Sinbad and The Eye of The Tiger - Production

Production

The strong box office success of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad led Columbia Pictures executives to begin work on another Sinbad motion picture with the second still in theatrical release. The plan was to move away from some of the mythological creatures which had been features of previous films and use more recognizable prehistoric animals. Legendarily tall (7 ft 3 in ) performer Peter Mayhew made an unbilled acting debut in the film in some live-action sequences as the Minoton, while Patrick Troughton (who had played the harpy-plagued blind Phineas in Harryhausen's 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts) played Melanthius.

The film went into production under the working title Sinbad at the World's End. The live action was filmed in Almería, Spain; Malta; and Jordan. The treasury house of El Khasne at Petra makes an appearance in one scene. Several castles near Mdina, Malta, were used as backdrops for the film and inserted using triple-exposure, and scenes of ships at sea were filmed in a huge water tank there. Most interior sequences were shot on a soundstage of Verona Studios near Madrid (Spain). Principal filming took place between June and October 1975. Some sets were based on previous films in a wide variety of genres. The massive doors and deadbolt to the ancient shrine of the Arimaspi in the arctic were based on a similar set of doors in 1933's King Kong. The interior of the shrine was very similar to the shrine set in the 1935 motion picture She, complete with steep pyramidal steps, a vortex of light coming from above, and a saber-toothed cat encased in ice.

In one scene, the characters pass Al Khazneh, which later appeared as the entrance to the Holy Grail temple in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989.

Harryhausen originally planned for an arsinoitherium to make an appearance in the film. The massive, two-horned prehistoric rhino-like creature was intended to fight the Troglodyte in the ancient shrine of the Arimaspi in the arctic. Harryhausen did preproduction designs showing the beast defeating the Troglodyte, then getting caught and dying in a pool of hot tar. Harryhausen also said he planned to have Sinbad and his crew fight a yeti in the arctic, but that this idea was rejected in favor of a giant walrus. Harryhausen's stop-motion animation work lasted from October 1975 up to March 1977.

Because they were shot in close up, many of Harryhausen's models used in the film were larger than normal. The model of the walrus was 20 inches long and 10 inches high. The troglodyte was about 16 inches high, while the saber-toothed cat was about 15 inches long and 9 inches high. Harryhausen made two baboon models: a highly detailed 24-inch long model for most of the animation sequences, and a much smaller 5-inch model for a few long shots.

The stop-motion troglodyte figurine used in the film was later cannibalized to make the Calibos character in Harryhausen's 1981 film, Clash of the Titans. Harryhausen wanted to have made a different armature for Calibos but didn't have time, so he sadly had to cannibalize Trog. This was the last model he ever cannibalized.