Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer, Adolph Zukor
Short Synopsis
On his island, surrounded by the monsters he has captured on his voyages, Sindbad the Sailor sings that he is the greatest sailor, adventurer and lover in the world, "the most remarkable, extraordinary fellow". Popeye sails past with Olive Oyl and Wimpy, cheerfully singing his own song, which Sindbad takes as a challenge. He sends his giant bird, the Roc, to snatch Olive and wreck Popeye's ship, and Popeye and Wimpy swim ashore. Sindbad, planning to make Olive his wife, sets Popeye a series of trials to prove who is the better man. Popeye fights and defeats the Roc, then Boola, a two-headed giant, and finally Sindbad himself, who pounds him until Popeye gets to his spinach. Meanwhile Wimpy spends the whole film chasing a duck around the island with a meat grinder, hoping to turn it into hamburgers; the duck escapes, and in the end steals Wimpy's last burger.
Why It Matters
- The Stereoptical process is the showpiece. The Fleischers built three-dimensional miniature sets on a turntable and filmed the flat cel characters in front of them, so Sindbad's island and its monster-filled caves have real depth and parallax as the camera moves. Combined with rich Technicolor, it made the film one of the most visually spectacular cartoons of the 1930s.
- It was the first of the Fleischers' three two-reel Popeye Color Specials, made as their answer to Disney's move towards longer films, and it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cartoon Short Subject. It was added to the National Film Registry in 2004.
Notes and Trivia
- Sindbad is essentially Bluto under another name, voiced by Gus Wickie.
- The two-headed giant Boola is widely read as a parody of the Three Stooges.
- See also: Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves (1937), Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp (1939).