Saturday, November 24, 2018

SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS - "A Magical Adventure" (1989)

Thanksgiving might be over, but tonight's Dungeon fantasy adventure proves one of two things, you can either be thankful that you've seen this movie, or you can be thankful that you haven't seen it. I don't think there is any middle ground! That being said, welcome to yet another Saturday Night Special in The Dungeon!

"Sinbad Of The Seven Seas" was made in 1989 and starred "The Hulk" himself, Mr. Lou Ferrigno!

They got me from the start when they said that Edgar Allen Poe wrote this tale about the mighty Sinbad the Sailor. Edgar Allen might have wrote it, but some of the lines in this film are straight out of the 80's. Actually, this film is based on Poe's "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade," a story that included all kinds of weird anomalies that had they been part of the movie might have made it even better. I'm talking about things like Coralite, "an island, many hundreds of miles in circumference built in the middle of the sea by a colony of little things like caterpillars," and Maelzel's Chess Player, "a man out of brass and wood, and leather with such ingenuity that he would have beaten at chess, all the race of mankind," or Antlion, "myriads of monstrous animals with horns resembling scythes upon their heads who dig for themselves vast caverns in the soil, of a funnel shape."

The truly curious of you can read the whole story of "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade," for yourselves thanks to Wikisource!

This is the mean, evil, and wicked Jaffar as played by John (Yor, The Hunter From The Future) Steiner! Jaffar is a wild-eyed crazy man Hell bent on taking over everything, but mostly he just wants.......

.........Princess Alina to love him! The stunning Alessandra (Cave OfThe Golden Rose) Martines has the role of Alina!

Somehow Jaffar has a bunch of sophisticated equipment made of poly vinyl tubing and plastics from the future! It's all in vain though, because Alina will never love him!

Sinbad and his loyal crew comprised of Alina's boyfriend Ali (Roland Wybenga), the cook (Yehuda Efroni), a Samurai (Haruhiko Yamanouchi), a viking (Ennio Girolami), and a midget (Cork Hubbert) are set out on a mission to find some jewels of power that Jaffar has distributed in weird places scattered around the world!

Sinbad put his hand all the way through this demon and extracts it's heart which has this little face on it. As dumb as it might sound, I actually respect this movie because they somehow managed to make a movie in the 80's without any bad language, sex, or horrible gratuitous bloody violence!

No sex or nudity, but sexy as can be, here's the strikingly beautiful model Melonee Rodgers as the Amazon Queen Farida!

And just for the heck of it, they throw in American bodybuilder and writer Teagan Clive as Soukra, in a role bereft of meaning!

Big Lou gets a lot of on screen time destroying and tearing monsters limb from limb! In one of the earlier scenes, Sinbad is dropped into a pit of vipers, and he talks them into helping him. Just like in some cheap prison movie where the inmates tie sheets together to escape, Sinbad ties Cobras together. It will have you scratching your head in wonder no doubt!

Lucky for Sinbad, most of the creatures he has to face are hollow and lifeless forms that are pretty easy for him to handle! This rock monster is just as cool as the ones in "Missile To The Moon!"

Lou looks like he's having a good time for most of the film!

Jaffar is pulling out all the stops now, and traps Sinbad inside a cage of beams of light!

When nothing else works, what else can you do but make a copy of Sinbad to kick his own ass!

Sinbad Vs. Sinbad! Is this a great shot or what? It really shows you what a talented actor Lou really is! Lou's still working hard to this day and is in a handful of films in either pre or post production, so keep your eyeballs peeled!

From the start, the movie is presented as a bedtime story as read and narrated by Daria Nicolodi. Yes, the same Daria Nicolodi of "Phenomenon" and "Suspiria" fame!
As the world's longest bedtime story, this movie wasn't that bad, and it did serve it's purpose. I fell asleep at least seven times myself while watching it, but it was addicting, and every time I woke up, I went back for more!

4 comments:

Grant said...

I don't know Teagan Clive all that well, but I'm for almost any film with a female bodybuilder. Except for a handful of years, the movies seem to barely know they exist.

Randall Landers said...

You know, the production values don't look all that bad for a grade c action flick. I'd love to have the rock man and rock throne for one of my Star Trek fan films.

Speaking of which, be sure and catch Lou in the Star Trek Continues fan film "Lolani" where he plays a big green Orion. :)

EEGAH!! said...

My eyes are getting so bad I thought you wrote Lou plays a big green onion (Which would be pretty funny you have to admit!)

Randall Landers said...

LOL No, no onion, sir. An Orion.

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