Sinbad of the Seven Seas

Enzo G. Castellari's Sinbad of the Seven Seas (fantasy)
8.5/10 or 2/10

Now, this is the first time that I've given a movie two grades. And I will tell you why. This is the first movie that I've reviewed for you that is so awful, so idiotically abysmal, that it has actually crossed some magical line into the land of hilarious. Through some unfortunate twist of fate, Sinbad of the Seven Seas is a movie that will confuse the hell out of me, make me want to throw myself at the television, and then re-watch it because it was so damn funny.

This will be a pretty short review, as there isn't much to say about the cast. Cast as Sinbad himself is Lou Ferrigno, at-least-two-time winner of Mr. Universe. So you know it's only going downhill from here. Picture the Governator in a loincloth, with a slightly larger head, and you've got our boy Lou.

You've probably never heard of any of the other cast members, so I won't bother mentioning them. Hell, unless you grew up in Italy, you haven't even heard of the director. I should ask around in the Italian Department to see if any of the professors have ever heard of this film abomination.

The plot is fairly standard: man saves beautiful lady from evil sorcerer. Except, in this case, while Ferrigno does most of the saving -- being by far the burliest of his buddies -- he doesn't get the girl. He's saving his friend's girl. Yeah, I don't get it either, but I guess these guys are tight, or something. Anyway, Sinbad has to find some crystals that will... do something, and then the sorcerer won't be able to rule the world. Because all evil sorcerers want to do is rule the world.

Sounds pretty standard so far, right? It gets better. I've mentioned that the director was Italian. Well, so was essentially the entire cast, but the movie was all in English. At some point during the editing process, somebody decided that all those Italian accents were too hard to understand. So, and I kid you not, they dubbed over the entire English movie. With more English. Fortunately, Lou Ferrigno got to keep his own voice, but he still had to re-do everything and dub himself over. You can't understand the stupidity and hilarity until you see it for yourself, as some of the "less Italian" voices they chose made me want to cry.

And I haven't even talked about the acting. There's a reason: it's all crap. Not a single person in the movie can act, except for maybe our damsel in distress Princess Whatsername. Lou sure can't. But do you know what he can do? Run, in slow motion, with oiled-up muscles, on a beach. Oh, yeah. I'm not kidding. You don't know pain until you've watched Lou Ferrigno's man-boobs jiggling to and fro. I believe that jiggling man-boobs -- fine, fine: pectorals -- are the main cause of ocular hemorrhage. That's bleeding eyes, for those of you who weren't paying attention in biology. Not that you learned about bleeding eyes. I digress.

My favourite character is this witch woman who pops in a third of the way in to the film to help out the bad guy. She gets no introduction and has no reason for being there. She just appears one time in a shot, and they decided to keep her around. And not for her looks. She's rocking the David Bowie in Labyrinth hairstyle, and a black, sleeveless swimsuit-esque unitard that is far, far too tight. I was constantly afraid that her incredibly saggy breasts were going to fall out and that my eyes were going to pack their bags and leave altogether. The fact that she made a much more attractive man than she did a woman was a bit startling as well. Plus, her dubbed voice is awful. Did I mention that she has no reason to be there?

I also want to personally thank the writers of this script for coming up with some of the worst dialogue ever written. This way, George Lucas will have an example of what not to do that wasn't created by him! I will now insert a small quote from the film.

Sinbad: "Wait a minute, wait a minute! Where is everybody? There's nobody here!"
Poochie: "...there's nobody here!"
Sinbad: "I just said that. That's the point! ..."

By, "that's the point", he means, "that's why I said it, damn it all!" Oh, and yeah, there's a character named Poochie the Dwarf. No lie. Ah, the dialogue. Priceless.

Because this is such an obvious B-grade movie, a copy is damn hard to track down. As always, if you know me in person, ask for my copy. You will not regret it. Well, actually, you really will, but in a good way. You'll never be the same again. Ever.

Watch it.