From the land beyond beyond, from the world past hope and fear, I

by David Weiner
From the land beyond beyond, from the world past hope and fear, I bid you, Genie, now appear...
T
HE 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD
holds the honor of being one of
the most entertaining and influential
fantasy films ever made. The magical,
escapist adventure full of intrigue,
exotic locales, amazing monsters,
and a malevolent magician first
astonished audiences upon its release
in 1958, setting the bar at the time for
visual effects created by stop-motion
animation wizard Ray Harryhausen.
Ray’s attention to detail was
legendary. Sequences that last only
minutes onscreen took months for
him to painstakingly photograph,
working by himself to command each
of his creatures’ (he never called his
creations “monsters”) movement-byincremental-movement, imbued with
life one frame at a time. The results
of that exquisite patience consistently
yielded some of the most memorable,
naturalistic fantasy creatures of the
silver screen. That irreplaceable
talent prompted producer Charles
H. Schneer to insure Ray’s hands for
no less than one million dollars—an
unheard of precaution at the time,
even by today’s standards. But seeing
as 7th VOYAGE would rely almost
entirely on the spectacle of Ray’s
patented process of Dynamation,
it seemed to be a shrewd move on
Schneer’s part.
“I’ve been witness to his genius,”
Schneer said later of Harryhausen,
whose working relationship together
would last for more than 25 years and
a dozen fantasy features. “His scenes
and his sequences and his delivery
have been superb and unmatched
in the annals of the motion picture
industry. It’s been a great pleasure
of mine to see Ray at work: that
power of concentration, his area of
creative design, and his ability to do
what today crews of 70 or 80 men
are doing is certainly unmatched in
cinematic history.”
SINBAD as a Source of Inspiration
The ambitious origins of THE
7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD began
with a handful of drawings by Ray,
starting with his simple desire to
animate a skeleton. But who or what
would it fight? Explaining of the
ARABIAN NIGHTS character, he
recalls, “My decision was that the
best adversary for this unusual villain
would be Sinbad. I felt he was the
personification of adventure.” Ray
promptly put together an outline,
drawings, and sketches for a project
called “Sinbad the Sailor”, and
pitched his idea to Schneer, who
remembers that when he first saw
those sketches, “I was absolutely
overwhelmed by them, and I didn’t
need anymore than those drawings to
sell it to the distributor.”
The screenplay for 7th VOYAGE
was then put together. Initially titled
THE ADVENTURES OF SINBAD,
it was ultimately changed after Ray
recommended using the number 7 for
“its mystical connotations.” The story
finds Sinbad heading to Baghdad to
marry the beautiful Princess Parisa
a n d
unite with
her
father’s
kingdom
of
Chandra to avoid war.
En route, the legendary
sailor and his men anchor at
Colossa Island to restock their
supplies, only to encounter a
deadly Cyclops and the fleeing
magician Sokurah, who loses his
magic lamp in the scuffle. They
manage to escape and make it
to the wedding, but before the
happy couple can exchange vows, the
treacherous sorcerer shrinks Parisa
down to the size of a doll, coercing
Sinbad to take him back to Colossa to
obtain a crucial ingredient necessary
to break the spell. Of course, Sokurah
just wants that Genie lamp, and back
on the mysterious island Sinbad must
battle even more fantastic monsters
and once again take on the Cyclops
in order to return his bride-to-be back
to a reasonable size.
Dynamation, “The New Miracle
of the Screen”
Now that Columbia Pictures was sold
on Ray and Charles’ proposal for a
swashbuckling Sinbad adventure, the
next challenge was figuring out how
to translate Ray’s complicated effects
to a color film palette. They had
only been done in black-and-white,
and Ray encountered brand new
headaches in attempting to capture
the realism of his stop-motion
animation combined with live-action
actors against his rear-projection
process with the grainy color film
stock. But after multiple tests, he was
able to defeat his new Technicolor
obstacles and hone his craft that he
had established on such black-andwhite classics as MIGHTY JOE
YOUNG (1949) and 20 MILLION
MILES TO EARTH (1957).
it was still
the same old
Ray Harryhausen
magic.
