Rob, you and I have talked about him
off Mike, because he's in these Hammer horror movies like
Twins of Evil where he's playing this recurring character of
the vampire Count Carnstein. And there's a great scene in
Twins of Evil where he's having this dinner with all

(42:10):
these evil guests who were gathered around his table, and
he raises a glass and he says to Satan.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Yeah, he's a lot of fun. We don't really. He
doesn't really do much in this picture though. His main
job is to look handsome whenever. His character is not
a stop motion baboon, but he's more impressive in other works.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
Does he have lines as the non baboon version.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
You know, I honestly can't remember if he does. If
he does, he doesn't say much. I think he maybe
has a line or two at the beginning, and then
it's mostly baboon form. But yeah. Best known for his
roles in seventy one's Twins of Evil, he was in
nineteen seventy six Is the Message, and also the nineteen
eighty TV adaptation of Showgun. His later credits included twenty

(42:57):
tens Never Let Me Go on the Small Screen I.
He also appeared in one of my absolute favorite episodes
of the Granada Sherlock Holme series starring Jeremy Brett, the
Devil's Foot episode he plays more to more treganous in that.
This is This is the if anyone doesn't remember this,
this is the one where Sherlock is investigating a case

(43:17):
where it seems like some people dining in a home
were frightened to death or madness by something appearing at
the window, and so it seems like there might be
some sort of supernatural element in play. But it turns
out it's not. It's something more in a way, more
mysterious and interesting. Anyway, that's great.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
Is it an orangutin?

Speaker 2 (43:40):
It is not an a rangute? Okay, we've actually talked
about this one on the show before. I think we've
talked about poisons. Basically, it turns out to be some
sort of a hallucinogenic poison that is used against them. Okay. Now,
note Thomas was born in Egypt, but he was of
British and French heritage, but was often called on to
play a host of foreign roles in British productions. Now,

(44:03):
of note, the Minton, of course, is everyone's favorite. The
minaton is depicted in two ways. We see a stop
motion minton primarily, but there's also a version of the
minton that involves a human in a suit that human.
Peter Mayhew nineteen forty four through twenty nineteen, the seven
foot three actor best known for his portrayal of Chewbacca.

Speaker 3 (44:24):
So wait, he had two big movies in seventy seventies. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
Yeah, one way or another, it was going to be
Peter Mayhew's year. It just turned out to be the
year of Star Wars and not Simbad in the Eye
of the Tiger.

Speaker 3 (44:36):
I would love to hear his thoughts on that, Like
did he think maybe Sindbad was going to be a
bigger hit?

Speaker 2 (44:42):
Who knows? Yeah, I mean Simbad, Simbada and the Eye
of the Tiger. As we've discussed and we'll continue to discuss,
it is a very old fashioned picture. Like you can
tell that, like it feels like a picture of the
nineteen sixties as opposed to the nineteen seventies, almost the
nineteen eighties. But in that you can imagine some people thinking, like,

(45:06):
this is what a movie's about, Like this is this
is a return to the basics. This is what people want.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
Yeah, my swashes are buckled with this one. I don't
know what a death star is.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
All right? And finally, the score here the musical score
is by Roy Budd, who of the nineteen forty seven
through nineteen ninety three highly talented composer and musician who
died tragically young, but was nominated for a Golden Globe
for Best Original Song for nineteen seventy six is Paper Tiger.
He also composed the Get Carter theme song, which, if

(45:41):
you haven't listened to it, it's pretty stellar. You've probably
heard it somewhere. In addition to nineteen seventy ones Get Carter,
his other scores include seventy ones Cat Low and seventy
three's The Stone Killer, which has some nice synths in it.
The score for Simbat and The Eye of the Tiger
is like a sweeping adventure score. It's it does its
job perfectly. But listening to some of these other scores

(46:04):
that Bud did, I get the impression that maybe he
was at his best on films that enabled him to
explore more modern Nineteen seventy sounds like something a little
cynthy but also jazzy. That seems to be a sweet spot,
because that Get Carter theme song is tremendous.

Speaker 3 (46:21):
I don't know if I know it, I'll have to
go listen to it after this, But yeah, I would
say the sindbad score does not really stand out to
me much in either direction.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
Yeah, but it does its job.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
Yeah, well it actually, you know, there's some good music
cues in it now that I think about it, especially
in the scary scenes. It's like the creepy scenes with
the minoton have some really nicely complimentary music.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
Oh yeah, like when they've just finished baking his.

Speaker 3 (46:44):
Heart, yes, and like the heartbeat is playing and you
get those creepy kind of woo things.

Speaker 2 (46:50):
That's good stuff.

Speaker 4 (46:51):
That is good.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
All right, Are you ready to talk about the plot?

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Let's get into it.

Speaker 3 (47:03):
So we open with a shot of fireworks showing there's
a great celebration going on, and we get an establishing
shot of a city on a coast with beautiful Islamic
architecture and a full moon rising behind the city. So
along the skyline in the moonlight we can see white
city walls, minarets, pyramid shaped roofs, domes, and then we

(47:26):
cut to inside the palace in this city. This is
the kingdom we will later learn it's called Shirak. So
inside the palace in the capital of Shirak, there is
a procession going on where the Sharrak is about to
crown a new Khliph. And in this part of the
movie we see several main characters all in their formal

(47:46):
court attire. They've got veils, turbans, lots of jewelry. And
in this scene you've got Prince Cassim played by Damian Thomaskin.
That's Count Carnstein for you Hammer fans. This is the
noble young prince who's about to ascend to the throne.
He's about to be crowned Caliph Cassim's beautiful and kind
hearted sister for Ra played by Jane Seymour, Cassim's stepmother,

(48:09):
Zenobia played by Margaret Whitting and again she's the very
first moment you see her. It's a case of like, okay,
which one of you is the evil witch? Like she's
just always she's got her nose upturned at everyone, permanent
witch sneer. In fact, I think I could make a
distinction here. Maybe there are more categories than this, but broadly,

(48:29):
if you're going to take movie witches, I think there
are like two big streams that you can split them into,
and it's going to be like woods witch versus Castle Witch,
and so you've got your more kind of earthy, ground
level nature associated or independently operating, which is that's kind

(48:50):
of your woods witch. And then you've got your aristocratic
witches who are doing depraved evil magic. And these tend
to be you know, rich schemers who are trying to,
you know, protect their power. And Zenobia in this movie
is very much in the ladder camp. She is an
evil queen witch and aristocratic witch.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
Yeah, absolutely, get you your goop witch, I guess yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
And then also you have Zenobia's son, Raffi, played by
Kurt Christian, who is doing his best to look like
he is scheming at all times.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
Here.

