Letterboxd — Your life in film

Ray Harryhausen
1920–2013

From the land beyond beyond... from the world past hope and fear... I bid you Genie, now appear.
-Sokurah the Magician

One of Ray Harryhausen's landmark films alongside Mighty Joe Young, Jason and the Argonauts and the original Clash of the Titans. 7th Voyage of Sinbad is Harryhausen's first attempt at using his special effect techniques in a color film and if that wasn't enough he pushes himself even further by stepping away from the "monster on a rampage" theme and into fantasy adventure featuring several giant monsters instead of just one.

Helmed by long time genre director Nathan Juran from first time feature film screenwriter Ken Kolb's script, the film is one of the greatest examples of fantasy adventure for it's time and would go on to influence the greatest films of said genre for decades to come. Even Harryhausen himself couldn't help but revisit the famous skeleton warrior scene years later making it even bigger and more challenging in Jason and the Argonauts.

The film wastes no time as we're thrown into the middle of Sinbad's (Kerwin Mathews) adventure where he's attempting to come home with a princess (the stunning Kathryn Grant) in hand already. While the momentum of the film is non stop for it's 88 minute running time, it never feels like the kinetic mess that plagues most of today's adventure films. Most importantly though, and another thing missing from most of today's offerings, is that it's plot and characters are full of charm while the entire affair is simply great fun.

Fuck you! You Fucker!
-Nicole Carrow

I can usually find something redeemable in any bad film, even the ones that aren't "so bad they're good". It's what makes bad films fun to watch sometimes. With that said, I don't think I'd be able to find anything redeemable about Rest Stop if my life depended on it. Don't think for one moment that it's because this is a horror that "went to far" because that would suggest that it actually tried to do something. Anything.

Think of this film as a giant void where creativity and talent are not permitted to exist. The plot is under baked, the dialogue is almost as idiotic as the characters, the cinematography is atrocious, the production values are nonexistent and the acting is beyond horrible. Joey Lawrence of Blossom fame has a small part in this and gives the best performance of the film. The movie is THAT bad.

It stars Jaimie Alexander, who would go on to give decent performances in Thor and The Last Stand, but here is unbelievably bad. She is lucky to still have a career after this train wreck that some people might call a performance. It was written and directed by multi Emmy nominated Producer/Writer John Shiban. He had worked on The X-Files and Star Trek: Enterprise as a writer/producer prior to this film. He would then go on to work on Breaking Bad and Hell on Wheels as writer/producer while directing a few episodes for both. How the same man involved with those television shows, as a writer no less, could write and direct this garbage is amazing.

Finally I'll point out what I enjoyed about the film. There is a 1980s Fleetwood Bounder RV that is used in the movie that looks IDENTICAL to the one used on the first two seasons of Breaking Bad. While watching the film I convinced myself that it was the same vehicle and took joy in knowing that even the RV went on to bigger and better things after this.