Making the Movie and
Casting Sinbad
Meanwhile, the showman side of
Schneer came up with a catchy new
name for Ray’s technical process.
Sitting in traffic in his Buick, he
eyed the word “Dynaflow” on his
dash and had an epiphany: the word
“Dyna” perfectly embodied Ray’s
unique style of visual effects. Why
not combine it with “animation”? As
if Ray’s incredible creatures weren’t
enough to sell the idea, now they
thought they had the perfect gimmick
to help market 7th VOYAGE. Vintage
trailers for the film announced that
it was filmed “In Dynamation, the
new miracle of the screen,” and a
promotional featurette, very much
a product of its time, explained,
“Dynamation is a new process which
utilizes technical and scientific
advances in electronics and color to
open up vast new vistas in motion
picture entertainment. Anything
the mind can conceive can now be
brought to the screen.” It concluded
with the declaration, “THE 7th
VOYAGE OF SINBAD is the 8th
wonder of the screen.” Indeed!
As times change, so do sales pitches,
and the Dynamation name evolved
with future projects to become known
as “Super Dynamation” and then
“Dynarama.” Call it what you will,
THE 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD’s
release in 1958 was the start of
a successful Sinbad trilogy for
Ray that spanned close to two
decades, with THE GOLDEN
VOYAGE OF SINBAD in 1973
and SINBAD AND THE EYE OF
THE TIGER in 1977—the latter
considered a disappointment because
it was “put together too quickly” on
the heels of GOLDEN’s success. The
extended period of time between the
first and second SINBAD movies
made room for other Harryhausen
classics such as MYSTERIOUS
ISLAND (1961) and JASON AND
THE ARGONAUTS (1963), but the
lack of success of THE VALLEY
OF GWANGI in 1969 prompted Ray
and Schneer to return to Sinbad’s
adventures and give the Genie’s
magic lamp another go.
Three different actors took on the
title role of Sinbad for those movies:
Columbia Pictures contract player
Kerwin Matthews was clean cut
and square-jawed and would team
up with Ray on his next project as
the title character of 1960’s THE
3 WORLDS OF GULLIVER.
John Phillip Law played Sinbad in
GOLDEN, while Patrick Wayne,
the son of John Wayne, rounded out
the bearded protagonists in EYE OF
THE TIGER.
Schneer said Matthews “made a
splendid choice for us,” explaining
of the former teacher from Seattle,
“He was handsome, he was vigorous,
he was athletic, and he was totally
dedicated to the job of being an
actor.”
Ray also
observed,
“This
type
of
picture presents a
big challenge to actors
because they have to do
what we call shadow boxing
to a great degree. I found out in
THE 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD
that Kerwin Matthews was very
talented at giving the impression
that he was actually seeing
something.”
Playing Sinbad’s love interest was
Kathryn Grant as Princess Parisa.
The Texas-born beauty made her
screen debut in 1953’s FOREVER
FEMALE, and made a perfect damsel
for Sinbad to save. Her character
was also quite independently written
for the time; rather than simply
scream at Ray’s creatures like many
a ’50s B-movie heroine, Parisa had
sufficient pluck and even came in
handy to rescue Sinbad and his
men from the dreaded Cyclops’s
cage thanks to her diminutive size.
Despite Grant’s promising turn, she
retired from acting shortly after her
7th VOYAGE adventure when she
married Bing Crosby.
Torin Thatcher proved to be the
perfect foil for Sinbad as Sokurah the
Magician. Originally from Bombay,
India, Thatcher was also a former
teacher who made his screen debut
in GENERAL JOHN REGAN back
in 1934. Rounding out the cast as
the young Genie Barani in the lamp
was 12-year-old Richard Eyer, a
Santa Monica-born Los Angeles
resident whose chief credit prior
to 7th VOYAGE was 1957‘s THE
INVISIBLE BOY. He went on to
make multiple TV appearances in the
next 10 years, but also ultimately left
the entertainment industry. Eyer went
on to become an elementary school
teacher, perhaps due to the sage advice
of his experienced male co-stars.