Speaker 3 (49:23):
Yes, So the procession leads into the throne room. Prince
Cassim assumes the position at the head of the hall
and there's a big ceremonial brazier of charcoal smoking in
front of him, and then a cleric steps up behind
Cassim to place the crown on his head. But as
the crown is descending, we cut to Zenobia and then

(49:44):
we see her eyes and she's looking very intense as
if she's casting a spell on Cassim, and the moment
the crown touches his head, the brazier flares up and
these flames leap to the ceiling and you hear a
clamor break out in the room and Princess Farros screen
and this is the moment I was talking about earlier.
In a quite funny editing choice, we get the exact

(50:06):
same scream played twice, so it goes scream awkward, cut
to silence for a second. Then the clamor resumes and
the same scream plays, scream and scream again. Okay, yeah, exactly. However,
we don't see yet what was so horrifying. We can't
see what she sees. We cut away to some time.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
Later, which I thought was kind of a confusing cut
because I knew I knew about some of the stop
motion creatures that I was in store for, and I
thought maybe they were about to jump out, or we
would find out later that they jumped out, But that's
not really what happened either. Will reveal if.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
I had gone to the theater, Like if I'd seen
a preview for this and had gone to the theater,
I would be expecting. Okay, Jane Seymour just screamed, We're
about to see the minoton but yeah no, So next
we meet our other main characters, the brave Captain Sindbad
played by Patrick Wayne, and his crew of lovable scoundrels.
They anchor their ship in the harbor off the coast

(51:02):
of the capital city of Shirak Heir, and they row
ashore talking about how excited they are to eat roasted
sheep's eyeballs, to meet some local women, and to have
some wine to chill out at the inn. But that's
what the sailors are into. Sindbad himself is here for
a specific purpose. He is in love with the Princess
Farrah and he wants to ask her father's blessing for

(51:24):
the two of them to get married.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
Yeah, he is sort of higher goals, like not sheep
eye eyeballs, but maybe sheep ears and not just any women,
but the princess herself.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
That's right. Or actually, I don't know if he wants
to ask her father, he might know that. I think
it's that he wants to ask Cassim, her brother, for
her hand in marriage. Yeah. So anyway, when when Sinbad
comes to the entrance to the city, he finds the
gates closed and the walls of the city are dark
and silent. He tries to call out to the captain
of the guard. Nobody comes. What's wrong? Well, behind him,

(51:58):
a man appears claiming to be a and he warns
Sindbad that the city is under curfew due to an
outbreak of the plague. Now we the audience can see
the so called merchant is actually Raffi, the queen's and
obious son, and he tells Sindbad that he will not
be able to pass the city gates until daybreak, and
until then he offers Sinbad and his men the comfort

(52:20):
of his tent to share wine and food and a fire,
so Sindbad accepts. Next thing, they are all hanging out
around this fire, eating meat and watching belly dancers. There's
one crew member here. I don't remember who this is,
but he gets a great close up that is very
much like a D and D dwarf with chicken and
his beard thing. He's simultaneously like cartoon wolf ogling the

(52:44):
belly dancer in front of him and cramming some disintegrating
white food into his mouth. So Raffi offers the other
all the sailor's wine, and you know, they take their
glasses and Sindbad is about to drink, but then another
sailor who has already drank the wine, starts screaming and
they figure out the wine is poisoned, so a sword
fight breaks out between Sindbad and Raffi. Sinbad quickly gets

(53:07):
the upper hand and he demands to know who Raffi
really is and why he tried to kill them, But
before he can get an answer, a strange feeling comes
over everyone in the tent, and there's a cold wind
howling from outside, and then a woman covered all in
black except for just a strip where you can see
her eyes, parts the flaps of the tent and steps
into their midst and eerie music starts to play. There

(53:30):
is a sort of unstable witch theme that we hear
throughout the film associated with Zenobia here and despite her disguise,
obviously we the audience know this must be who this is.
But the camera zooms in on her face where only
her eyes are exposed, and then her eyes fade and
are superimposed with non human eyes with vertical slits like

(53:51):
a cat's eye. So I think they're trying to give
you a little payoff in the title there yea the
Eye of the Tiger. This like sheet her eyes turn
into cat eyes.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
Yeah, there's not much to it. It happens because she's
doing magic, and maybe it's sort of foreshadowing something to come,
but also not really so.

Speaker 3 (54:07):
In a booming, echoing voice, she says, from the depths
of the earth, I command you a rise, kill them,
kill Sinbad, and she points down to the campfire, and
out of the fire emerge three creatures, our first stop
motion monsters of the film, so it didn't take too
long to get to them. These monsters are sort of

(54:29):
clay fleshed insectoid ghoules. There are three of them, bipedal,
basically human in form. They are very skinny. They're like skeletons,
but with a little bit of skin and sinew stretched
over the bones, with a texture that looks somewhere between
clay but also sort of rubber and sort of wood.

(54:50):
And they are armed. One of them has a sword,
another has an axe, and I think one has a club.
And then on their heads they have mouths that are
fixed in permanent gaping frown like they don't move their mouths,
they're just gaping frown shaped with wrinkled cheek skin drooping
on either side of the mouth. And then they've got
these pairs of nubby horns or buds on top of

(55:12):
their heads, and huge saucer sized, bulbous eyes with no pupils,
no color differentiation in the eyes, just each a solid
color all the way across. One of them has black eyes,
one red, and one green. I loved these ghouls when
I was a kid, and I love them now. I
think this is a really fun design and once the
fight breaks out, this one is a hoot.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
Yeah, these creatures look great. They you know, there's a
there's a bit of the devil to them. They're kind
of like skeletons and then and also like bugs too.
They they remind they have a little bit of an
Edgar Riis Burrows vibe to them. I could easily imagine
them on the side of a van in the nineteen seventies.
You know, they remind me a lot of things I

(55:55):
remember from I remember seeing a nineteen seventies fantasy art,
so they had They have a great visual flair for sure,
and then the fight sequence is full of that Ray
Harry hows and human versus stop motion sword fight effects.
It's wonderful.

Speaker 3 (56:10):
Yeah, and I love that stuff, even when the edges
are a little bit patchy. Still I love it. So
Sindbad and his men fight bravely, but the Ghules are magical.
So one of the men, it might be San stabs
a Ghul through the chest with a sword and the
ghule just kind of looks down like what was that? Well,
never mind, and then just keeps on fighting. So we

(56:30):
get the idea, you're not going to beat these guys
with a few jabs of a sword, that you can't
beat them that way, And the fight proceeds outside of
the tent into the open port in the moonlight, and
eventually it's just Sindbad versus these three monsters. So how
is he going to beat them if his sword is
basically useless? He uses a cool trick. This is the

(56:50):
kind of thing I like in a fight scene. I
like when a fight scene is not just like application
of weapon back and forth until somebody wins. I like
it when there's somebody figures out an in iron mental
trick or something. And that's what Maybe I like that
because I grew up watching movies like this. So Sindbad
realizes there is a giant pile of timber logs stacked

(57:11):
up on the shore. I guess they've just been loaded
off of a ship here, and Sindbad cuts the rope
holding the logs in place, and then they tumble out
of their pile, falling on crushing and burying the ghules underneath.
And that's a flawless victory.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
I think it's probably worth noting here that the ghules
are at least vaguely connected to Middle Eastern lore here,
as opposed to I think pretty much any of the
other monsters in the picture. We've talked about ghules on
the show before, though these are I guess essentially ghules
and name only I don't know.

