Movie memory: ‘The 7th Voyage of Sinbad’
By Bob Bloom
Some movies resonate in your find for reasons other than the quality of the picture.
“The 7th Voyage of Sinbad” is that movie for me. The reasons are many and varied.
It was the first movie I attended without my parents. I was 12 years old. Up until that time, my movie-going experiences were limited to family affairs, mostly trips from our house in North Massapequa on Long Island into New York City for roadshow engagements.
Most of the movies I saw were on television: The “Million Dollar Movie” series on WOR and the various Shock Theatre horror film classics that popped up on other channels.
The TV fare was limited in the mid- to late 1950s, consisting mostly of films from the 1930s and ’40s. I don’t know how many times I watched “King Kong” or “Gunga Din” on “Million Dollar Movie,” but it was in the dozens.
The same goes for the classic Universal horror features.
The nearest move theaters to North Massapequa were in Wantagh, Hicksville or Syosset, none of which were within walking distance.
That changed sometime in 1959, when the North Massapequa Theater opened in a shopping center at the intersection of Hicksville Road and Jerusalem Ave.
The theater was about a mile from my house. So, on the first Saturday the theater was opened, my friends and I walked there to catch its first “kiddie matinee.”
And that is where I fell in love — twice. First, with the power of movies, and second with a cinematic wizard named Ray Harryhausen.
The marvels Harryhausen created for “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad” opened an entire new world to me.
From the outset, when the one-eyed cyclops chased Torin Thatcher’s evil magician, Sokurah, onto the beach, I was captivated.
The images I remember from the movie remain very fresh in my mind: the transformation of Kathryn Grant’s servant woman into a half-snake-half woman, the giant rocs, the sword fight between Sinbad and the skeleton, the boy genie, the p.o.v. shot of Grant’s shrunken Princess Parisa looking up at the seemingly giant Sokurah.
These shots transformed me, sparking a curiosity about movies that I never realized was dormant inside me.
The viewing of “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad” spurred me to a multiyear love affair with the North Massapequa Theater.
I went there many Saturday afternoons, seeing such films as “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers” (another Harryhausen project), “The Maze,” “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” “Them,” The Beginning of the End,” “Forbidden Planet,” “The Deadly Mantis,” “War of the Worlds,” “This Island Earth” and the various Vincent Price-Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe adaptations.
Another Saturday that was a transformative moment when was the 12-chapter serial, “Adventures of Captain Marvel” was screened. The chapters had been spliced together, so there actually were no cliffhangers, but you still understood and thrills that the chapterplay elicited.
Yet, all of these wonderful memories would be absent if not for “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.” It was a catalyst that, as I look back on my life as not only a movie reviewer, but as a film buff and collector, sparked my imagination and introduced me to a world of endless imagination.
The technology of movie making may have changed, but at its core, a movie can still elicit a response in your soul that can influence the course of your life.
“7th Voyage …” was that film for me.
I am a member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association. My reviews appear at ReelBob (reelbob.com) and Rottentomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com). I also review Blu-rays and DVDs. I can be reached by email at bobbloomjc@gmail.com or on Twitter @ReelBobBloom. Links to my reviews can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.