Five Sacred Gems

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Sinbad of the Seven Seas is basically Hercules on a boat. There’s no reason for a sailor like Sinbad to be as jacked as Lou Ferrigno, but it was his third collaboration with Italian director Luigi Cozzi. Although Cozzi was replaced by Enzo G. Castellari, then brought back to salvage what was left. As a result, Sinbad of the Seven Seas is definitely one of the worst adaptations of an adventure from One Thousand and One Nights. Even though a long opening text claims that the movie is based on a story written by Edgar Allen Poe. It’s more like The Princess Bride with Daria Nicolodi as a mother reading her daughter a bedtime story. Sinbad is exactly like Hercules with feats of strength and terrible dubbing that almost every actor has.

This time his crew of stereotypes are a little easier to tell apart. There’s Cantu the Samurai, Poochie the Dwarf, Cheropolis the Bald Cook, and the Viking. The most important crewman is Prince Ali. The movie borrows heavily from The Thief of Bagdad (1940) with evil sorcerer Jaffar as the main villain. John Steiner uses his own voice in an over-the-top performance. Jaffar manipulates the Caliph of Basra in order to marry his daughter. Alessandra Martines is the lovely Princess Alina romantically linked to Prince Ali. Sinbad escapes Jaffar’s clutches using a snake rope and must find five sacred gems. The scavenger hunt is almost exactly the same as The Adventures of Hercules. They first encounter the Legions of Darkness and an Oracle tells them how to find each gem.

The first gem is found on Skull Island where Sinbad defeats, not King Kong, but a giant rock monster. The second gem is found on the island of the Amazons. Even though that’s more Greek than Arabian. Queen Farida is a gorgeous black goddess who sways Sinbad until he sees past her deception. The third gem is found on the Isle of the Dead where Sinbad defeats Ghost Knights and the Ghost King. Jaffar leaves him stranded and is joined by female bodybuilder Teagan as the evil Soukra. Kira ends up being Sinbad’s love interest and her father Nadir is a wizard who invents a hot air balloon. After fighting ghouls and the Lord of Darkness who shoots lasers, Sinbad retrieves the final gem. When he faces Jaffar, Sinbad fights an exact double of himself. As soon as everything is resolved, the movie ends abruptly. Sinbad of the Seven Seas is as bad as it is fun.

Sinbad of the Seven Seas

Sinbad the Sailor

6 thoughts on “Five Sacred Gems”

  2. I do wanna check this film out to be honest. I’ve seen a couple of Enzo G. Castellari’s other films and he’s a very solid action filmmaker I’m becoming a big fan of, so I’m confident he’ll be true to the time period setting. A musclebound Sinbad certainly is over the top, but Lou Ferrigno somehow does look the part from the still. John Steiner was a pretty decent actor actually, but he was a little like Brando in a lot of the films he did were strictly for the paycheck, though unlike Brando, he would give the best performance he could whatever the part. Enio Girolami, the actor who plays The Viking, was the older brother of Enzo G. Castellari and they often worked together when the opportunity came about. I’ll have to see about finding a copy of the film with Italian language since the English dubbing will be atrocious.

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