Speaker 3 (57:45):
I don't think we see them eating grave flesh or anything.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Right.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
So Sinbad is about to run back to his ship,
but suddenly a woman in a pink veil calls out
to him. He turns and it is his beloved. It's
Princess Farah played by Jane Seymour, and so they have
a brief reunion, but the witch is still about. So
Sinbad sees a figure clad in black watching them, and
there's no time to talk. They run and jump into

(58:09):
the bay and all begin swimming out to Sinbad's ship. Also,
his sailor friends are in the dinghy and they're rowing
back to the ship as well. They're going out there
to you until the morning comes when things will be safer.
But back on the ship, Farah fills Sinbad in as
she says it's not true that the city is under plague.
Her brother Cassim has come under a terrible curse quote

(58:31):
worse than a thousand plagues, and she needs Sinbad's help
to break it, and Sinbad says, oh, he owes Cassim
his life from previous adventures. I guess, so he promises
to do anything he can to help. In this scene,
we also learn a bit about their relationship. Sinbad and
Pharah have been in love, but they couldn't marry because
they couldn't get on the same page. Sinbad refused to

(58:52):
give up his life at sea, Farah refused to give
up her life at court, and upon their meeting, Sinbad says, hey, okay,
I'm ready to live on land, and she said, well,
I'm ready to live at sea. So I don't know
which way they're going to compromise now, or maybe maybe
they're at an impass again.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
They've gifted the magi, so it would have.

Speaker 3 (59:13):
Been would have been a happy reunion one way or another,
I guess, if not for the curse worse than a
thousand plagues. So the next day, Fora's uncle Balsora, who
seems to be kind of regent for the time being,
he comes to meet them at Sindbad's ship and he
says that they have consulted all of the wisest doctors
and astrologers from here to Alexandria, and no one knows

(59:36):
how to help Cassim.

Speaker 2 (59:40):
Balsora here is played by Bruno Barnaby, who lived nineteen
oh five through nineteen ninety eight, a British actor of
stage and screen. He was also in nineteen seventy six
Is The Message, which starred Anthony Quinn.

Speaker 3 (59:55):
So Balsaura explains that unless Prince Cassim is able to
be crowned Caliph within the next seven full moons, he
will forever lose his right to ascend to the throne.
And I think that it's implied that the crown will
then pass to Raffi's and Obia's son, and it's like,
is there anybody here who can break the spell? Before
then they talk about it and Sindbad has an idea.

(01:00:18):
He says, if there's anyone who knows how to cure Cassim.
It could only be a Greek wise man named Melanthius,
who is a hermit, natural philosopher, and alchemist who lives
on an island called Caskar off the coast of Phrygia.
Sinbad says his deeds are legendary and he may not
even exist.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
It seems like a very far fetched plan. It's the
kind of thing you'd instantly go for in dungeons and dragons. Obviously,
you know, but practically it's like, our only hope is
someone who might not exist at all.

Speaker 3 (01:00:50):
But it was your idea. But he might not exist,
And so he says the journey will not be easy.
That the crew talk about it, they say his island
is ringed with dead reefs, and it's full of savages
who eat human flesh and worship Malanthius as a god.
And then also they say that some people, some say
that Melanthius himself, if he exists, is mad. But Balsora promises,

(01:01:13):
He's like, okay, let's do that. Yeah. He promises to
sind treasure for Sinbad's crew and for Melanthius. But before
they can get underway, we have to have a meeting
between the hero and the villain. So Zenobia arrives in
like she's being carried in like a little compartment, and
when she shows up, all the horses whinny with fear,

(01:01:34):
and she starts off kind of playing coy with She's like, oh, sinbad,
why you know, what are you doing here? There is
nothing that can be done about Cassim. But by the
end of the scene she's just full on yelling at them.
She tells them abandon hope. Cassim is doomed forever. And
then Jane Seymour gets very upset at Zenobia because they
do not have a friendly relationship, and she grabs a

(01:01:56):
knife and she says, let me cut that smile from
her face. But Valsa reminds her, you are not allowed
to draw one drop of blood from a member of
the royal family or it has been prophesied. I guess
you will bring down an eternal curse on your head.
And then Fara says, well, that's the only reason she
has an outright murdered Cassim. She says, as cunning is

(01:02:18):
a snake, as malicious as a shark, Rafi will never
be Caliph. Zenobia says, there is no one who can
prevent it, and Fara says Melanthius will prevent it, and
this hits Zenobia is shaken. She stops for a moment
to think, and she tries to dismiss it. She says
Melanthius is a myth and his powers are a legend.
He does not exist, but I guess we'll find out,

(01:02:40):
and Zenobia retreats, oh do we want to mention? In
the scene, we also meet a Hinchman kind of character
I think named Zabeide who is Balsaura's guard captain with
an eyepatch very well, oh.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
Yeah, played by Bernard Kay who lived nineteen twenty eight
through twenty fourteen, a British character actor who also appeared
on Doctor Who.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
Yeah. So, sind Farrah and the crew get ready to
set sail for the island of Kaskar. Meanwhile, we get
a scene of the witch Zenobia and her son Raffi
together in private discussing their schemes. Zenobia is disturbed by
Sindbad's plan. She says if Melantheus exists, he is the
only person who she fears could undo her magic, and

(01:03:20):
Raffi is kind of whiny. He's like, but you promised
me it was my turn to be Khalif. But Mom,
yeah exactly. Uh, but yeah, so they discuss. She's like,
I will make sure that you it is your turn
to be Khalif. So they go to check on a project.
Zenobia's got a sort of medieval blast door on her

(01:03:41):
laboratory here where you can look through the glass window
into a furnace that's firing something. And in fact, it
reminds me of the radiation room in The Devil Bat
where Bella Goosi is looking through the square window while
he microwaves bats.

Speaker 4 (01:03:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
Yeah, there's there's definitely a mad science vibe to a
lot of what she has going on here. Well, Malathius
as well Milanthius as well as wolf. See.

Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
Yeah. So she says Sindbad may have a ship and
a crew, and Balsora may have his palace guards. But
then she stares through the window into the furnace and says,
that will be our army. What is it we see inside?
And it appears to be a white, hot metal form
of a minotaur, a man's body, muscular, big shoulders, with

(01:04:27):
the head of a bull, all made of bronze, glowing
with heat.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
Ah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:32):
The Menotan meanwhile, Raffi has been working on something too.
He's been crafting a golden heart covered with clockwork gears
and jewels, and so we get this awakening scene. And
I love this scene. I remember how scary it was
when I was a little kid. I was mesmerized. So
the bronze Minotaur this is a little bit later, and

(01:04:54):
the minataar is removed from the furnace and laid out
on a stone slab in Zenobia's chambers. On the soundtrack
there is this steady rhythmic heart beat and some creepy
atmospheric music. Then Zenobia holds up the clockwork heart with
its little gears pumping and milling around, and she says, Oh,
brave and proud bull, whose heart my son has fashioned

(01:05:16):
of purest gold, beat with the power as only I
command you, Oh mighty Abu Slem, you who rule over
a thousand devils by all the fires of hell and darkness,
give strength in life to this your creature, min Oton
min Oton. And as she says this, she pours little
streams of a blood red potion out of a bottle

(01:05:39):
onto the bronze statue's head, and the blood runs down
like tears from the corner of the bull's eye and
then slowly the creature's eyelids creak open. And I don't
know why this is so creepy, but this really hit
me when I was young. The eyelids open, and then
underneath them, the eyes are the same bronze material as

(01:06:02):
the lids, and they're just blank. So it's like something
opening and there's nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
Yeah. Yeah, this is just such a great sequence. I
really enjoyed seeing this this on the big screen, and
I'm I'm glad that this is a family project. Like
so many things seem to be just Zenobia's doing, like
she's doing all the leg work to try and get
Raffi the throne. But here we learn, you know that
he has also done his part. He has created the heart,

(01:06:29):
he has crafted the heart, and therefore you know it's
a it's a family effort to bring the menton into existence.

Speaker 3 (01:06:35):
That's right. He is a crafter of clockwork, which you
wouldn't you wouldn't guess based on the other things he
does in the movie. Because generally, as Zenobia is the
brains of the operation.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
And I to it in a larger extent, I think
it's it's worth noting that I think Zenobia has taken
on too much in this quest. I feel like she's
a very confident woman. She's a very capable witch, but
she is trying to do a lot, mostly all by
herself or via the efforts of things that she has

(01:07:06):
directly created. And you're just gonna you're gonna have mistakes
if you try and take on too many things. You
just can't do everything effectively. And so she is going
to begin to stumble here and there.

Speaker 3 (01:07:17):
We'll get to a really good stumble in a bit,
but I'd say right now, she's still cooking like she's
ten for ten at this point.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
Yeah, at this point, she's very confident and with good reason.
Everything seems to be going her way, with the possible
exception of this quest that she's about to squash. But hey,
she has the Minton, the one man army of the
menton here.

Speaker 3 (01:07:37):
So back on Sindbad's ship, there's one scene where they're
like they're bringing a crate on board for the journey.
This is before they leave, and it topples over and
reveals that it's actually a cage with a living thing inside,
a large baboon creature, and the baboon grunts and gets
agitated until Princess Farrago's to calm it. She is bringing

(01:07:57):
this baboon with her on the journey. Later, a member
of the crew, Hassan, is working on ropes on the
outside of the ship and he spies through the window
into the captain's quarters to see Princess Farah playing chess
with the baboon.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
Ah, this is such a great reveal.

Speaker 3 (01:08:14):
Yes, And Hassan comes into the cabin and the baboon
reacts violently before retreating to his cage. Then Sindbad also
comes in and Hassan's like trying to tattle tale. He's
like Captain, the baboon was playing, and Sinbad says, chess,
I know he's beaten me twice.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
The baboon. To be clear, is is a Ray Harry
Housen effect. Yes, and there's no live baboon used here,
and it's clear that it's not a live babboon. But again,
through the magic of Ray Harry Housen's craft, it feels
completely alive. It feels like an authentic character with a
complete internal state going on. It's wonderful, totally.

Speaker 3 (01:08:52):
Yes, it is there in the room, and I don't
see how this is possible. I mean, I think it
looks wonderful. I don't see how this is possible. Well,
but I have read that some audience members mistook it
for being like a real live creature in the in
this set. I mean, I don't think I could possibly
think that about it. But it looks great, and it
really does it has drama within it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
Yeah, I well, I'll just take it. I think we'll
take that as the compliment that it probably was. I mean,
I can't imagine being upset about that where they're like,
I thought it was a real bad damn you, Harry Housen.

Speaker 3 (01:09:28):
So anyway, the import of the scene is the baboon
is not just a baboon. It is actually Prince Cassim.
This is the curse. The Witch transformed him from man
into baboon, and to prove it, the baboon writes on
the wall with a pencil, he writes, I am Cassim.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
After this, we get our first scene of the minoton
in action. This is good. So some guards left behind
to watch Zenobia's castle. I think this includes Zabid, the
character with the ipatch we mentioned earlier. They see a
boat emerging from under the fortification, of Zenobia's castle and
it is a boat traveling without sails. Instead. It has

(01:10:06):
many rows of oars pumping in the water, but only
one oarsman, a single giant figure on the deck working
a single mechanism that powers all of the oars at once.
This is the Minoton rowing the galley by himself. The
guards say they're going to go out and try to
get aboard the boat, so they head out in the

(01:10:27):
little dinghy. It does not go well. Zenobia sees them
and orders the Minoton to steer the galley straight into
the dinghy. It rams and crushes their boat. One of
the men is left alive in the water, calling for help,
and then she commands the Minoton to finish him. So
the Minoton goes. He gets its long spear and he
stabs the guy and like heaves him up over the
top of the boat onto the other side. Chilling scene.

(01:10:50):
Another one that scared me when I was a kid.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
Yeah, quality kill. Minoton looks very strong here, and watching
it for the first time, I'm like, we're building up
to that battle with Menaton and Sindbat. I don't know
how he's gonna pull it off.

Speaker 3 (01:11:10):
Okay, So next thing, our heroes arrive at the Isle
of Caskar Sinbad and his companions. They get there, they
go on shore and explore, and I really like the
location shots here. There are some beautiful desert canyons and
use of real rock cut ruins. I'm almost certain this
is Petra in Jordan. It really looks like it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
It is, yes. The what al Casne Mazwet Mausoleum is
a popular tourist site and a frequent filming location. I
think most people may remember this from this location from
Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade, but it also shows
up in films like Mortal Kombat Annihilation.

Speaker 3 (01:11:47):
That is a mat I do not remember that from Annihilation.
I'm gonna have to watch that one again. So as
they approach the temple of Melanthius, suddenly all of our
heroes are pelted with rocks by people on the cliffs above.
But then they are saved by the intervention of a
young woman. This young woman with blonde hair comes out
of the temple and orders the people to stop throwing rocks.

