Sinbad Of The Seven Seas Review by Bobby LePire. Edited by Courtney McAllister.

 

Edgar Allan Poe wrote a Sinbad tale. Yes, that macabre loving, morbid maestro of horror wrote an adventure yarn about the iconic sailor. This movie, despite its own claims, has exactly squat to do with that, which makes for an even more intriguing mess of a film. And I do mean mess!

 

Lou Ferringo stars as Sinbad, which leads me to question why this just wasn’t another “Hercules” sequel. Sinbad has magical powers- communicating with animals, super strength (when you cast Ferringo, you damn well better put his impressive physique to good use), and inhuman lung capacity (more on that later)- and considering the character is mortal, I don’t get it. Imagining this as a full blown Hercules sequel makes way more sense. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how this script originated and then rewrites due to the underperforming “Adventures Of Hercules” led to this becoming the swashbuckler it is.

 

Here’s the big kicker though, as wooden as Ferringo has been in other roles, he’s pretty good here. He had done a smattering of films between being Herc and now, during which he clearly learned something. This is not to say he’s amazing as Sinbad, just significantly improved. His romantic moments still ring false, and only a bug-eyed, crazy overactor could properly sell some of these lines.

 

That bug-eyed crazy is John Steiner as bad vizier (aren’t they all?) Jaffar. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating, I don’t know what attracts such melodramatic personalities to villainous roles in fantasy b-movies, but damn, I am sure glad that the attraction exists! Lines like, “The gems no longer exist” can never be uttered creepily, but my goodness, Steiner gives it the old college try. Whether he’s yelling at his magic mirror, lustily/ creepily oogling an unconscious Princess Alina who is hooked up to his brainwashing machine, or happily telling his men to kill people, Steiner is nothing less than camptasticly amazing.

 

As Alina, Alessandra Martines is doe-eyed sincerity incarnate, but very bland aside from that. Teagan Clive plays evil sorceress Soukra and consistently sounds too modern, which adds a goofy anachronistic vibe. Good Prince Ali is portrayed by Roland Wybenga and I am surprised he never went on to do bigger work. He’s handsome, confident, and acquits himself well throughout. However, his good acting simply serves as juxtaposition to all the less good acting going on. Sinbad has a crew of merry men, and each of those actors is respectively fine. The movie is presented as a bedtime story a mother is reading to her daughter. This was an Italian production, and the actresses for this segment are Italian. They were dubbed over in English though, and holy bad matching Batman! The English dialogue doesn’t even try to synch up with the actors’ lips. Worse still is the voice over actresses; it’s crystal clear that they could not be more bored or annoyed to be doing this.

 

Now typically, I am a huge fan of voice over, as I believe it can be a very effective characterization and/ or world building tool. However, here it’s just a way for the film to skip on narrative tissue, so a lot of scenes have no real stakes. Like when Sinbad and his crew, consisting of a samurai, a viking, and a midget cook- respectively named Samurai, Viking, and Midget because this script was written by a very earnest but severely misguided 8 year old- land back home in the beautiful city of Basra, after the gems have been banished (yes, despite Jaffar’s ineffectual line, they do still exist, simply banished to another realm. See 8 year old, above). Sinbad talks to the calif but how all the people are savage and angry now, but we get zero scenes of that, with the VO explaining it to us instead. This robs a lot of the film of any impact. That it happens throughout is a source of great delight.

 

The fights are lifelessly staged, so nothing, not even a giant rock monster living in freaking Skull Island (!) feels like a threat. Ferringo does what he can, but bad direction is bad direction. Whilst fighting some evil henchmen, the samurai does a high kick that so clearly didn’t connect, but the baddie fell down anyways. The spells cast by Jaffar are just as ineffectual, a la the “winds of destruction”. They did not destroy, but rather, flung Sinbad’s clown colored ship directly to the next island they needed to get to. Huh? Aren’t you the bad guy? Why are you helping our heroes?

 

To be fair to the movie, this island, the Isle Of The Dead, is an awesome set piece. Gothic and spooky, with bones of fallen heroes strewn all about, and craggy, creepy rock formations. The movie is only really alive and has any tension during this test to get the last mystical gem. The dead knights raise out of the sand on their horses (if they were riding them) and it’s an awesome sight. However, they don’t prove much of a fight, because this film won’t allow itself to have any real fights. I feel like that should be a drinking game- anytime a fight happens, but is restrained to running and Ferringo pushing really hard take a drink (a very similar game could be used for the terrible new “Godzilla” film, but even I wouldn’t subject you to such cruel and unusual punishment). Take a double shot when he makes a rope out of snakes! Using his inexplicable Beastmaster powers, Sinbad convinces a dozen snakes to allow themselves to be used for a rope to escape a cellar. I can’t make this up, and it’s as awesomely dumb/ double shot worthy as it sounds!

 

All the costumes are of the eleventh hour, the store was out of anything else caliber. Too bright and shiny to be convincing, and just eyesores other times, without these, this movie wouldn’t be nearly as unintentionally hilarious. The special effects are equally atrocious. The giant rock monster looks like cheap rubber, the gems shine as if it was an after effect done in MS Paint, and the green screen portions are so cheap, I am surprised anyone got away with calling it a real effect.

 

With dumb lines, bad action, and cheap everything else this film is a disaster from beginning to end. But thanks to overacting, a confused script, and inexplicable superpowers this movie is an epicly enjoyable disaster. Poor Ferringo, he got better, but his movies got worse.