****             Trust in Allah... but tie up your camel.

15 or so years after "The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad", they finally decided to make a sequel. Once again Sinbad is faced up against a bunch of Ray's stop-motion monsters, but there are a few decade worth of changes and special effects improvements. Not exactly from the same lot as Godzilla movies, but still a great movie none-the-less.

Sinbad, as usual, is floating around on his ship in a big body of water somewhere. Rather this is before or after his 7^th Voyage isn't made quite clear, but I am assuming it's after. When a strange bat-thing drops a gold medallion thing onto the ship, Sinbad does the logical choice and straps it around his neck (and it makes one heck of a tacky pendant). After getting a bunch of whacked-out dreams from the thing, he goes ashore and finds out that it is one of three golden-thingies that all connect to give some sort of magic powers when put in a certain place and all that junk. Basically Sinbad sails off with the gold-masked Grand Vizier of the local place, some slacker kid whose father paid Sinbad to take along with him, and a slave girl with a prophethetic eye painted, err, tattooed on her hand. They're all trying to get to some lost island before Koura (the film's resident evil sorcerer guy), can get there and claim all that magic prize stuff. The race is on, and Koura of course tries to stop them by bringing their headmast to life, trapping them in a cave, sicking a 6-armed statue on them, and even getting the green-skinned natives against them. Even though nothing stops them, he still gets "there" before Sinbad and the rest, and so he gets the first magic-thingy to make him "young" again (and he really needed it to, his choice of magic kept taking a lot out of him). After Koura helps the Centaur win a fight against the Griffin, and after Sinbad kills the victor, Koura and Sinbad fight and of course Sinbad wins, even though the second-magic thingy, a Shield of Darkness (looks more like just becoming invisible to me), helped Koura out a bit. The third magic-thingy, a Crown of Untold Riches, is given to the Grand Vizier guy by Sinbad (well Sinbad didn't really need a kingdom or money, he already has them).

As a whole that plot there is very complex yet very simple for the length of the movie. It's a lot longer movie then the "7^th Voyage", and yet the plot is more simple. It generally makes the movie seem shorter while watching it, but does lag at times. The movie is a lot more accurately done then the 1950's version, and seems a lot more like an Arabian Knights adventure to. The Sinbad (John Philip Law) in this one looks a lot more convincing, mainly because the actor looks a lot better in a turban than the last guy did. Speaking of nice looking, the only real female character (Caroline Munro) doesn't really act at all, and not many care. She does her part simply by leaning over and setting things down. But the real show-stealer of acting is, once again, the main bad guy. Tom Baker (who played as Doctor Who or something) does quite the terrific job at playing the evil but tragic sorcerer guy. Quite well done overall, and the scene where he's bring the masthead to life really does look like he's killing himself in the process (I sure hope he really wasn't though). As a whole the plot and acting are all quite good for the most part, and goes along with all the great scenery you see throughout. Only real complaints are the occasionally annoying music and that darn "please press the fast-forward button" oracle scene.

But of course there is one main reason that makes this movie what it is: the stop motion monster scenes! Starting at the beginning we got the Homunculus, one of Ray's smaller creations but certainly not the worse. The little guy is quite a well-crafted gargoyle-thingy that walks and flaps around real good. It has probably the most screen time of all the creatures, and yet it uses its time real well. Next up is the animated "siren-style" headmast. She's quite the good-looking block-o-wood. Moves like one to. The next thing is also an animated inanimate object. The six-armed statue of the Hindu goddess Kali didn't give Koura nearly as much trouble as the headmast, and so she can sword-fight with Sinbad and the rest like nothing else. Very well executed couple of scenes. The second scene involves all that fighting, and it is a very well choreographed one to. Second only to the skeleton scene in "Jason and the Argonaughts" I say. The first scene with her is where she just dances, and that's not bad either. The final stop motion effect is the battle between the centaur and the griffin. The centaur gets a lot more screen time, including parts where he lugs the (small plastic model of the) main female character around, and a part where he battles (the model version of) Sinbad. The Griffin on the other hand just pops up and fights. Both creatures are quite well done, and their battle is good to. Not exactly the best work; there are a few complaints about the centaur having only one eye (like the cyclops in previous movie) and the griffin's feathers are all ruffled, but as a whole they are still pretty good. Basically this movie provides a quite a few good stop-motion scenes. Other then Kali they're pretty average for Ray's work, and so the movie doesn't provide the best of scenes, but it's still a great movie to watch them, overall.

The movie seems to have had a lot bigger budget then the "7^th Voyage", because the scenery, props, and everything else look a lot less "cheap". There is a quite of lot of things like that which make it better then the last voyage, but since the plot is slightly better for the last one and there was more variety and more interesting monsters, it basically ends up being about the same in overall enjoyment value. Basically watching both the Golden and 7^th Voyage is probably best, because as a whole these movies are quite different in their own ways. The only thing that hasn't changed is the great stop-motion effects. It's a great fantasy-filled Sinbad adventure, recommended to all fans of those great little moving models.

Great, complicated-yet-simple, plot

Terrific (as usual) special effects

Great stop-motion scenes (especially Kali)

Filled with great quotes (like the one at top)

Fairly accurate Arabian knight thing (compared to average)

Music gets annoying at times

The best thing the oracle did was shut up

Although pretty good, the plot is lacking at times

Not exactly a movie where monsters run around stomping buildings

How on earth did that guy stand on a column of rushing water?

Credits