STUDIO: Sony
RELEASE DATE: October 7, 2008
STARRING: Kerwin Mathews and Kathryn Grant
WRITTEN BY: Kenneth Kolb
DIRECTED BY: Nathan Juran
FEATURES: Audio Commentary with Ray Harryhausen, Visual Effects Expert Phil Tippett and Randall William Cook, Author Steven Smith, and Arnold Kunert
Remembering The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
The Harryhausen Legacy
The Music of Bernard Herrmann
Photo Gallery
"Sinbad May Have Been Bad, But He's Been Good To Me" Music Video
A Look Behind the Voyage
This is Dynamation Special Effects Featurette
Ray Harryhausen Interviewed by Director John Landis

Long before ILM or WETA Workshop, there was the brilliant imagination of Ray Harryhausen. If there was a Mt. Rushmore of special effects icons, he'd be George Washington. He changed the way people watched movies. Inspired by The Thief of Bagdad, one of the most important fantasy movies of all time, Harryhausen championed a production of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. What's it about? Oh, come on, it doesn't matter. It has swordfighting skeletons, a woman who turns into a snake, and an awe-inspiring cyclops. That's what people remember about this massively influential film. To be honest, it hasn't held up like I thought it would. The dialogue is cheesier and the acting is more wooden than I remembered, but that proves the point. No one remembers the characters or even the plot of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. They remember the creature with the giant eye and the skeleton that refuses to die. Harryhausen had an amazing ability to show audiences things that they had never seen before. The Blu-Ray release timed to mark the 50th Anniversary of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad does the man's legacy proud. It's one of the most extensive in a long line of classics that have been released on the format in recent months.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad was the first part of a magical trilogy by Harryhausen and his team. In this one, Sinbad (Kerwin Matthews) encounters Sokurah the magician and the magic man drops his lamp in an encounter with the deadly cyclops. I often wonder what it must have been like for audiences in 1958 to see Harryhausen's creature designs for the first time. In a time when we've become numbed to the magic of cinema by CGI extravaganzas, I don't believe it's something that can ever be fully replicated. The cyclops keeps Sokurah's lamp and the magician joins Sinbad and his fiancee Princess Parisa to Bagdad to be married. The Caliph of Bagdad refuses to provide Sokurah with a ship to retrieve his lamp and so he shrinks the Princess in revenge. Sinbad has no choice. He must travel with the aid of thieves and murderers as his crew to get the lamp and save his bride-to-be. A cyclops vs. dragon climax steals the movie.

For generations, 7th Voyage of Sinbad was a G-rated, childhood treasure and now the people raised on it can watch it in 1080p high definition. I'm actually not sure that movies like Sinbad should be seen in high-def but that's just because I so associate them with the full frame, grainy pictures of the televisions of my youth. There's something lost when Sinbad gets blown up to widescreen TV size, but that's probably just a preference. Fans of the movie will have little to complain about with the picture and sound quality, transfers that wisely don't over-do it. Sinbad is the kind of movie that shouldn't be polished too much or it would look ridiculous. Viewers need to always be aware that they're watching a five-decades old film. The transfers on Sinbad don't make it look too fake, like some classics sometimes end up on Blu-Ray. The special features are extensive and impressive, including a commentary, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and interviews.