THE 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD
was formally announced to the world
on June 20, 1957, and principal
photography began on August 12,
1957, with director Nathan Juran at the
helm. The Austrian-born filmmaker
was previously an art director who
won the Academy Award for Best Art
Direction with 1941’s HOW GREEN
WAS MY VALLEY; his directorial
debut was THE BLACK CASTLE in
1952. 7th VOYAGE was shot primarily
in Spain instead of in the middle east
(where the story is set) due to that
region’s unstable conditions. Using
a partial Spanish crew, it lensed in
wide-ranging locations including
Madrid, Barcelona, Granada, Sevilla,
Mallorca, the beach at S’Agaro, Tossa
de Mar, and the Caves of Arta. There
was also some studio work in London,
and after principal photography
wrapped, Ray “worked his magic”
in Hollywood. Post-production was
completed on March 7, 1958.
The Cyclops of Colossa
The first set piece out of the gate
in 7th VOYAGE is our first encounter
with the fearsome Cyclops, a
character Ray lifted from the tale of
Odysseus in Greek mythology and
gave some special modifications
to make it his
own:
pointed
ears; scaly, wartcovered skin and
a ridged upper
torso;
threefingers on each
clawed hand; the
legs of a satyr and
cloven hooves;
a crowning horn
atop his head—
and an animalistic
roar that will give
you nightmares
for the
rest of your
days. One of
the thoughts behind
giving the Cyclops the
legs of a satyr was to sell
the idea to the audience that
this was not a man in costume.
Through the capable talents of
Ray, the detailed stop-motion
figure incredibly transmits clear
emotions of anticipation, surprise,
pain, anger, and frustration. When
he licks his lips at the delight of
snacking on Sinbad and his men, you
can almost empathize with his desire.
It’s little details like that one that made
Ray’s work great.
“We tried to give him a proportion
so that people would find him rather
awesome,” recalled Ray of the
Cyclops’ size. One of his signature
creations, it was a character he
had been plotting to put on film for
years. His first attempt to bring it
to the screen was in 1946 with an
unrealized project called “The Satyr”
that introduced a variety of creatures
in a secret underworld beneath a
Mayan pyramid, including a Griffin,
Sphinx, Medusa, and a Satyr along
with the Cyclops. A few years later,
another unmade project called “The
Lost City” had a Cyclops escaping
to the surface to cause havoc; and
the Ymir
in
20
M I L L I O N
MILES TO EARTH
was originally meant
to be a one-eyed monster
in a project called “The
Giant Cyclops”. One doesn’t
have to look too closely to
notice that Ray’s Cyclops and
his Ymir display a significant
resemblance, from the facial
sculpt to the ready-for-action
stance. They even share the same
armature, as Ray pillaged the Ymir’s
metal skeleton to use for the Cyclops.
The
Groundbreaking
Skeleton Fight
The Serpent Dance and the
Shrinking Princess
The next Harryhausen set piece
finds Sadi, a handmaiden to Princess
Parisa, transformed by Sokurah
before a royal audience into an
undulating half-woman, half serpent
in a feat of magic. As everyone
looks on mesmerized, the disturbing
performance comes to a screeching
halt when Sadi is almost strangled by
her own tail. This creature was one of
Ray’s favorite characters in the film.
The meticulous artist added an extra
set of arms to his creation, which
gave “her whole body an allure and
a flow that worked wonderfully with
the music.” An astute observer of the
human form and the art of movement,
Ray studied belly dancers to lock
down the serpent’s rhythm, joking,
“This arduous piece of research
involved me slogging round all the
Los Angeles nightclubs I could find
that were featuring belly dancers.
Sometimes animators have to suffer
for their art.”
As a major plot point of 7th
VOYAGE requires the scheming
Sokurah to shrink down the princess
to smaller-than-Barbie proportions
while she sleeps, yet another trick of
the camera was devised to pull off the
optical illusion. Kathryn Grant was
filmed on a Madrid soundstage, tied
to a stake to keep her motionless, as
the camera focused on her arm. The
camera then slowly moved back 40
feet to make it appear to get smaller.
For the final stage of the gag, Grant
was placed on a giant pillow, 25 feet
high and 40 feet wide, to really sell
the effect.