(01:12:09):
She interrogates the travelers. This is Diany. We will later
learn Malanthius's daughter, and after Sindbad, he gets through to her.
He's like, we have to meet Malanthius and she's like why,
and he says it's a matter of great urgency and importance.
She's like, oh, well, in that case, good enough. We'll

(01:12:31):
go see Malanthius then. And here's where we learned that
Melanthius and Diany can communicate telepathically. I did not remember
this detail from when I watched the movie as a kid.
You know, they we see them have a conversation while
they're on like, you know, not within speaking distance. They're
on opposite sides of this great distance, and they're like,

(01:12:51):
what is that? And she says, my father taught me.
He calls it telepathia, and again does not really seem
to come up again in the film, but Malanthius explains
that when they meet. He explains he already knows who
Sinbad is because thought is transferable and it can travel
through time and space. Okay, maybe that's more telepathic stuff.

(01:13:16):
But so we have introductions all around. Farrah and Sinbad
introduce the baboon cassium to Malanthius here and Malanthius reacts well,
he says, the scientific name of the baboon, and he's
very happy to see the baboon. The baboon also takes
a liking to Diany. It licks her hand, and so
Malanthius takes Cassim back to his laboratory to examine him.

(01:13:39):
He explains that as an alchemist, he knows that metals
can be changed, one transforming into another, and by the
same principle, he believes it's possible that one creature can
be transformed into another. He gets a mirror and he
gives it to Cassim, and this is basically the ancient
Greek version of the mirror self recognition test. Cassim looks

(01:14:00):
in the mirror in his baboon form and is distressed
and then saddened, and the baboon cries, and Malanthius says,
by all the gods, a true baboon would have attacked
the mirror, thinking it an enemy, and would not have
recognized itself or have been moved to grief. So Malanthius
here is shaken. He says this black magic is more
powerful than he's ever seen before. He does accept Prince

(01:14:23):
Cassim's identity and he shakes the baboon hand. So they
start kind of brainstorming about what can be done to
save Cassim. They it is mentioned that they're having mint tea.
I thought that was interesting. I was like, Oh, I
wonder how far back mint tea actually goes practice. Is
that an ancient world thing? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
It's depicted here, so we have to just believe it
at face value.

Speaker 3 (01:14:45):
Yes, it's canon. Diany brings Cassim bananas, and I was thinking, like, wait,
is this a joke about how he's a baboon? Do
they associate bananas with primates?

Speaker 2 (01:14:56):
I don't know. I guess it's a joke. But on
the other hand, it's like everyone loves bananas.

Speaker 3 (01:14:59):
Yeah, I love ban But Melanthius explains that the longer
Cassim stays in this form, the less of his mind
will remain and the more his animal nature will take over.
And also, he finally recalls, he's like, wait a minute,
I think there may be one way to cure him.
He says, an ancient advanced civilization, now lost, known as

(01:15:22):
the rmas Pi, once knew the secrets of transforming matter
one into another for alchemy purposes. Their machines by those
same principles, may be able to transform Cassim back into
his true form. He says that the aramass Pi lived
in Hyperborea, the great Northern Continent, a warm and green

(01:15:43):
valley surrounded by glaciers on all sides. And he says
if they could find the great shrine in the temple
of the ramass Pi, cassium might be saved.

Speaker 2 (01:15:53):
So mentions of Hyperborea date back apparently to the writings
of Herododus, but its use here probably still from more
modern usage and esoteric, the esoteric thought and more to
the point, weird fiction. So Hyperborea may be more familiar
with a number of you out there because it shows
up and say the writings of Roberty Howard as well
as Clark Ashton Smith and others.

Speaker 3 (01:16:15):
And I think the aram Aspi are also mentioned in
ancient Greek writings, Like doesn't Herodotus mention them as like
the people who get gems from Gryffins or something like that?

Speaker 2 (01:16:24):
Oh, yes, yes, yes, I think we've talked about that
on the show before, haven't we like a valley of
the gems and Griffins or the others. There are a
few different stories and with different creatures involved.

Speaker 3 (01:16:34):
Yes, yeah, I may be misremembering, but that's what I
associated with. Also, the the the Ara Masspi scrolls which
they're going to use to guide them to this place.
They're being kept in a basket with a bunch of gerbils.

Speaker 2 (01:16:46):
Yes, I love this. This This got a great chuckle
by the love from the live audience. So at my viewing, yeah,
you just keep those in there with the with the rodents.

Speaker 3 (01:16:55):
It's fine little rodent toilet paper containing the ancient lost secrets.
But anyway, so there's a moment here where I didn't
fully get the the causality, like why one thing leads
to another, But quickly Melanthius like builds a laser and
then he tests it. Then he considers the principle proven
and he agrees he will go with Sindbad and Farrah

(01:17:17):
to Hyperborea.

Speaker 2 (01:17:18):
Yeah, he builds this death ray laser thing, and you, yeah,
you kind of assume this will be more important, like
all right, we're laying it out. This is this canon
is going to be important later on, but not really.

Speaker 3 (01:17:30):
I think it was just to make sure that he
accepted the principle that transformation of a creature could happen, right. Yeah.
So the next sequence we get is a fun one.
This is Zenobia the Spy here's where we get both
Zenobia and Malanthius kind of bumbling. So Zenobia, Raffi, and
the Minoton remain in hot pursuit of Sindbad's ship, and

(01:17:51):
Zenobia decides that she has to know their plan. She
has to know what advice Malanthius has given them, So
she drinks from her vial of blood Poe recites a spell,
and then she transforms into a seagull, and in her
gull form, she flies to Sindbad's ship, where she then
retransforms into herself, but in tiny form, So it's attack

(01:18:13):
of the puppet people's stuff. She's doll sized, running around
on the floor and spying. Now while she's doing this,
I think it's actually Cassim in baboon form who notices her.
And then, with the Baboon's help, Malanthius captures puppet sized
Zenobia and puts her in a jar. So it's kind
of Doctor Pretorius bride of Frankenstein.

Speaker 4 (01:18:34):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
Yeah, so she's already screwed up royally in an attempt
to spy on her enemies. She is miniaturized, deep powered,
and captured by her enemies, and now she's in a
jar on their table.

Speaker 3 (01:18:46):
Yeah, so Melanthius is left alone in the room with
the homunculus Zenobia to interrogate her. He threatens to put
a bee in the jar with her if she does
not answer him. I was like, whoa, that is brutal.

Speaker 2 (01:18:58):
Yeah, so yeah, like this, there's a these two don't
know each other.

Speaker 3 (01:19:02):
Yeah, I mean, you've never met.

