[Pete]

SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS - Directed by Enzo Castellari for Cannon films, this is a truly abysmal effort. The score is terrible, the acting and dialogue are appalling bad and, as with the HERCULES films he made for Luigi Cozzi (who came up with the story for this one and directed a few sequences - more on that in a sec!), Lou Ferrigno is dubbed by someone else and it's painfully obvious. Now I know bad acting and dialogue is a typical trait of Italian exploitation but it's even worse than usual here. John Steiner however, gives a delightfully over the top performance as the evil Jaffar and it's worth getting the film just for his scenes....and possibly the scene in which Sinbad makes a rope by tying a load of Snakes together (not real, thankfully!)

To be fair to Castellari some of stuff he directed is techincally very good and there is a nice sequence featuring dead Knights rising from the ground, including one on horseback which looks like they actually buried the horse and then made them climb out! The action scenes are well done and feature Castellari's trademark slow-mo. However, Castellari either walked or was fired (I'm not sure which) and Luigi Cozzi took over and made a few changes and added new scenes (plus a few shots from HERCULES) and, if I was to make a guess, I'd say he was responsible for the opening sequence featuring Daria Nicholodi reading the tale to her daughter (which I think is Cozzi's real life kid) and the subsequent narration which is completely unnecessary and totally ruins every scene it features in.