Sinbad visits the kingdom of Charak and soon realises that all is not well. He eventually discovers that Prince Kassim, brother of Princess Farah (who Sinbad wishes to marry), has been turned into a baboon by his evil, magic-wielding stepmother Zenobia! In order to turn Kassim back into a human so that he can be crowned Caliph, Sinbad must seek out the alchemist Melanthius, which then leads to a quest to a far-off country beyond the north polar wastelands.
Directed by Sam Wanamaker, SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER stars Patrick (THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT) Wayne, Jane (FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY) Seymour, Taryn Power and Patrick (JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS) Troughton. With stop-motion effects by Ray Harryhausen, this was the third Sinbad movie released by Columbia Pictures.
This colourful fantasy romp features, amongst other things, a fight with three bug-eyed zomboid ghouls, an attack by a (fairly) big bee, a witch (Margaret Whiting) who ends up with the foot of a seagull and a voyage to the lost land of Hyperborea. It’s a shame, then, that TIGER is nowhere near as good as either THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD, which boasted better cinematography, direction, acting, score, script and creatures, or THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, which had a livelier sense of adventure, a wonderful Bernard Herrmann score and more striking stop-motion beasties.
SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER has rather a lot of iffy moments, unfortunately: ‘ice’ that looks like it’s been made out of plastic bags, the unblinking, lifeless glass eyes of the sabre-toothed tiger and poor blue screen work seen during the Petra scenes.
However…
…there’s still a lot of stuff I do like: all the baboon and Trog stop-motion scenes are good, the film has an attractive (though wooden) cast, the attack of the giant walrus is enjoyable and Patrick Troughton, as the alchemist Melanthius, acts everyone else off the screen.
The mechanical Minoton, animated via Zenobia’s sorcery, looks pretty cool, but has a rather throwaway demise when it just falls under a block of stone: I would have liked to see it fight either Sinbad or Trog.
Complaints aside, the film is charming and watchable – and I still have very fond memories of seeing this movie twice in the cinema, once in a double bill with the Nicholas Hammond SPIDER-MAN (which was released theatrically in the UK).
Here are some more posters…
Foldout movie promo…
Lobby cards…
Super 8 movie box art…
VHS, DVD and Blu-ray covers…
Pages from the movie pressbook…
A comic book adaptation of SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER was produced in the UK by General Publishing. This single issue also included a couple of movie features.
Ian Gibson, a regular artist for UK sci-fi comic 2000 AD, provided the nice-looking, detailed illustrations…
Books and magazines…
Here’s a hand pulled screen print art piece by a veteran of the UK graffiti scene, inspired by the film…
Finally, here’s a publicity shot…
Monster Zone 