The Golden Voyage of Sinbad

It is 1991 - 2 AM on a warm summer night.

Flipping through channels - refusing to go to sleep - suddenly the infomercials and the offline messages part as AMC is playing its discount back catalog. Claymation monsters leap from the screen, heroic adventurers sail the sea and do battle with evil sorcerers! 2 AM is the time for adventure - high adventure! - and classics of folklore and literature are told half-truthfully to form through the aging celluloid broadcast over the airwaves.

Many such films have been made - many such films have engrossed the imaginations of young boys, going on to write and run campaigns and voyages of the mind about them - with the added enhancements of polyhedral dice. One such film - one which holds its value, speaking both to the target reader of the Basic and the Advanced sets - is Gordon Hessler's The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.

N-Spiration:
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad

About the Film

Released in the United States on April 5, 1974 - following a December release the prior year in the United Kingdom - putting its development and release in parallel to if not just barely before the original publication of the Dungeons & Dragons game. It has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 75%, accompanied by an audience score of 64%, and was a commercial success at the time: starring John Phillip Law in the title role of Sinbad: whom discerning viewers may or may not immediately recognize from his more shaven role as Pygar in the 1968 classic Barbarella. The film pits Law against the wiles of Doctor Who Tom Baker in the role of Prince Koura: an evil sorcerer in pursuit of power, wealth, and youth. 

However - the most magical name that appears in the credits of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is that of producer and stop-motion special effects legend, Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen was a staple in the world of cinematic special effects for decades: one whose signature films - The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, One Million Years B.C., ... have formed staples of the imagination of countless young watchers - this watcher included. The hallmark of a Harryhausen is stop motion animation, which per his biography, he fell in love with after seeing King Kong in theaters. Stop motion, thus, is expected and delivered in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad: with monsters and minions large and small being nimbly manipulated and meshed in shot with live action sequences - forming the final product on the screen. These - combined with practical effects and on-location sets produce an immersive experience (albeit dated, tinted with nostalgia) which is consistent unto itself.

Fleshing out the film's surprisingly all-star cast are Hammer Horror veteran Caroline Munro, who would go on to star opposite Roger Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me, and Douglas Wilmer: who would likewise appear with Roger Moore in a Bond project - Octopussy - but whose face might be more familiar to the reader in present context by his appearance in Harrythausen's 1963 Jason and the Argonauts: in which he played Pelias.

What's to Like

First and foremost, while the claymation effects provide - for me - a modicum of nostalgia above their presentation of verisimilitude, they provide an opportunity for the film to present multiple mythical or magical beings - great or small - in a manner interactive with the characters directly. That is, unlike - say - Godzilla - where the prop interacts with other props of the city and cut-aways to actors and military scenes imply their interaction, in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, the effect creatures are injected into the scene, interacting with the actors directly, in a manner consistent with how the magical creatures of a fantasy adventure game might interact: a first in film, if the American Film Institute is to be believed. You don't see the wood golem - you fight the wood golem. The wizard's familiar moves and thinks and does - and can be killed if the wizard isn't careful with it. The action in the movie proceeds like that of a fantasy adventure game - your workaday OSR expedition: dungeon and wilderness exploration, both included in the bargain. 

To build on the above - the practical effects being limited (there are no scenes where nothing but clay puppets and props take the stage) means that they tend to be in use only in a few places: the things that they represent are truly fantastic - and they tend to present unique challenges to the protagonists. Herein, we see player skill - demonstrated in the form of character ingenuity. When battling with a magical creation made from wood, Sinbad calls his men to attack it with fire. When fighting against a construct of bronze, Sinbad and his men have to figure out how to use the environment against it, as swords are largely useless - as well as flame, it would seem! So you see both successful ideas and unsuccessful ideas being attempted by various members of the group as the environment challenges them with enemies and foes alien to their expectations.

Which leads into the last main point that can be drawn from this film - it's a fantasy adventure film.

It does not linger on elements that don't advance the adventure; it does not put on airs about its literary references; and it allows the characters to build themselves through action rather than through exposition or implication. The protagonists do battle with evil wizards; the party treks through foreign lands, mapping as they go; and Sinbad has to think on his feet to figure out how to deal with the different challenges that stand between him and their goal. 

How do you fight a man, invisible? Stand in the water where his footfalls will be visible!

There are even puzzles to be had - verbal riddles provided by ancient beings to guide the party's next steps or visual clues hidden in treasure (treasure maps require Read Languages to decipher, maybe? Or perhaps a high level Thief to figure out?) to figure out the way to reach new and forgotten soils. In short - The Golden Voyage of Sinbad has all of the elements of an OSR D&D game: packaged and presented through the lens of the classic Arabian Nights ensemble.

Where to Watch

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad - in addition to being available on DVD and Blu-Ray - is available to stream on your streaming service of choice - including Google Play Movies, Amazon Prime Video, and Apple TV - as well as on YouTube.

For further gaming, a referee intrigued by this and similar films may be wise to consider the system Seven Voyages of Zylarthen, as well. Although not a direct reference to the seven voyages of Sinbad, it draws intentionally from some of the same folklore as would have inspired The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and similar media.

In Conclusion

While The Golden Voyage of Sinbad was produced too late to be a true influence within Appendix N - the people involved in it were certainly known to the creators of the game: and without doubt, it fits into the genre as well as if not better than most of the Appendix N literature - presenting a protagonist getting by on skill and cunning, presenting evil sorcerers and wild locations, and featuring dungeons, caverns, mythical beings, puzzles, and hex-crawling. Not literal hex-crawling, of course, but voyages into the unknown: sailing to new and rumored places following what is effectively a treasure map and then trekking through unknown and rugged territory. For that reason, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, it is fair to say, is 1: Entirely OSR.

This film - and others like it - are kindling for the flame of the imagination. Though they have no connection to the game, as written, that gives them the distinct advantage of having been developed in its absence: The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, like other material truly Appendix N that predates the release and rise of D&D as a game, is unshackled by the conventions of the role-playing genre: liberated to tell a story and for that story to take you across to the ends of the earth.

May your campaigns have half the breadth of the journeys of Sinbad - because even halfway, you'll have years of sessions to spare. Thank you for reading - delve on!

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, distributed by Columbia Pictures, produced by Moningside Productions, and written by Brian Clemens. All imagery related thereto is property of the owning studio. Portrait of Ray Harryhausen with several of his creations retrieved from and presumably owned by bloody-disgusting.com. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeons & Dragons, and D&D and all imagery or references thereto related are property of Wizards of the Coast.

Clerics Wear Ringmail makes no claim of ownership of any sort to any of the aforementioned media, texts, or images and includes references to them for review purposes under Fair Use: US Code Title 17, Chapter 107. 

The slide-in of Gary... I got from a meme.