It is perhaps JASON
AND THE ARGONAUTS
that is best remembered
for its exciting, four-and-ahalf-minute, multiple skeleton
sword-fight sequence, which
took Harryhausen four and a
half months to painstakingly
photograph,
requiring
an
estimated total of 184,800 individual
movements. But in order to
accomplish this incredible feat,
he first had to cut his teeth on the
scene that inspired him to make 7th
VOYAGE in the first place: Sinbad’s
incredible one-on-one fight with
Sokurah’s skeleton, animated to do
battle by means of sorcery. In order
to learn believable swordplay for the
sequence, Ray once again dove feet
first into his craft and learned the
art of fencing, enrolling in a course
at the Faulkner Fencing School on
Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
“I must confess that I enjoyed it,” he
recalled, “but I had to give it up when
I threw my hip joint out.”
When it was time to film the
sequence, Italian Olympic fencing
coach and sword master Enzo Greco
was called in. The stunt supervisor
for the film, Greco choreographed
the intense fight and stood in for
the skeleton to clash metal with
Matthews, who shared, “We had
to be so precise to make sure that
the swords eventually met on the
screen that we started counting.
Finally, we worked out that we were
choreographing things exactly the
way you’d choreograph a dance
sequence in counts of eight ... and
with Bernard Herrmann’s music, it
almost is a dance sequence.”
The exact same fight choreography
was then
shot with
Matthews
going through
the motions alone,
and the skeleton was
matted over Greco’s
performance. An interesting
note: When 7th VOYAGE was
released in England, the censors
cut out this entire fight sequence,
worried that it would frighten
children. What a crime!
The Fire-Breathing Dragon
No outrageous fantasy adventure
is complete without a fire-breathing
dragon, and the creature designed by
Ray for this film was thematically
based on far eastern legends, with
lethal fangs, a forked tongue, and
twisted horns attached to a reptilian
body with “a touch of dinosaur,” of
course. (Ray loved dinosaurs!) He
purposely chose not to give the beast
wings in order to keep the dragon
grounded and the established story
from changing too much. As for
capturing believable fire coming
from the mouth of a three-foot model,
he filmed a flamethrower against a
dark sky and superimposed it.
The climactic fight between the
dragon and a second Cyclops took
weeks to animate and is a true
highlight of the film, with each
creature drawing enough sympathy
during their tussle that it’s hard to root
for one over the other. Alas, there can
be only one victor in Harryhausen’s
law of the jungle, and—spoiler
alert—yet another Cyclops meets his
doom. Only minutes later, Sinbad’s
giant crossbow is assembled to defeat
the dragon, and that mythical creature
meets a particularly nasty end.
One life-sized, 15-foot arrow was
constructed for the production; the
rest of the crossbow apparatus was
actually a miniature that measured
only two feet long, matted with an
eight-foot wheel that the performers
would work in front of on the beach
of S’Agaro.
The Importance of Sound Design
& Herrmann’s Music
Sound design is crucial for the
believability of Ray Harryhausen’s
collection of beasts. Can you imagine
the Cyclops without his unsettling
roar, the two-headed Roc without the
gale-force flap of its wings, or the
Skeleton
warrior
without
the
rattle of its bones?
Growls,
shrieks,
groans, roars of terror,
whines of pain, and so
many more innovative sound
effects connect the viewer to
each creature’s raison d’etre, key
ingredients to making them look
and feel real.
And
without
Bernard
Herrmann’s incredible orchestral
score for 7th VOYAGE, the puzzle is
not complete. His music for the film
is a character in and of itself, guiding
the emotional tone of the entire
proceedings. “The music is very
important,” Harryhausen would point
out. “I’ve always felt that 50 percent
of the success of the fantasy film is
the music. The music heightens the
emotion and makes the whole thing
bigger than life.”
The veteran composer’s score is
marked by a memorable, melodic
overture full of harmony and
excitement. Scenes are brimming
with musical energy to serve the
visual splendor of the film, courtesy of
Herrmann’s
trademark
brass,
chimes,
bolstered percussion,
and a full complement
of woodwinds. And
when it comes to Sinbad’s
death-defying duel with the
animated skeleton, Herrmann’s
use of clacking, snapping
percussion and xylophone
accompaniment wills the
audience to believe that
every bone of this formidable
adversary is working together to take
out our hero without remorse.