Speaker 2 (01:19:03):
But it's this. This already seems like they are like
long time enemies. Here if he's already like, all right,
I'm just gonna put a wild to you giant be
in there, and we'll just see what happens when it
stings you.

Speaker 3 (01:19:15):
She knows of him by reputation. I wonder if he
also knows of her by reputation. I don't think that's
clear night.

Speaker 2 (01:19:23):
Or you know, he's the guy who lives mostly alone
in the middle of an island far from humanity. Maybe
he just distrusts everyone. He treats everyone like this, and
that's why he's alone.

Speaker 4 (01:19:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:19:33):
Yeah, but anyway, so he's trying to figure out what
she wants. He goes, why did you come here to
get a look at these? And then he holds up
the scrolls and show where they're going. Yeah, long enough
for her to get a good solid look at them,
and then he's also like, do you know that we're
going to the Shrine of the RMS by well now she.

Speaker 2 (01:19:52):
Does, yeah, where you'll need this key and he holds
that up as well, and she hit The movie is
wise to what's going on, because she's like she's wide
eyed over this, and she's like, oh, you know, I'm
gonna memorize this really quickly. Oh that key, okay, I
need to steal that later. So massive bumbling from Melanthius
here as well.

Speaker 3 (01:20:11):
He kind of catches himself like after he does it,
he covers his mouth like ooops. And then she starts
trying to hypnotize Melanthius and send him to sleep, but
it works for a minute, but he kind of snaps
out of it. But then Melanthius recovers the vial of
magic blood potion that Zenobia dropped in the room. He
thinks it may be possible to use it to transform

(01:20:33):
Cassim back to himself, and he decides to test it
on the bee that he was messing with earlier, and
Zenobia is screaming the whole time. She's like, no, that's mine,
I need it. But then the bee experiment goes very bad.
The bee laps up the potion and then it starts
growing and growing and growing. And now you've just got

(01:20:54):
a monster killer bee in the room. Yes, and Zenobia
is yelling at it. She's like, yes, kill the Greek.
Kill antheus. So while he is busy being attacked by
the bee, Zenobia escapes her jar, drinks more potion, shifts
back into gull form, and then flies back to her ship.
But then when she arrives back at her ship, she

(01:21:16):
she has to transform back into human shape with more
of the potion, and unfortunately there was not enough left.
She is like ninety five percent transformed back into human shape,
but she still has a seagull foot.

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
Oh, shades of the fly here. Yeah, And my wife
mentioned that when she she remembered this scene from she
remembered two scenes from saying this as a kid, the
baboon playing chess and then the witch being stuck with
a gull's foot.

Speaker 3 (01:21:44):
This one. This scene also made a major impression on
me as a kid. I found this. Now, this scene's
kind of funny, but it was scary when I.

Speaker 4 (01:21:52):
Was a kid.

Speaker 3 (01:21:52):
I mean, the idea of being stuck with a gull's
foot is actually scary.

Speaker 2 (01:21:56):
Yeah, it's it's horrifying, and it really makes you kind
of feel for Zo be A. Here. This is where
I begin to think, like, oh, this, this poor woman
has taken too much on and and she's not going
to be able to pull this off. She's already having
some massive setbacks here. And in general, this whole sequence
is fascinating because it was clearly they clearly set out

(01:22:17):
to have both of these characters fumbling all over the place.
Everybody thinks they're out to each each side thinks they're
out smarting the other, but end up losing in the process,
Like both sides have experienced massive setbacks.

Speaker 3 (01:22:30):
Yes, yes, So eventually they reach Hyperborea, Sindbad's ship reaches
the ice. There are these huge ice bergs in the water,
and Sindbad discovers that they have to take the long
route over the top of the ice because there was
going to be a hidden tunnel passage to the valley
of the armas By, but it's too small for their
ship to sail through. So eventually the ice brings Sinbad's

(01:22:53):
ship to a stop and they load up sledges that
they have fashioned according to Melanthius's designs, and they travel
overland or over ice. Along the way, we get another
stop motion creature battle where they battle a killer walrus.
This is yet another actually kind of sympathy for the villain. Here,
this monster walrus comes up out of the ice and

(01:23:14):
it attacks their camp, so they have to they have
to fight it. But I remember thinking when I was
a kid and I saw this the way they're like,
it just seems like a big animal here, and they're
like poking it with these sticks and stuff, and I
was like, oh, I bet that hurts the walrus. I
remember having that thought.

Speaker 2 (01:23:30):
Yeah, it just wants to eat like mollusks and stuff.
But here these humans are messing with it.

Speaker 3 (01:23:36):
But there is a good moment of peril here. I
think it is Maroof who gets like tangled and the
rope says they like they sort of drive it away
by poking at it, and it starts trying to retreat
and go back into the water. But Maroof is tangled
in these ropes that are hanging off the back of
the walrus, and it's like it's going to drag him
under the water, and they've just managed to cut him
loose in time before it dives.

Speaker 2 (01:23:57):
Yeah, I'm glad they were able to save Marouf so
that he can unceremoniously die later in the picture.

Speaker 3 (01:24:03):
Yeah, in the final conflict.

Speaker 2 (01:24:05):
Yeah, true, at least it's the final conflict.

Speaker 3 (01:24:07):
This, by the way, we as we mentioned earlier, this
is one of those scenes where I think the cinematography like,
it's too dark. There needs to be more light here.
I know it's supposed to take place at night, but
it's just like blue, Blue Blue, you can barely see
who anybody is. So next they go to the valley
of the Aramas Pai and Sindbad and his companions. They
make the journey on foot, while Zenobia, Raffi and the

(01:24:28):
Minoton are able to use a hidden ice tunnel to
access the valley. The Sinbad's crew crosses over a snowy
mountain and they see the Aurora borealis. Malanthius explains what
it is. He says that in Greek mythology it's known
as something that maybe the crown of Apollo or something
like that. And once in the warm valley, everybody has

(01:24:49):
a bath in a nice river. Everybody starts, of course,
you know, skinny dipping. Malanthius observes that Cassim is turning carnivorous,
and he says it will soon be too late to
change him back. Meanwhile, Diany and Farrah are bathing in
a pool when they meet a new character, Trog, the
lovable Trog.

Speaker 2 (01:25:10):
Trog is great because Trog is I guess, supposed to
be some sort of it is a trogoldye, that's what
the word is referring to here.

Speaker 3 (01:25:18):
The name is referring to weller.

Speaker 2 (01:25:20):
Yeah, cave dweller. But is again, don't don't draw. I
don't assume that anything here matches up with with with
actual real world organisms past or present. Because it is
a horned humanoid. It is. He's kind of like he's
reminiscent of the cyclops from from an earlier Harry Howsen picture.

Speaker 3 (01:25:42):
It's like a ten foot tall humanoid and a pelt
with a horn on his head.

