It is now the 1970's and Ray has been plying his trade of making actual cinema magic for almost 25 years.
His first project of the new decade was...
"The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" (1973)
Directed by Gordon Hessler, Written by Brian Clemens, Story by Brian Clemens & Ray Harryhausen, Based on Sinbad the Sailor from One Thousand and One Nights, Produced by Charles H. Schneer & Ray Harryhausen, Music by Miklós Rózsa, Cinematography by Ted Moore & Edited by Roy Watts, Starring John Phillip Law,
Caroline Munro & Tom Baker.
Sinbad's adventure pits him against a master magician who's trying to reach the Fountain of Destiny on the lost land of Lemuria in a bid to be crowned the new leader of Marabia. Sinbad and his crew must battle an array of monsters before finally coming face to face with his foe.
Harryhausen revisits the character of Sinbad for the first time since "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" released back in 1958.
not to bury the lead here...
It was a smash hit! Made for a reported budget of $2m ($12.8m in 2024) and took $11m at the box office in the US and Canada alone and approximately $10m+ everywhere else. That would be $149m in 2024 money.
The film Starred actor John Phillip Law as the titular Sinbad the swashbuckling hero and the truly charming Caroline Munro as Margiana.
British actor Tom Baker appears in the movie as Prince Koura. Tom went on to land the career defining role of the fourth Doctor in the BBC's long-running Sci-Fi TV show "Dr Who" the year after this film was released. legend has it Barry Letts the producer of Dr Who was keen to cast Baker due to his performance in this film.
Baker was fortunate because the role was intended for Christopher Lee but looking at Lee's filmography he was extremely busy at this time in his career and personally I am happy he chose to make The Wicker Man (1973) instead (This film was filmed 2 months before Lee started shooting "The Wicker Man" specificity but he was very busy in the summer of 1972)
After the financial disappointment of "The Valley of Gwangi" Ray and Producer Charles Schneer decided it was time to go back to the Arabian Nights stories something they had great success with in the late fifties.
Even though I can't see what box office success led to a demand for swashbuckling adventurers harking back to the popular matinee film serials of the 1940's and 50's in the early 70's but in 1973 we got "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad", Richard Lester released his "The Three Musketeers" film starring Michael York, Oliver Reed and Richard Chamberlain and the Walt Disney company put out the animated film "Robin Hood" the one with the foxes.
So there was just something in the zeitgeist I guess.
What obviously set Golden Voyage apart was obviously the creatures created and brought to life by Harryhausen via his Dynamation process.
The bat winged gargoyle esc "Homunculus"
A minion of the evil Prince Koura (Tom Baker) that he creates with his black magic and uses the creature to spy on Sinbad.
The ship's wooden "Figurehead" that Prince Koura brings to life to attack Sinbad and his crew.
Kali (Goddess of Death) no still image would do this justice so I have posted a clip from YouTube.
The one eyed Centaur and a Griffin.
Following the strong box office success of "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" Columbia Pictures executives were pushing Ray and Charles Schneer to begin work on a third Sinbad motion picture while Golden Voyage was still showing in cinemas. The light was Green!
The plan was to move away from mythical creatures and lean more into recognisable prehistoric animals and real animals in general.
"Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger" (1977)
Directed by Sam Wanamaker, Written by Beverley Cross, Based on Sinbad the Sailor from One Thousand and One Nights, Produced by Charles H. Schneer
& Ray Harryhausen, Music by Roy Budd, Cinematography by Ted Moore & Edited by Roy Watts, Starring Patrick Wayne,
Taryn Power, Margaret Whiting, Jane Seymour & Patrick Troughton.
Legendary adventurer Sinbad stops in a port town to visit his friend Prince Kassim, only to find the city walls locked and no one there to greet him except an evil witch, Zenobia, and her monstrous henchmen. Kassim's sister, Princess Farah, finds Sinbad and informs him her brother has been transformed into an ape, so now it's up to Sinbad to find the magic shrine that may be the only hope for restoring Kassim to his human form.
This time Harryhausen & Schneer tapped film director Sam Wanamaker to direct this project.
Sam Wanamaker was an American actor and director who moved to the UK in the 1950's after becoming concerned that due to his socialist political views he may be blacklisted in Hollywood. His directorial career started off mainly in television then moved to motion pictures. Living in England he became massively involved in English theatre including being the person credited most responsible for saving The Rose Theatre, which directly led to the modern recreation of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London. Sam was also the father of the incredibly talented actor Zoë Wanamaker.
casting for the film followed a couple of the conventions of the last film but none of the specific actors, They cast a beautiful English actress, a Dr Who and a random american beefcake to play Sinbad.
American actor Patrick Wayne (son of actor John Wayne) was cast as Sinbad.
Stunning English actress Jane Seymour plays Princess Farah.
Old Greek alchemist hermit Melanthius is played by ex Dr Who Patrick Troughton and his daughter Dione is played by Taryn Power.
English actress Margaret Whiting puts in a pitch perfect performance as the evil stepmother/sorceress Zenobia.
When it comes to Harryhausen's offerings in this film there is a bit of a bandwidth between what people claim is not his best and his creation that was so well executed some people didn't even spot it came care of Harryhausen.
the "Ghouls" come in for criticism mainly due to them being a derivative retread of "The Children of the Hydras Teeth" aka The Fighting Skeletons from "Jason and the Argonauts " and the Selenite lunar creatures from "First Men in the Moon" mixed together and to that I say that is a fair criticism. Ray was kind of a one man band when it came to what he did and this was the age before home video so films from the past pretty much stayed in the past for movie fans unless they popped up on TV in standard definition and viewed on a 14 - 26 inch screen so he didn't view revisiting past ideas as a bad thing he was just trying to thrill the audience in the moment.
