The Sabre-Tooth Tiger

Creator: Ray Harryhausen

Film: Sinbad and the eye of the tiger 1977

Sabre-Tooth Tiger Video Clip

 

With their enormous, deadly sharp canines, sabre-toothed carnivores are well known to many people as frightening and ferocious predators of the Cenozoic era. When Kassim is turned back to his human form Zenobia sees Rafi dead at the foot of the stairs with a broken neck, this infuriates her she uses her magic to invade the body of a Saber-Tooth tiger frozen in ice.

The Tiger attacks Sinbad and the rest as the Shrine falls apart, but Trog did not forget his friends and challenges the Tiger to a fight. The sequence between these two is awesome! back and forth they went until the Tiger was too much for Trog and kills him. After Trog falls to the floor dead, the tiger turns his attention to Sinbad. The other two crew members try to fend off the Tiger but with one swipe from his claws he sends them flying!

Sinbad grabs the spear that Trog dropped when he died, with spear in his hand the Tiger launches towards him but Sinbad impales him with it and the Tiger falls to the floor and finally dies.

 

 

 

 

 

Sabre-Tooth Tiger Facts

 

• It was difficult for Mr. Harryhausen to animate the tiger mostly because of the way big cats move, their slow sprint was difficult to re-create.

 

• The fur was also something that gave him problems if he ruffled the fur in the wrong way or location the camera would capture it, but in the end it showed the very talent that this amazing animator had.

 

• To incase the tiger in what looked like ice, Ray Harryhausen covered it in cellophane then sprayed it, as the tiger freed himself he used sections of clear acrylic resin that had to be individually animated on wires to seem as if they were falling away.

Credit: An Animated Life

By Tony Dalton