Herrmann’s score for 7th VOYAGE
is one of the greats, and his
collaboration with Harryhausen and
Schneer proved so successful that they
collaborated on three more pictures:
THE 3 WORLDS OF GULLIVER,
MYSTERIOUS
ISLAND,
and
JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS.
What Didn’t Make the Cut
As with any endeavor that springs
from creative minds, a lot more is put
on paper than is ultimately burned
on film. This happens for a variety
reasons, from budget and time
limitations to technological barriers.
Harryhausen, however, was wellknown for his tenacity when it came
to inspirations like his Cyclops, and
over the course of his storied career,
a good many creatures and sequences
survived to tell their tale: “Few, if any,
of my ideas were ever completely
discarded,” said Ray. “Once I had
pictured a creature in my mind’s eye,
it rarely left me until I had realized it
on paper or celluloid.”
The original outline for 7th
VOYAGE had Sinbad seeking a
mythical place called The Valley
of Diamonds. He has to battle the
Cyclops, who is a diamond miner,
and penetrate a Fortress of Fear
to get to the gleaming prize. After
also battling a dragon, he confronts
an adversary named the Lord of
Fear in the crumbling castle, then
encounters a hooded figure—Death
himself—which is a skeleton, of
course. They duel, and Sinbad
claims his untold riches.
The original outline also had a
scene in which Sinbad’s men break
open the gigantic two-headed Roc’s
egg, drag out the baby bird, and kill
it for food. Naturally, this angers
its parents, who attack Sinbad’s
ship with giant rocks, breaking it
into two and sinking it. While that
particular catastrophe didn’t make it
to the picture, the scene with Sinbad’s
starving men noshing on the giant
baby bird did make the cut, and Ray
got to throw in a similar payoff in a
memorable MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
sequence a few years later. I guess he
was a big fan of roasted chicken...
Ideas like those that never saw the
light of day, and many others—like a
film that Harryhausen wanted to make
about the Abominable Snowman—
ultimately ended up “filed away” in
what Ray called his “story morgue.”
And although they never got made,
he came up with even more Sinbad
movie concepts, including one in
which our hero encounters dinosaurs,
and two others: SINBAD AND THE
7 WONDERS OF THE WORLD and
SINBAD GOES TO MARS. Yes,
Mars. Who wouldn’t want to see
those movies?
The Film’s Reception
film
grossed
over
$6
million
in
its
initial release and was
considered to be a sleeper
hit. A true collaborative
effort, what ultimately made
the final product so special had
everything to do with Ray’s fancy
footwork; people had never seen
such a spectacle onscreen before,
and had no clue how it was done.
Even Kerwin Matthews was
surprised, saying of the finished
picture years later, “When I finally got
to see the film it was in a theater in
Monte Carlo, and I couldn’t believe it
was the same film I had worked on.
Not at all. When all those monsters
came to life and the Cyclops and all
the special effects, I was just carried
away as if I weren’t in it.”
Ray credited the runaway success
of 7th VOYAGE with opening up
opportunities he had never had before,
and for changing the direction of his
career: “I owe a great deal to Sinbad.
Up until 1958, I had been almost
exclusively involved with so-called
monster-on-the-rampage movies and
was looking not only for a way out,
but also for new inspiration.”
The “feather in the turban” for
THE 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD
came in 2008, when it was selected
for preservation in the National Film
Registry by the Library of Congress
and deemed “culturally, historically
or aesthetically” significant, to be
preserved for all time.
With a taut running time of 88 minutes,
THE 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD
opened in December 1958. Photos
taken in front of a New York City
theater with a 7th VOYAGE marquee
show huge lines of excited patrons,
making for a genuine blockbuster
opening. Produced for under $1
million (at a reported $650,000), the
Credit where credit is due: For
this article, many thanks goes to
The Art of Ray Harryhausen,
Ray’s Fantasy Scrapbook, The
Official Ray Harryhausen website,
and THE 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD
DVD extras from Columbia/Tri-Star
Home Video for select quotes and
production details.