The Jungle Book | Sabu, Joseph Calleia | Please, Somebody, Restore This!!!

The Jungle Book | Sabu, Joseph Calleia | The great original version of a fantastic movie

DVDs:

The Jungle Book

	The Jungle Book Sabu, Joseph Calleia Alpha Video, 2002 average customer review:based on 18 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Disney has mined Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli stories twice, but it has never topped this elegant, lush classic by the British Korda brothers. Producer Alexander Korda brought director Zoltan and designer Vincent to California, where they used Hollywood's resources to create a storybook India of verdant jungles, beautiful lagoons, and modest peasant villages. Sabu plays Mowgli, the man-cub raised by wolves and schooled in the jungle who returns to civilization as a young man. When greedy villagers discover that he knows of a hidden treasure, they turn the town against him and follow him to the ruins of an ancient palace (a magnificent, crumbling temple of glowing blue stone overrun with vines and vegetation). Sabu gives a vital, energetic performance, leaping and climbing like he was born to the wild and innocent of corruption and fear that infects the village. As the treasure hunters turn on one another and resort to murder for the prize they all desire, the film gets darker and fiercer than Disney ever dared in its remakes. It's still the most glorious of all versions, a grandly realized epic vision with a sense of wonder and a magnificent fantasy landscape of deep, rich colors, like a painting come to life. Joseph Calleia plays the greedy villain with his usual conniving flair. Miklós Rósza wrote the gorgeous score. Be wary of inferior video copies: the film has fallen into the public domain and is available in a proliferation of substandard prints. --Sean Axmaker

for more information click here

Please, Somebody, Restore This!!!

I give this film five stars because it's a gem. I do NOT give the DVD release any stars whatsoever. This is one of those unfortunate films that fell through the cracks into Public Domain (like FLYING DEUCES and ROYAL WEDDING) and has been languishing in shoddy releases ever since. The source print(s)for this DVD leave us with a muddy picture whose Technicolor splendor is reduced at times to sepia or even black and white and whose soundtrack is consistently noisy.

The movie is delightful and in many ways superior to the far more recent remake with Jason Scott Lee (who deserves another good movie, but that's another matter entirely). Sabu, at 18 or so, was delightful and at his boyishly charming peak. So why can't someone take the trouble to locate a pristine print or negative (as they did with FLYING DEUCES) and digitally restore this classic to its original glory? Surely there are enough of us in the world to buy it that the project would be worthwhile!

for more information click here

The great original version of a fantastic movie

This is without a doubt the best version of the original story. A must buy for lovers of classic movies.

One of my childhood memories.

The special effects and direction by Korda, Sabu's performance, the strange animal acts and Kipling plot combine to create a cinema classic for kids of all ages. Recommended for lovers of action/fantasy stories.

Great

Mom loved it! Revisited her childhood. As good as she remembered it.

It's a jungle out there kid!

As I review this film, I can't help but think back to when I was a boy and how this film affected me when I first viewed it. As a boy, the introduction actually bored me, but the introduction is necessary to the story if you are to understand the character of the animals that are to appear in the story and what they mean.

Who did fascinate me was Mowgli. First off seeing Sabu again as a adult, it's clear Sabu was obviously born to play this role. Physically, he is one beautiful male to watch on the silver screen; a simply lovely specimin of the male human animal. The young man's sex appeal goes without saying in other words. As a boy I was aware of his physical beauty; but equally attracked to his pureness of heart in the character he played. But beyond that, the character of Mowgli, a boy born in the wild, raised by the animals, with the ability to communicate with them, while then experiencing the contrast of the civilized human world, intrigued my mind and heart as a boy, asking the question; how it might have felt to be him, experiencing what he did, next to the world I grew up in.

While Disney's animated version of the Jungle book was more a musical, this adaptation did a great job trying to capture the real ambiance of the original story in my view. The book had an even darker ambiance to it than communicated in this film. You can read the Amazon review if you want a summary of the story. I'm simply trying to add in things in my review I think will be an addition no one else has mentioned when considering this film for purchase. I actually enjoyed it greatly both as a boy and nearly half a century later. In short, I see this as a good film for the whole family.

Allot obviously went into the making of this film. The animal scenes are just marvelous to watch and the lessons the story teaches, about the vices and virtues of human nature, are timeless.

By no means is Mowgli a simple character to be dismissed by the viewer. There are complexities going on in this character that defy description in this review and must be viewed to be appreciated.

So if you want a somber, but delightful story one evening, this is one to watch. A great job was done in restoring this old classic: Looks almost new, like the day I first saw it back in the 1960's.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

products you might be interested in