Featuring a gorgeous young Jane Seymour "Eye Of The Tiger" was my favourite Sinbad movie growing up, so when I saw it was on TV I sat down to watch it with my 9 year old son. Plot In A Paragraph: At the request of the beautiful Princes Farah (a gorgeous Jane Seymour) Sinbad (Patrick Wayne) and his gang set sail to try and help lift a curse put on her brother, the soon to be King, Prince Kassim. Whilst I revelled in the nostalgia from my youth, my son would say "that looks so fake" whilst I would tell him about how old the movie was, and the effects were great back in 1970's and the wonder of Ray Harryhausen, he would say 'Star Wars' and 'Superman The Movie' were out in the 70's too, and being the tech savvy 9 year old he is, he pointed out this was made in the same year as "Star Wars"Whilst the story is on par (if not better and Jane Seymour is as attractive as Caroline Munro (although she does not show as much cleavage) Patrick Wayne is not as effective as John Philip Law in the "Golden voyage of Sinbad" and seemed to spend most of the first part of the movie like a love sick puppy making doe eyes at Seymour!! (Not that I blame him) Not as good or as enjoyable as I remember, I now rate "The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad" above this one.

Like Clash of the Titans and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, it's Ray Harryhausen's special effects that steal the show. Yes, they look a little dated now when you compare them to some of Hollywood's current big budget offerings, but, if you can look past the obvious blue-screen then you'll find yourself getting lost in a fantasy world that just doesn't seem to be about any more.'Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger' is the sequel to 'The Golden Voyage of Sinbad' and this time out, the fearless sailor must help restore a prince to his rightful throne. Only the price has been turned into a baboon and the witch who made him that way is hot on Sinbad's crew's heels.If you've seen 'The Golden Voyage' you'll know what to expect. Personally, I preferred the first one, as this one has a longer running time and, as a result, tends to drag around the middle. However, the beginning and the end more than make up for any slowness in the middle. So, if you're a fan of classic fantasy movies then give this one a go. It will retain its special charm for years to come.

Sinbad the sailor from Basrah (Patrick Wayne, son of the Duke) wants permission from the good Caliph to marry the Caliph's sister (Jane Seymour, not related to THE Jane Seymour) but the Caliph has been turned into a baboon by his and Seymour's wicked stepmother, Zenobia (Margaret Whiting).Well, a baboon who can't speak and whom no one recognizes as the transformed would-be Caliph can't very well give permission for Wayne and Seymour to marry, so they must travel to distant lands where magic and its practitioners prevail. Pursued by Whiting and a bronze beast with the head of a bull, they make their way to the island where the magician Melanthius lives with his fetching daughter Dione (Taryn Power, daughter of Himself).Then they're on to Hyperboria and another perilous journey. All these journeys are perilous and, in fact, they don't make a heck of a lot of sense except that they provide an excuse for fantasy, adventure, romance, the exercise of avarice, and Ray Harryhausen's agreeable special effects.All the performances are overdone but that's in no way objectionable because it suits this kind of phantasmagorical story. Do we really want realism when Sinbad is fighting off four bug-eyed scimitar-wielding ghouls? No. No, we don't. Not if we're the kind of people I think we are.In any case it's hard to tell whether Patrick Wayne's acting is good or not because he isn't really an actor but an icon in Charles Sanders Peirce's sense of the term. He corresponds to an actor.Jane Seymour I had mixed feelings about. When she was a "Medicine Woman" on television, I always prayed that the bandits or Indians would get her and do things to her. Here, she's so young and tender, and so decked out in low-cut pantaloons and bustiers that I was happy she survived long enough to bring medicine and compassion to the Wild West.The best performance -- envelope, please -- goes to Margaret Whiting as the evil witch. My God, she looks fiendish. Make up did a splendid job. And she overdoes her depravity to within an inch of her life. Totally ruthless. She barks out orders and expects instant obedience, and she can be rough on those who don't act as automatons. Totally ruthless, rather like my ex spouse.It's the kind of movie in which you settle back in your easy chair with a bag of tortilla chips and a bowl of pineapple salsa and while away the time, savoring the nicely executed location shooting in Andalucia, Malta, and the old tombs in Jordan. The kids will probably get a big kick out of it.

"Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger" is not as good as the other two Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movies. There are too many instances where events could play out really cool, yet they invariably fizzle. Given that this is the third installment of Sinbad by the same creative team, I expected more. The plot seems to wear out halfway through the movie, and important scenes are poorly executed. But can any movie featuring Ray Harryhausen's creatures and sexy Jane Seymour ever be truly bad? Of course not! I'm just frustrated that this movie missed being great, because it easily could have been. The storyline of the movie is acceptable, and some of it is directly lifted from an 1001 Nights story, which is a plus. A prince is cursed into baboon shape by a witch so a challenger for the throne (the witch's son) can take over the kingdom. The shapeshift will become permanent after a while. The sister of the prince hires Sinbad to sail to a foreign land to find a wizard to break the curse. The witch and her son pursue Sinbad to prevent the reversal of the shapeshift. At the end of the movie, the competitors end up at the north pole in the temple of a lost civilization, the last hope to cure the prince.Much of the plot follows standard elements found in the three Harryhausen Sinbad movies such as a race to a lost land and a shapeshifted/disfigured royal person. But that is okay. What does not work is that there are too many characters just tagging along with little to do. Sinbad is one of the characters left hanging, which is not a good sign for a movie with Sinbad in the title. Once Sinbad states (early in the film) that he cannot remove the curse but he knows someone who can, Sinbad exits center stage and the wizard becomes the driver of the plot. Jane Seymore visually dominates any scene she is in with her sexy princess outfit, but does little else. The witch's son and the wizards daughter must have some dramatic story potential, I'll figure out what it is some day, maybe.Basically, the heart and soul of the movie comes down to a duel between the wizard and the witch, as both ships race for the north pole. The witch (Margaret Whiting) is outrageous and bizarre, and has plenty of stop-motion creature sorcery at her disposal. The wizard (Patrick Troughton) has obscure knowledge and is wonderfully nutty. But this duel is hardly a battle of wits. Their antics actually make the movie kind of funny, not necessarily on purpose, but since they are the main focus for drama the whole tone of movie feels uncertain. The writers do not seem to grasp the central importance of these two characters, and the plot devolves into random encounters and padded scenes. It would have been great to have an ongoing duel of sorcery (and dynamation creatures) throughout the race to the pole, but this opportunity was missed. As always, the dynamation monsters are entertaining, but perhaps not as effectively presented in the dramatic parts of the story as they could have been. The minotaur is totally cool, but almost pointless; the walrus is totally pointless; the skeletons are okay but without any sense of why the witch could summon them (and then only once); the troglodyte looks great but is almost pointless; and the saber-toothed tiger and troglodyte fight (two dynamation creatures fighting at the climax is another staple feature in these Sinbad movies) is an awkward disappointment. The baboon is by far the best creature in the film. Harryhausen always manages to evoke personality from his creations, and the baboon-prince is one of his very best in terms of expression, emotion and presence. However, too much screen time is spent with this creature and the baboon ultimately adds drag to the film.In spite of my frustrations with the film, I've watched it several times and will undoubtedly watch it several more. There is something charming about a Ray Harryhausen movie, even one that misses the mark.