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Similar to The Lost Continent and Warlords of Atlantis, this is a movie I saw long, long ago as a kid, and which was such a surreal flick that for years afterward I assumed it was a weird fever dream brought on by too much sugar. Something about the atmosphere and set designs make it very otherworldy, and although it remained vividly in my mind, its obscurity made me think I'd dreamed it up.

The standout sequence is of course Sindbad's quest through the jungle to reach the tower with the heart and all the delightfully absurd (and some a little disturbing) perils he faces along the way, each one claiming one or more members of his crew.

I always vividly remembered the whirlpools/sucking maws that slurp people, the vines that grab guys and haul them upwards offscreen to some kind of grisly demise, and of course the giant hand, and one scene that always got under my skin was the scene with the guy who accidentally becomes separated from the group and finds himself surrounded by giant alligators. Although the alligators are a very mundane threat compared to everything else the good guys come up against, I always found this guy's death difficult to watch because he was so alone and terrified. The actor playing him (good old Lawrence Montaigne) did a good job of selling his fear and despair as the gators rush at him en masse, doing wonders to help make the otherwise unconvincing puppets genuinely scary to me as a kid. The only thing I don't get is where they went after killing him. There were so many of them and they were so gigantic that I'm unsure this one guy satisfied them, and yet there's no sign of them by the time Sindbad and the others arrive on the scene. Oh well.

My point is clearly the writer(s) and designers had a blast designing the jungle perils Sindbad and co. face on their way to the tower, and even if the effects don't quite sell everything convincingly, there's a lot of creativity in this film that I quite appreciate.

On the acting side, I quite like Pedro Armendáriz as the villain, El Kerim, and it's interesting how a lot of the elements in this film cropped up in Pirates of the Caribbean of all places. Kerim dies basically the same way Barbossa does, felled by a wound he'd suffered moments earlier after Galgo throws his heart off of the tower, and the idea of the bad guy being unkillable because his disembodied heart is kept somewhere else is very similar to Davy Jones in Dead Man's Chest.

Mention the word Sindbad, and I'm there, and this has always been one of my favorite versions. Seeing on a children's program from the '60's "We're Off to See the Wizard," which ran children's films.

Just now looking at the cast list, I didn't realize how many semi-famous actors were in the cast. Whose careers dated back, some of them to the '30's. Abraham Sofaer, as the wizard, Hans Schumm, whose last film appearance this would be, Bernie Hamilton, yes--that Bernie Hamilton, Heidi Bruhl, as the heroine, Henry Brandon, whose 1st credited film role was as Barnaby in Laurel and Hardy's "Babes in Toyland," when he was only 22 or 23, and, of course, Guy Williams, as the hero Sindbad.

And that is interesting about the similarities between this and "Pirates of the Caribbean." I hadn't notice, but the OP is correct. Of course, there isn't that many ideas, and as long as they have been making films, they probably ran out of original ideas along time ago.

Count me as a big fan of this "bad" movie.

Nice piece of work, thisun'.
Although I'm inclined to think the villain would have reacted badly to a sword thrust even if it'd didn't kill 'em.
"You insufferable pr$&k! Don't you know how that stings?"