Studio: Ub Iwerks Studio (ComiColor Cartoons)
Distributor: Celebrity Productions
Produced by: Ub Iwerks
Short Synopsis
Sinbad, in the crow's nest of a merchant ship with his parrot, spots a pirate ship whose crew is singing a shanty. He orders a retreat, but the pirates give chase and open fire; Sinbad bats the cannonballs back with a plank and wrecks their guns, so the pirate captain hooks his ship with an anchor and the crews fight hand to hand while the two captains, and their two parrots, duel. The pirate captain bowls a cannonball through Sinbad's crew, and Sinbad goes overboard; his parrot saves him and he swims to a desert island, where he hallucinates hula girls. The pirates land to bury their treasure; Sinbad pelts them with coconuts from a tree until an ape throws him down and he is caught and tied to a tree. The tree is the leg of a giant fire-breathing roc, which routs the pirates; the captain throws the treasure chest at it, the roc catches the chest and flies off with Sinbad still tied on, and the parrot frees him so that he comes down with the treasure.
Why It Matters
- The roc, a bird the size of a hill with fire in its beak, is the Iwerks studio's best monster, and the duel of the parrots is a good running gag; the film is a year earlier than the Fleischers' two-reel Popeye Sindbad and a reminder that the Arabian Nights were in the cartoon air before Popeye made them famous.
- The film is in the public domain in the United States, its copyright never renewed, and it survives in Cinecolor prints of fair quality; Iwerks is not credited on screen as director, as was the studio's habit by 1935, when Al Eugster and Shamus Culhane were also directing.
Notes and Trivia
- Shamus Culhane later wrote that the Iwerks studio's stories were made up as the animators went along.
- The release date is given as 26 July in the series filmography and 30 July in other sources.
- See also: Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor (1936), The Valiant Tailor (1934), Ali Baba (1936).
