Captain Sindbad vs the Harryhausen Sinbads

I prefer the Harryhausen films for their excellent stop-motion effects and their sometimes terrific acting (John Phillip Law as one example) and some of the action sequences. Sadly Harryhausen's wonderful creatures did not always get the right fight choreography they should have; the battle between the Griffin and Centaur in Golden Voyage as one example; beautiful creatures who basically ran around in circles grappling with each other.

I truly enjoy Captain Sinbad for Guy Williams' wonderful performance and the imagination of some of the effects such as the giant hand. Pedro Armendariz and the astonishingly beautiful Heidi Bruhl were very strong supporting players, especially Heidi who carried her role much better than many of the women in Harryhausen's films. I also feel the direction was more exciting in general.

It's just television, get over it! - David Letterman

Hard to decide. The Harryhausen movies obviously had the better effects. I also think their production design and music were better.

However, Captain Sinbad had some really fun ideas and a great fairy tale story.

In the end, it's a draw for me.

As a fan of Zorro, I enjoyed seeing Guy Williams draw his sword one last time. The film was very imaginative, the villain is very fun (you'd have no idea that Pedro Amendariz was in pain at the time), and I enjoyed the monsters such as the dragon and the giant hand. The part where the hand waved its finger at him was hilarious and I love Sindbad's frustrated kick after the fight is over.

That said, I must concede that at least the first two films of Ray Harryhausen's Sinbad trilogy were better than this one.

This one had a lot more explicit violence, where you could see the blood and a few other things. This was made in 1963, didn't MGM have that belly-button rule concerning censorship? Could they get away with that, because the movie was made in Germany?

Bottom line, you can't surpass Harryhausen work, you can only try to match it.