Fate of a film can be decided on factors that often have very little to do with its quality, and that includes timing. One example is the summer of 1977, arguably the worst possible release date for films like Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, a fantasy adventure directed by Sam Wanamaker.
The protagonist is Sinbad the Sailor, the famous character from Arabian Nights. The plot begins when his ship ports at the city of Charak, where Sinbad (played by Patrick Wayne) intends to meet his beloved Princess Farrah (played by Jane Seymour). He soon hears bad news about Prince Kassam (played by Damien Thomas), Farrah’s brother and heir to the throne, who has become the victim of an evil spell that turned him into a baboon shortly before his coronation. The spell was cast by his stepmother Zenobia (played by Margaret Whitting), a sorceress who wants her son Rafi (played by Kurt Christian) to become the new caliph. The person who might undo the spell is the old Greek alchemist Melanthius (played by Patrick Troughton), and Sinbad takes Kassim and Farrah on a voyage determined to seek his assistance. Melanthius is found on the island of Casgar and explains that the spell can be undone only at the distant northern land of Hyperborea. He and his telepathic daughter Dione (played by Taryn Power) join Sinbad, while Zenobia pursues them aided by her mechanical minotaur.
Eye of the Tiger is the third film in the series dedicated to Sinbad and produced by Columbia Pictures, best known for featuring stop-motion animation by the legendary special effects master Ray Harryhausen. Unlike the first film, the 1957 Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, which is still hailed as a very good display of special effects, this one probably looked aged even to contemporary audiences, especially when compared with the recently released Star Wars, which set new standards of film magic. Ray Harryhausen’s work, although uneven and sometimes of very poor quality, is the least of the film’s problems. Eye of the Tiger suffers most because of the inept script by Beverley Cross and the terrible miscasting of John Wayne’s son Patrick, whose lack of charisma allows him to be easily overshadowed by Troughton and Whitting, the latter often being unrestrained as a hysterical villain. Sam Wanamaker, known and respected as an actor, cannot handle the material and the film often looks poor in confusing scenes that feature annoying “day for night” effects. Not everything in the film is bad, though. The baboon and the friendly troglodyte (which appears at the end of the film) are handled well, while Wanamaker uses lax 1970s censorship standards to add some fan service in the form of scantily-clad Seymour and Power, and even allows for a family-friendly scene of skinny dipping and sunbathing.
RATING: 4/10 (++)
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