Here’s a real shot in the dark. I went to a birthday party when I was around 4 or 5 (dating this around 1972 at the latest) and we were taken to a movie that scared the pants off of me… so much so that I had to go half way through (ya, I know… whatta wuss).
All I can remember about it now is…
It was a Sinbad/Ray Harryhausen type film.
The plot involved an evil wizard who could not be killed because he had hidden his heart in a castle in the middle of a treacherous swamp (possibly protected by a dragon… I was gone by then).
A group of adventures goes in seach of this castle. During one scene an adventurer falls into the swamp disappears below the surface… resurfaces as a skeleton… then sinks to the bottom again (that’s the scene that cost me (and my parents) a lot of sleep).
So, does anybody know what movie I’m talking about?
Before this question slips away entirely, let me say that I too recall the OP scenes and being kind of creeped out by them. Whether I’m mixing up two different films I can’t be sure; however here are some additional details I recall:
-The wizard twisted his magic ring and his hand magically stretched to retrieve some sort of object a great distance away.
-At the climax, the hero climbed up a huge rope in a tower with the aid of a hook of some sort and there did battle with a giant hand that tried to crush him.
After checking IMDB, I wasn’t completely satisfied that “The Magic Sword” was the right answer. I remember the effects being more impressive than they sound from the description, although as a child (I’m 42 now), I remember being frightened by the Pia Zadora classic “Santa Claus vs. the Martians”, so it may well be.
I definitely remember the skeletonizing scene being in TMS. Also the dragon, and Basil Rathbone’s heart, and the hero’s mother being a witch/sorceress.
The effects were pretty spectacular…for 1962, when the movie was released. We look back at things like TMS and t7VoS now and think they look cheesy, but they were major cool when they came out.
Did this movie by any chance have a scene where the hero takes refuge in a mill, and the monster/villain grabs at him through a window only to be crushed under the mill wheel as it passes?
I know this was a Ray Harryhausen movie and it was shown at the kiddie’s Christmas party that my father’s company would throw for us back in the mid 60’s. This monster crushing scene is the only thing I can remember from the movie, or for that matter, any of the Weyerhauser Christmas parties. This kind of family viewing is what made me into the warped adult I am today.
Did this movie by any chance have a scene where the hero takes refuge in a mill, and the monster/villain grabs at him through a window only to be crushed under the mill wheel as it passes?
I know this was a Ray Harryhausen movie and it was shown at the kiddie’s Christmas party that my father’s company would throw for us back in the mid 60’s. This monster crushing scene is the only thing I can remember from the movie, or for that matter, from any of the Weyerhauser Christmas parties. This kind of family viewing is what made me into the warped adult I am today.
The one that freaked me out was on TV late one nite when I was a kid. It was an old Cronenberg film, They Came From Within (aka Shivers), shot entirely in an apartment building, with mediocre acting, poor acting, and just plain bad acting, as well as inept lighting and cheap filmstock, but that just made it all the more effective.
It was supposed to be a universal replacement organ. But it took on a life of its own and turned parasitic. It looked like a length of bloody entrail, and crawled along the floor leaving smears of blood, and through pipes and ducts, to invade your body through any convenient orifice. And it turned you into a horny zombie to better propagate itself. And of course, by the end, the protagonist was the only man left un-parasitized.
Most of Cronenberg’s other films have left me feeling uneasy as well, especially Videodrome (Debbie Harry was hot as a redhead!) and eXistenZ.
Certainly sounds like a Sinbad movie. I remember the cheesiest of the Sinbad movies being ‘Sinbad the Sailor’ where they had an invisible monster (to save on budget, footprints just sort of appeared in the arena). I also remember a wizard waving a wand over his arm to make it longer to try and steal something. He failed IIRC.
It’s been a long time since even I saw these, but I have two suggestions. These ring a bell, but I can’t exactly place it.
1.) Captain Sinbad– an early 1960s fantasy film starring Guy Williams (Disney’s Zorro, also the Dad on Lost in Space in the title role. IIRC the evil magician hid his heart away in a guarded location. There was a somwhat weaker good magician who tried to steal it, using his arm that stretched for miles, but the Bad Magician defeated his. Finally, Captain Sinbad has to g get it. No animation (his wasn’t a Harryhausen picture), but he fights a giant fist (a la Yellow Submarine) and he and his men avoid Living Trees and skirt a “whirlpool”. This is the thing tht sucks one man in. I don’t recall him bobbing back up as a skeleton, but it’s possible.
2.) The third version of Thief of Baghdad was an Italian film starring Steve “Hercules” Reeves. It’s the first version I saw. It hasn’t the charm, critics say, of the slent 1925 ouglas Fairbanks version, or the special effects of the 1940 Sabu version, but I liked it. It’s just possible that some of this stuff was in there, although I really think yo saw “Captain Sinbad”.
For the record, MST3K didn’t make fun of either of these, as far as I know.
The movie that gave me literal nightmares as a kid was he 1951 version of The Thing/
Actually, it wasn’t Harryhauen movie – your memory plays you false, but you’re not completely wrong.
The movie you halfremember is Jack the Giant Killer, and the giant who gets his hand crushed is named Cormoran.The movie has ome out on videocassette, although I don’t kno if it’s available still. I haven’t seen it on DVD. Harryhausen had nothing to do with it.
In 1960 a guy named Harris saw that Harryhausen’s movie The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad was turning a cool profit, so he decided to essentially remake it. He got the same hero (Kerwin Matthews), the same villain (Torin Thatcher), h same diector (Nathan Juran), and I think the same screenwriter. But he didn’t or couldn’t get Harryhausen, so he hired a new, young animator named Jim Danforth. Danforth had done/would do the effects for Goliath and the Dragon, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, and The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao. His stuff was not up to Harryhausen’s standard, and the fanzine FXRH devted an issue to comparing Seventh Voyage to Jack, to the latter’s considerable disadvantage. (Danforth got better later. His When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth was infinitely better, and he did the animation in the cult classic Flesh Gordon , where he spelled his name backwards in the credits. He’s still active in films, painting matte painting and the like, but I don’t think he animates much anymore. At any rate, he was a few years ago.)
I liked Jack the Giant Killer as a kid. Now it’s a little embarassing. Not just he animation (although the “puppy dog” dragon at the end now gives me the giggles), but also the writing. The rhyming leprechaun and the out-of-nowhere Viking (which historical epoch is this supposed to be?) send this one over the top into MST3K country. I’m sorry they never did this one.
Thanks for all of your answers. From looking on the imdb, it seems like the most likely movie is, in fact, “Captain Sindbad”. Now I just gotta see where I can rent it.
Magic Sword looks good for a larf
