This kicked off the Fest, and Sandy was VERY excited. He’d been waiting years to show this and it finally hit DVD. Basically, some Brits decided to try to make their own Sinbad-esque (I know, you can’t see the influence at all) fantasy movie. They even hired Kerwin Matthews, who starred as Sinbad, and Nathan Juran, who directed him in Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, to see the movie.
Anyway, they made exactly the movie they were hired to make, and the moneymen who I guess weren’t really familiar with the movie they wanted ripped off, decided it was too scary and kids wouldn’t go see it. (Because kids hate monsters and being scared.) So they decided to use editing tricks and without no reshoots to convert the film to a musical. The film bombed, because, gasp, it turns out kids like monsters more than musicals, and they had to release the original version anyway. A really weird and fascinating tale.
