I am honestly surprised this one doesn’t get more attention in the bad movie community at large. Troll 2, The Room, Birdemic, etc. have nothing on the entertainment value of this film.
Basically, it’s an Italian directed Cannon fantasy adventure flick that got shut down during a bankruptcy, then finished quickly and tossed on video once Cannon got some more funds. In the interim, they lost a bunch of their recorded sound, so they grafted on the Princess Bride plot device of having the whole thing be a story a mom is telling her young daughter. That means there are obvious scenes of people clearly talking to each other but the mom’s narration is the only thing we hear. Supposedly the writer they hired to compensate for the lost sound was given the video they had and told to make sense of it. He couldn’t, so he just wrote everything he could think of and figured they’d read it over and edit it down. Imagine his surprise when he shows up with a what he wrote and the Cannon people grabbed it and immediately handed it over to a woman in a sound booth waiting to do voice over!
Enzo Castellari (Escape 2000) started directing it before the bankruptcy shut it down, so there’s lots of gratuitous slow motion shots. Luigi Cozzi (Starcrash, Devil Fish) finished directing it once the money came back and helped write it.
If you’re already familiar with the two Hercules movies Lou Ferrigno did for Cannon prior to making this movie (if you’re not, just think Starcrash and apply it to Hercules and you’re there), keep in mind that as nuts and cheesy as those movies were, that was when everything was working as planned. Sinbad Of The Seven Seas is what you get when all the wheels fall off! There’s loads of continuity errors, plot holes, terrible acting, ridiculous costumes, brilliantly bad special effects and about 20 more ideas and subplots than the movie needs. It’s truly amazing.
It’s my wife’s favorite bad movie, and it’s definitely in my top 3. We have shared it with so many of our friends, none of whom have ever walked away disappointed from the experience. I don’t say this without meaning every word of it, this is the Plan 9 From Outer Space of the 80’s. It’s surprisingly well paced and has an enthusiasm that’s hard to dislike. We have watched it dozens of times and it just keeps giving and giving.
Anyone else familiar with this? I really feel it’s overlooked.