Speaker 2 (01:25:46):
Yeah, he's got this. Uh, he's kind of like he's
got this nice head of hair and very thoughtful eyes.
I guess at first you don't pick it up on
this as much because it seems like he is a threat.
He's going to probably try and and abduct these women
or something. But instead you quickly learn like, no, Trog
is afraid and has a heart and really is one

(01:26:11):
of the most beloved characters in the film totally.

Speaker 3 (01:26:13):
So when they first meet him, of course, the two
women run away and Trog sort of walks after them,
and then Sinbad comes up, you know, with his sword
drawn and faces off against him, but Melanthius convinces Sindbad
to lower his weapon, explaining that this guy is one
of Man's ancestors. They're called Trogladites, and so Diany once

(01:26:34):
again is able to make friends. They immediately name him Trog.
They're calling him Trog within a couple sentences, and we
learn that Cassim and Trog can communicate. Melanthius like draws
a picture of the shrine they're looking for in the sand,
and then Cassim asks Trog where it is, and Trog

(01:26:54):
knows and offers to lead them to it. So he's friend.

Speaker 2 (01:26:58):
Yeah, Trog doesn't speak with language, but he makes these
adorable sounds. There's kind of like kind of sounds you
know that they're they're they're reminiscent of like some of
like the soft sounds that a pet might make, like
not full on barking or meowling, but some of those
those more subtle sounds that our animals make around us.

Speaker 3 (01:27:19):
They really went out of their way to make Trog sweet,
and it's tragic what's going to happen to him as well? Yes,
so we're leading up to the final showdown. So both
groups are headed for the shrine of the Aramas Pie,

(01:27:40):
which turns out to be in a giant pyramid that
makes crackling electricity sounds because it's got the Aurora borealis
right over the top of it. And Trog helps Sinbad's
group get through the gate, but Zenobia's team goes faster
because they have access to the tunnel. And I like
the creepy scene as they're passing through the tunnel in
their boat and they're looking at these graves in the

(01:28:01):
walls of all these kind of mummified figures, and I
think rafi asques are these the last of the armas
bay And Zenobia is like, who knows, there's a nice
little mystery there. But Zenobia's team makes it to the
pyramid first and oh no, no, Minoton no. So because

(01:28:21):
they don't have the key to get inside, Zenobia uses
some magic explosives and then now that one of the
giant pyramid blocks is loosened, the Minoton has to manually
remove it, so he's like scooting this huge stone cube
out of the side of the pyramid in order to
get through. But the block falls on top of the

(01:28:42):
Minoton and crushes it. And it's a horrible moment.

Speaker 2 (01:28:47):
It is I was I was crushed watching this in
the theater, just the Menoton is just doing what he
is told over and over again, road all the way
here has pulled this block out and then it just
falls on him and he's crushed. And then is Zenobia
is just like he's served his purpose or something to
that effect, and they just leave him. They just leave
him there. And I kept hoping, well, he'll come back, like,

(01:29:09):
you know, either he'll come back and turn the tide
or at least he'll come back and continue his programming
to protect protect Zenobia and Rafi. But he does not.
He's just stuck under that block forever.

Speaker 3 (01:29:19):
I think what she says is his work is done
or something.

Speaker 2 (01:29:21):
Yeah, yeah, man, and I have some again. I think
Zenobia is absolutely wrong here and we're going to see
why in a minute. Because she's like, we don't need
the military support of our unbeatable automaton anymore. You and me,
we've got this Rafi. It's not really going to work
out that way.

Speaker 3 (01:29:40):
So Zenobia and Rafi make their way into the temple,
shortly followed by our heroes. Upon arriving, Melanthius explains that
because the block was removed by the minoton, the integrity
of the shrine has been compromised, and now its power
is out of balance and it's about to collapse.

Speaker 4 (01:29:57):
Like.

Speaker 3 (01:29:57):
They have to hurry if they want to be able
to use it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:00):
A moment in viewing the film where I was thinking
about the fact that here they have traveled vast distances
to a place that houses an ancient power of perhaps
like world breaking intensity, in order to solve a very
regional conflict.

Speaker 3 (01:30:18):
In order to get this baboon eligible for royal for
the royal throat. Yes, so inside the shrine, the decor
is kind of ice Egyptian in theme, like that there
are hieroglyphics and stalactites like ice slacta icicles. There is
a giant machine that is sucking the aurora from the

(01:30:39):
sky into a beam that flows into this big pool
of water. And then there is a cage on a
chain that can be cranked into the flow of the beam.
So the idea is they've got to put Cassim into
the cage and put him in the beam. But first
Zenobia comes out. She's like, the gods have abandoned you.
Now Rafi kill Milanus. They are helpless without him. So Raffi,

(01:31:03):
who this is all about. Raffi, by the way, the
whole point is like get him on the throne. He
runs at Melanthius with a knife and tries to kill him,
but the baboon Cassim attacks Raffi. They tumble down the
stairs and then Raffi lies dead at the bottom, his
neck broken.

Speaker 2 (01:31:19):
Yeah, and this is this is a case where yes, okay,
as Zenobia points out, he Raffi only has to kill
Melanthius because he's the brains of this, this whole scheme
they're trying to pull off. But it still kind of
breaks down to, Okay, Raffi defeat like five people at once,
like this is where the minoton would have been essential,

(01:31:39):
and you discarded him. And this is a ridiculous ask
of Raffi, even though he's clearly, you know, a capable
fighter and schemer in his own right, and you know,
certainly a quite a capable alchemist or whatever as well,
but like he's just doomed to failure here because the
task is too much.

Speaker 3 (01:31:58):
Something has gone wrong and you like see the the
wise witch here has become foolish. Yeah, she's giving impossible orders.
So now and now he's dead, and so she sort
of goes down to his side and she's distraught. And
meanwhile Cassim goes into the pulley cage. Sindbad cranks him
into the beam and magic happens. Melanthius praised to both

(01:32:21):
Apollo and to the Great Mystery, and Cassim comes back
down smoking and he's Captain Karnstein again. Farah is overjoyed.
Fully clothed too, Yeah, he's fully clothed. Good point. And
I think Dione is Diany is like hubba hubba. She
likes Count Carnstein here.

Speaker 2 (01:32:41):
She's like, I was just going to marry the baboon,
but now look at him.

