However, the venture into the castle is one where Jack’s solutions the entire way are provided by a genii’s wave of the hand. It does occasionally during the cormorant and dragon set-pieces. A film like this – certainly one with the title like Jack the Giant Killer – should rest upon Jack’s heroism. (l to r) The sorcerer Pendragon (Torin Thatcher) has Jack (Kerwin Mathews) prisoner The most imaginatively staged and animated sequences are the witch attacks on the ship where the animation is hidden beneath a solarised glow to certain eerie effect. The worst sequence is the amazingly shoddy battle between a two-headed monster and a giant octopus – the octopus looks totally amateurish, down about the level of Gumby. Similarly, the climactic flying dragon duel is well staged but fails to seem threatening because the dragon has a face like a cuddly puppy dog. The cormorant scenes are potentially well staged by Nathan Juran but the animation is jerky and the creature looks like a plasticine model, not an actual character in the way that Harryhausen crafted the cyclops. The effects give the impression of either being done by erratically talented amateurs or in a hurry. The stop-motion animation here has been conducted by Tim Barr, Wah Chang and Gene Warren, who sometimes collectively worked under the name Projects Unlimited. What made The 7th Voyage of Sinbad was Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion animation set-pieces. Unfortunately for Jack the Giant Killer, the crucial figure it fails to bring back is Ray Harryhausen. Entire set-pieces have been staged to copy The 7th Voyage of Sinbad – the cormorant is a direct copy of 7th Voyage‘s Cyclops, there is a climactic dragon fight, and instead of a genie in a bottle there is a leprechaun in a bottle.
It was also one of the most blatant – it slavishly copies The 7th Voyage of Sinbad to the extent of reuniting 7th Voyage‘s director Nathan Juran, its star Kerwin Mathews and villain Torin Thatcher. Jack the Giant Killer was one of the better budgeted. A number of other films came out seeking to copy that success. Ray Harryhausen’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) was a huge success.