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"Every voyage has its own flavor." An inkling of Baudelaire's albatross gets things rolling with winged homunculus and fractured amulet, Sinbad (John Phillip Law) pockets the talisman and in a vision gets a visit from a faceless odalisque with tattooed eyes on her palms. The Fountain of Destiny is the destination, deep in a mystical island inhabited by cultists who paint themselves jade-green and worship Ray Harryhausen behemoths. Along for the ride is the noble Vizier (Douglas Wilmer) with a disfigured visage behind a golden Hellenistic mask, plus the curvaceous slave (Caroline Munro) and the stoned wastrel (Kurt Christian). On their trail is "a black bat of a man," the wizard (Tom Baker) who seeks absolute malevolent power but nevertheless remains a touching stand-in for the stop-motion artisan—a beguiling passage has the villain patiently breathing life into a tiny gargoyle, "mandrake root and a few chemicals" and drops of his own blood are the ingredients of creation. Zoltan Korda is the model for Gordon Hessler's direction, with plenty of matte work and zooms building toward a cavernous temple infused with Mario Bava lighting and Robert Shaw's hallucinatory appearance as the Oracle of All Knowledge, a sort of horned Mr. Arkadin. The splintery sound of the ship's Amazonian figurehead coming to bellicose life, a quick wide-angle lens for the POV of the cyclops-centaur who tussles with a griffin in tribute to Willis O'Brien. Wonder of wonders, the Kali statue that follows a lavish Odissi dance with a furious duel, a sword in each of its six arms. "Trust in Allah but tie up your camel," wise words for adventurers. Spielberg notices much of this in the Indiana Jones series. With Martin Shaw, Grégorie Aslan, Takis Emmanuel, David Garfield, and Aldo Sambrell.
--- Fernando F. Croce |