l watched the three Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movies having seen that 'Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger' is on Fumito Ueda's video shelf in that photo from the ICO and Shadow of the Colossus artbook. That third movie in the series is without a doubt the silliest of the three and also the most enjoyable. All three movies though have a lot of stuff going on that will make you think of Ueda's games. The tales of Sinbad were apparently a late addition to One Thousand and One Nights. It's interesting that Prince of Persia (1989), one of Ueda's favourite video games, also has roots in those Middle Eastern folktales.
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). Some of the action takes place on an island called Colossa where they fight a cyclops.
The baddie, Sokurah, summons from a magic lamp a genie who creates a barrier so they can all get away from the cyclops. The genie is a boy who speaks with two overlapping voices (which I think are just his own voice twice).
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973). Near the beginning of the second movie, Sinbad has a dream that's like a premonition of what's to come, set against a dark, cloudy sky.
This time the baddie is called Koura and one of the things he does is create these bat-like creatures and then send them off to spy on Sinbad. The vizier explains that it is Koura's watchdog, "a living homunculus, an extension of his eyes and ears, and with it he now knows as much as we". We are shown that Koura is indeed listening to them. When Sinbad captures one in his hands, it disappears in a puff of smoke. I was thinking they look like the small Spider shadows in ICO. Is it possible that Ueda thought of them as spies with a direct line to the Queen?
Koura also brings to life the figurehead of Sinbad's ship and is able to control it remotely, attacking the crew of the ship.
Sinbad and his men visit a temple, looking for 'The Oracle of All Knowledge'. It emerges from a well with engravings on it and tells them where to go and who their next foe will be: "Go north... North to barren lands of pagan places... The pagan barrens... Before a goddess cast with many limbs and death to all intruders is their whim". Then the oracle disappears back into the well.
Towards the end, a bunch of green guys grab Sinbad's girl, carry her away and dump her in the cave of a one-eyed centaur. Sinbad hops on the back of the centaur and kills it.
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977). And finally, the one photographed on Ueda's shelf which I highly recommend people watch. If there'd been a Carry On Sinbad, it wouldn't have been so different from this movie. The antagonist is a witch called Zenobia. She transforms Prince Kassim into a baboon so Sinbad and Kassim's sister, Farah, need to go places and find people in order to restore him to human form. Zenobia goes after them, aided by her son who wants to take the throne and by an automaton minotaur called Minoton, who has a clockwork heart and does all the rowing. Groovy.
They come across a young woman called Dione who can communicate with her father via ESP. "My father taught me. He calls it telepathia, a Greek word for communication of the mind", she explains to Sinbad. Zenobia also has some ability to see things without actually being there. They have a fight with a giant walrus which stamps on one of Sinbad's men.
Zenobia giving chase, takes a shortcut through an ice tunnel. They float past structures that look like tombs and her son suggests that these could be 'the last of the Arimaspi', a society of mathematicians.
In the end, they manage to transform Prince Kassim from a baboon back into a human by putting him in a cage and hauling him through a column of light inside a shrine. I was getting major Shadow of the Colossus vibes at this point.
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Some other screenshots from the Sinbad trilogy -
