Synopsis
He must conquer evil on land and at sea!
Sinbad returns from the sea to find his country subjected to the will of two unscrupulous sorcerers.
1989 Directed by Enzo G. Castellari, Luigi Cozzi
Sinbad returns from the sea to find his country subjected to the will of two unscrupulous sorcerers.
Sinbad e os Sete Mares, Simbad, el rey de los mares, Sindbad - Herr der sieben Meere
Look, I'm willing to concede the notion that I'm just a lunatic with utterly insane taste in movies, but I actually kind of loved this goofy Italian adventure nonsense.
The film's intro claims it's based on the Edgar Allen Poe short story, "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade," though a quick Google search reveals that to be a blatant lie. And that's not the only thing that's screwy about this absurd film. Apparently, Luigi Cozzi (who penned the script) was originally set to direct but was replaced at the outset by Enzo G. Castellari. Castellari, however, produced three hours of unusable footage and the film remained unfinished for roughly three years, until Cozzi was brought back…
When Enzo G. Castellari hands you three hours of footage deemed unreleasable, how do you salvage the movie? Remove most of the audio, and have Daria Nicolodi narrate over everything - acting as the heart of the film.
Because no matter what the picture, Daria Nicolodi made it better.
How is it that it's taken me nearly 1000 reviews for me to talk about and review a film starring Lou Ferrigno?
I decided to jump ship and rest a bit from the Sinbad-a-thon I embarked on a little while back, one that saw a journey spiral downwards the moment the 70's kicked into high-gear, and here we return on a brand new vessel, switching from Columbia to Cannon Films in a decade when fantasy adventures became more in vogue. This revival of the character was intended to be a glorious return to form, an apex of Italian fantasy-and-swords that would have stood tall compared to the plentiful competition and have a slightly raised budget to boot. The only problem…
Why is no one singing the praises of this loony Italian mess-terpiece? The screenplay by Luigi Cozzi claims to be based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade," but this wacky thing takes only the most superficial inspiration from that satire, and is more a spiritual cousin to Cozzi's Hercules movies for Cannon. Legend has it Cozzi was initially refused a directorial position, but when credited director Enzo G. Castellari turned in an unusable 3+ hours of footage, they had to call in Luigi to turn it into something resembling a narrative feature. His solution was to present it as a bedtime story read by mom Daria Nicolodi to his own daughter, Giada, and to have her narrate…
Started as a tv-series with Enzo G. Castellari in the director's chair, the production got out of control.
So production company Cannon Films put their high hopes in their one and only wild card: Luigi Cozzi!
Due to the popularity of "Mr. Universe" Arnold Schwarzenegger and the movie "CONAN", Cannon Films started to produce their own Fantasy-flicks (with Schwarzenegger's "Mr. Universe"-successor Lou Ferrigno) "The seven magnificent gladiators" and "Hercules", written and directed by Bruno Mattei.
While Mattei was already shooting "The seven magnificent gladiators" he started to write the script for "Hercules". The finished "Hercules"-script was so bad, that producer Menahem Golan boiled with rage (Hercules getting blowjobs doesn't fit in a movie for kids and it definitely doesn't fit in a Golan-Globus'…
My third recent watch starring Lou Ferrigno as a mythical hero and squarely in the middle of the pack, between the 2 80s Hercules films. This is a dizzying mixture of kid-friendly bedtime story and feverish heatstroke dream. I swear I dreamed that Lou tore a demon's heart out and it had a freaking face on it. That was real?! what?! Man, that whole demon-battle scene was just begging for a good metal soundtrack. Had they gone for less kid friendly fare, I think this could have been as much fun as Hercules. As it is, it's still great for pure cheese value. Just add your own riffs.
Watched with Jason.
Accidentally watched two kinky low-budget weirdo movies from respected genre auteurs nominally based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe in a row. This one doesn't quite live up to the standard set by Stuart Gordon's The Pit and the Pendulum but it gets lot of points for variety in its supernatural action-adventure scenarios, many of which seem to have been reverse-engineered from whatever costumes/SFX were already available.
Honestly I could watch this another day and probably have more fun with it, and maybe it's because I just watched Picnic at Hanging Rock so I was in a high brow mood, but this sucked pretty hard.
28/100
Poochie is innocent. Very, very, very bad no-good movie but it makes sense that there are fans. Lou Ferrigno has muscles. That's all I've got for this dumb homoerotic Italian adventure movie.
Watched on HBO Max (iPad; HD).
Up Next: American Assassin
It's hard to describe how bad this is. If you LOVE bad movies, this could end up on your Letterboxd Mount Rushmore.
Apparently initial director Castellari had left behind 3 hrs of unreleasable mess, a la Jodorowski's attempt at Dune. Writer Cozzi was brought in to try and salvage it, and it's hard to believe he wasn't at least familiar with The Princess Bride.
If only they'd had William Goldman.
There is nothing resembling an attempt at world-building. Not a word to explain Sinbad's Herculean strength. (Apparently Ferrigno having starred as that hero before was enough.) Two of the places they must venture are called Skull Island and the Isle of the Dead. Again, these are two separate places.
The…
Supposedly whittled down to half from a 3 hour original version (rough cut?), incoherently laying narration over everything (including what feels like most of the dialogue) in order to get from one set piece to another as quickly as possible and yet despite being 93 minutes of almost nonstop whammy, this still feels overlong and draggy, or perhaps eternal. An endless labyrinth of silliness and badness that will subsume your entire world.
D+ and a heart.