Ray animated a giant wasp which attacks Melanthius and a gigantic walrus that Sinbad and his crew encounter on the ice of the North Pole.
"The Guardian of the Shrine" which is a prehistoric Smilodon AKA a saber-toothed tiger which thaws from a block of ice and attacks Sinbad.
The crew also encounters "Troglodyte" an 8-foot-tall hairy caveman-like being with a single horn on the top of its head. Looks can be deceiving and Trog is actually rather friendly and helps Sinbad to deal with "The Guardian of the Shrine".
A very memorable creature from this film is the "Minaton"which is a giant magical bronze robot/automaton created by the sorceress that resembles the mythical Minotaur which is used as muscle. He rows the ship solo and moves gigantic stones.
Actor Peter Mayhew was inside the practical Minaton costume making his feature film debut Peter filmed his scenes in this before he went on to play Chewbacca in Star Wars.
The main plot of this film is that Prince Kassim has been cursed and transformed into a Baboon. The Baboon was sculpted and animated by Harryhausen using his "Dynamation" process. People at the time genuinely believed that the filmmakers had used a trained Baboon in the scene. Today that seems ridiculous, You can train a Baboon to sit on a stool but I don't think you can train one to play chess.
All the Baboon animation is stunning and really is the coming together of Ray's skill and artistry he had honed in the 27 years since he worked side by side with his mentor on the film "Mighty Joe Young".
The 1970's was a remarkable decade for cinema in general where they seemed to really crack the code of getting people away from their TV set and into the movie theatre. The three stand out "Blockbuster Hits" were "The Exorcist" (1973), "Jaws" (1975) and "Star Wars" (1977).
Where "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" (1973) was in theatres at the same time as William Friedkin's horror masterpiece "The Exorcist" that Sinbad movie provided more family friendly counter programming and flourished at the box office BUT the summer of 1977 was a very different situation all together.
Opening day of Star Wars 1977 at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in LA, the same theatre young Ray saw King Kong in 1933.
Star Wars was a phenomenon! a box office juggernaut that nobody saw coming. George Lucas's space opera sucked up all the oxygen not only in the fantasy adventure film space but in the cinema space in general, Sinbad and a wonderfully animated monkey did not get a look in. William Friedkin released a thriller in the summer of 1977 called "Sorcerer" which is a truly remarkable and brilliant film but it was ignored and bombed so hard in '77 it derailed Friedkin's career at the time and the film only started receiving the respect it deserves in the 2010's
"Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger" (1977) was not the smash hit Columbia Pictures, Charles H. Schneer, Ray Harryhausen & Sam Wanamaker were hoping for.
But even reviews at the time really highlight the films flaws,
Lawrence Van Gelder, wrote in The New York Times, calling the acting "rudimentary", but found the film enjoyable: "...this latest Sinbad adventure maintains the innocent and atavistic juvenile charm of the others in the series".
Film critic Lorna Sutton said the film was "pure escapist entertainment which doesn't require serious analysis or criticism". She found the film enjoyable, despite its flaws: "The plot is familiar, the characters are predictable and dialogue is trite. But the action and the special effects provide for a fast-paced two hours of entertainment".
Some of the acting is poor and when your leading man is one of the performers letting the side down its not a good situation, Patrick Wayne (son of John Wayne) as Sinbad is not great in the role and Taryn Power (Daughter of actors Tyrone Power and Linda Christian) as Dione doesn't really pull her weight... I am not going to write it but we are all thinking it!!
Ray in later life did say "that the picture was too rushed, which led to many characterisation problems in the animation."
The rushed nature of the production also led to some poor optical effects for example, the traveling mattes used in the film to include various filmed elements are poorly executed, and the special effects used to show Zenobia transforming into a gull are very poor for a mid 1970's production.
The film was made for $3.5 Million ($18 Million in 2024) and took approximately $20 Million worldwide ($104 Million in 2024) not a catastrophic performance making almost six times it's budget but when they were looking to build on the success of their last Sinbad film that made more than ten times its budget back it will have felt like a frailer.
The director Sam Wanamaker didn't make another theatrical film after this only working in TV and directing for the stage.
It is now the late 1970s and Ray is living in a post Star Wars age. What can't be ignored is Ray's work was a massive influence on the generation of filmmakers and technicians that made Star Wars. George Lucas was and still is a massive fan of Ray's work and Phil Tippett the stop motion animator that worked on the Star Wars was inspired by then mentored by Harryhausen the same way young Ray was inspired then mentored by Willis O'Brian but something was different now.
Star Wars 1977 did feature "Harryhausenesque" effects with the chess game and in the next in film series 1980's "The Empire Strikes Back" we would see more with the snow beasts "The Tauntauns" but Star Wars raised the bar in special effects especially with models and miniature work with the invention of the "Dykstraflex" system for creating dynamic shots of moving spacecraft. As well as the evolution of "Guy in a rubber suit" on display in Star Wars augmenting the creature performance with puppetry and animatronics so they actually looked good.
It must have really felt like the writing was on the wall for Ray and his "Dynamation".