Speaker 3 (01:32:44):
So he's transformed back. But now Zenobia wants revenge. Nearby
the whole time they've been there, there has been this
massive frozen figure in cased in ice. It is a
saber toothed cat, a smile It on Zenobia turns herself
into green smoke and then possesses the smilod on, causing

(01:33:06):
it to hatch out of the ice and attack. And
this is our final fight scene. So this is a
stop motion smileo On that first starts attacking Sindbad and
the crew. Meanwhile the temple is collapsing all around them
and it really looks like there's no chance they're going
to win this fight. But then to the rescue comes
Trog wielding the Minoton's spear. Nice, and so this is

(01:33:30):
an excellent fight. It feels really visceral, like you can
see the trog is wrestling and the cat is attacking
and it's like viciously like scratching at his back and
cutting up his muscles while he's trying to wrestle it
to the ground and choke it. And I don't know,
I think this is like an all time great stop
motion fight.

Speaker 2 (01:33:49):
Yeah, this is an all time great monster battle. And
it's just a work of art, Like this is a masterpiece.
This is a Harry House and masterpiece. Yeah, no matter
what you think about the rest of the film, the
rest the film is worth it for this sequence alone.

Speaker 3 (01:34:02):
But it ends very sadly because We're all on Trog's
side at this point. Everybody loves Trog. It's impossible not
to love Trog.

Speaker 2 (01:34:08):
Yeah, even if you're on team Menoton. Like Trog and
Meneton neverack in anything. Trog has literally picked up the
weapon of the Meneton and is continuing his legacy.

Speaker 3 (01:34:18):
Yes, but Trog unfortunately is killed by the Smilodon. It
goes for the Jugular and he lies dead. But he's
bought them a lot of time, a lot of I
think several of the people escape, but then Sindbad and
a couple of the crew are still left there in
the room, and so then the Smilodon attacks the remaining humans,
including Sinbad, I think, is it Maroof is killed and

(01:34:42):
Hassan survives.

Speaker 2 (01:34:44):
Yes, Yes, sadly we lose Maroof, but Hassan lives on.

Speaker 3 (01:34:48):
But Sinbad is able to defeat the Smilodon in the
end via a spear maneuver. He kind of gets under
it on the stairs and then when it lunges at him,
he holds the spear up and kind of like vaults
it over him with the dab and then does a
dagger to the heart and the evil witch possessed Smilodon
is defeated.

Speaker 2 (01:35:06):
Yeah, it's a Symbat movie, so he should get the
he should get the final kill.

Speaker 3 (01:35:10):
And then they high tail it back to Hirak. It's
just very quick wrap up after this, actually almost comically
quick after the fight is over, how fast they wrap
up over like, oh, we're back in Chirac. Now here's
the city and here's the ceremony where where we're seeing
Cassim being crowned, and it's just a happy ending all around,
sindbad and for a kiss. The way they're dressed up

(01:35:33):
in this final scene looks very funny. I've got a
screenshot for you to look out.

Speaker 2 (01:35:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:35:38):
Uh, and they're just wearing like Teal clothes.

Speaker 2 (01:35:42):
It's like bath Matt Teal.

Speaker 3 (01:35:43):
Yes. And then I think it's implied maybe Diany is
going to be Cassim's queen, but that they don't make
anything very clear there but just the end.

Speaker 2 (01:35:54):
Oh, but we do get a stinger at the very
end your brief, very brief credits and then the Eyes
of the Tiger, the Eyes of Zenobia. Will there be
a sequel, No, there won't be, but it gives you
that idea. Maybe you know the creature she inhabited survived.
But what else is possible? Oh? Is it possible that

(01:36:14):
the green spirit essence of Zenobia, if it can't return
to her own form, maybe it goes to the Minoton.
Maybe we have Minoton Zenobia emerging from the rock, or
just stuck under the rock for alternity. I guess that
would be fitting in its.

Speaker 3 (01:36:28):
Own I would love to see some other filmmaker pick
up the mantle of the Minoton and have us get
another minoton, give us another crack at the minoton in
a story like this.

Speaker 2 (01:36:39):
Absolutely yeah, I love the Menoton here.

Speaker 3 (01:36:41):
Okay, one last reflection on At the beginning, I was
talking about what defines adventure as opposed to other genres
like action. This movie is very much adventure. And adventure
I think has to do with a sense of discovery
and amazement. And yet the discovery and amazement, it's permissible
for that to be only really present in the audience

(01:37:04):
rather than the main character. Does Sindbad in the movie
ever act amazed. He doesn't ever to me seem all
that impressed by anything.

Speaker 2 (01:37:15):
Well, he's very he's very confident, he's very capable, and
he's goal oriented. He has a mission. So I guess
on one level. Yeah, he doesn't stop to he doesn't
need to stop to acknowledge the wonders that he's traveling through.
And he's seen a lot like this is Sindbad the Sailor.
He's not his first rodeo, even if it is his

(01:37:36):
first trip to the strange, forgotten temples of Hyperborea. But yeah,
I guess it is a good point that the wonder
is mostly for us, the audience. We don't have scenes
of him going whoa and looking up to the temple walls.

Speaker 3 (01:37:52):
I guess Melanthius and Diony both show amazement. Yeah, Yeah,
they've got that scientific temperament, you know, appreciation the wonders
of the world.

Speaker 2 (01:38:01):
Yeah, probably a good thing that the technologies of Hyperborea
didn't fall into either of their hands. Though, Yeah, maybe
there's nothing left for Melanthius to bring back and inevitably bumble.

Speaker 3 (01:38:12):
Oh wait. You know who does show amazement a little
bit is Raffi. When he's like when they're in the
tunnels and they're looking at the mummies and stuff, he
seems a little amazed.

Speaker 2 (01:38:22):
Are we prepared to admit that maybe Raffi would have
made a good Khlief. We don't really know he's never
given a chance to rule, even if his method of
achieving the throne is less than honest. I don't know,
maybe he would have ushered in a new golden age.

Speaker 3 (01:38:38):
We get no comparison whatsoever between the like sort of
policy outlook of Raffi versus Cassim.

Speaker 2 (01:38:47):
So yeah, maybe Cassino idea is going to be a
terrible ruler. Like right after the picture ends, he lifts
the chalice and says to Satan.

Speaker 3 (01:38:54):
Iron fist, yeah to Satan.

Speaker 2 (01:39:00):
All right. Well, that is Sinbad and the Eye of
the Tiger. It's a lot of fun. If you haven't
seen it, highly recommend it. Great monster mash, great effects,
with some plenty of cheese spread in there as well.
So we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Do
you have thoughts or reflections on Sinbad in the Eye
of the Tiger right in because we would love to

(01:39:22):
hear from you. Do you have a favorite Ray Harry
house and film or favorite Ray Harry Housen creature or effect.
We'd also love to hear your thoughts on that. Just
a reminder that Stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily
a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious
concerns to just talk about a weird film here on
Weird House Cinema. You can follow Weird House Cinema specifically

(01:39:44):
on letterboxed dot com. Our user name there is weird House,
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(01:40:08):
subscribing and downloading and listening to the show.

Speaker 3 (01:40:11):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:40:32):
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