What a treat, Harryhausen et al’s greatest film, well I think so at least. This is one of those films I watch through the same un-jaded eyes as when I first wondered at it as a kid, it’s a true fantasy jewel, perhaps the crowning jewel itself. From the rich and colourful titles, with Herrmanns literally striking overture, the film punches you straight into action, and what a beginning. Sinbad (Kerwin Matthews) and crew are lost in a dense fog at sea, Sinbad is visibly tense and Herrmans scoring is perfect. Soon they happen upon the island of Colossus, and from here the the story starts, I’ll try not to get too carried away and rant on too much, but if you’ve made it this far, well done and read on!
There are many reasons to re-visit this film, not least of course is the fabulous animation from Ray Harryhausen. The main actors do a fine job doing their part too. Sinbad is played by the enthusiastic Kerwin Matthews, he takes it all seriously and gives a fairly intense performance, in the fog scene at the very start of the film, at the wheel of his ship, his eyes pierce with such a believability you’re totally pulled into the scene and are gripped at that point onward.
The top acting honors though go to the amazing Torin Thatcher, he is simply incredible as the evil wizard, intent on regaining the magic lamp, lost to a Cyclops on Colossus when he’s rescued by Sinbad and his merry crew and taken to Baghdad. Torin was a stage actor and had been making films for over 20 years and the turn he does in this is real acting (I hope), I mean over the top theatrical magician, with all the expressions and gestures you’d have imaged from such a character as a kid, archetypical I guess, but with such gusto he’s awesome.
Ray Harryhausen’s creations are, of course amazing, and in Technicolor for the first time too, since his budgets with producer Charles Schneer so far had only afforded black and white features. I can’t go on about each creature or shot, we’ll be here forever, and I’m just not articulate enough to express my joy when I see Rays work. But, we all know how fine it is of course. Just as an aside, I really get pissed of when people say today about CGI: “oooh, it just looks so fake, you can tell it’s CGI”. Well I say to those people, “Good, I wanna see the fakery, I like to work out how it’s done, I want the effect to have a different quality from the ‘live action’ stuff. We know it’s not real, even if it may appear so, it’s the techniques that matter, good or bad.” It’ll probably sadden Harryhausen to hear that, but that’s how I enjoy my sfx.
So to the Bluray presentation: When this arrived I was almost at fever pitch imagining how incredible a clean print of this in HD would look, I’ll tell you it looked pretty awesome in my head. I was very disappointed when I put it on, very grainy and some really poor quality scenes. BUT, on reading up on the picture issues, it seems that this is totally representative of the original feature quality. It was a cheap movie, using cheap technicolor film stock, and coupled with the Harryhausen backplate techniques it seems I was being harsh, it’s a top quality representation to be proud of. A truly great film, now presented in such a striking quality never really seen before, it takes some getting used, but it’s really worth it.
