{"id":3766,"date":"2014-08-22T12:44:53","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T12:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3766"},"modified":"2014-08-21T20:54:39","modified_gmt":"2014-08-21T20:54:39","slug":"sandokan-the-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/reviews\/sandokan-the-great\/","title":{"rendered":"Sandokan the Great"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Umberto<\/a>
Umberto Lenzi’s Sandokan the Great<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aka Sandokan, la tigre di Mompracem
\nDirected by Umberto Lenzi
\nProduced by Solly V. Bianco, Joseph Fryd
\nWritten by V\u00edctor Andr\u00e9s Catena, Fulvio Gicca Palli, Umberto Lenzi, Emilio Salgari
\nCinematography: Aurelio G. Larraya, Angelo Lotti, Giovanni Scarpellini
\nEdited by Jolanda Benvenuti, Antonietta Zita
\nRelease date: 19 December 1963
\nRunning time: 105 minutes
\nItaly
\nCast: Steve Reeves (Sandokan), Genevi\u00e8ve Grad (Mary Ann), Andrea Bosic (Yanez), Rik Battaglia (Sambigliong), Mario Valdemarin (Tenente Ross), Leo Anch\u00f3riz (Lord Guillonk)<\/p>\n

Emilio Salgari is a curious writer. Immensely popular in Italy, he’s little known in the English language world today, even though his boys own style adventure stories have proven hugely influential, not least to Sergio Leone, who was apparently inspired by Salgari’s pirate heroes when making his spaghetti westerns. One of the best known of these pirate heroes was Sandokan, the ‘Tiger of Malaysia’, a prince and rebel who fights against the Dutch and British empires that have annexed his homeland.<\/p>\n

Umberto Lenzi’s Sandokan the Great<\/strong> wasn’t the first film adaptation of his work – these had gone back to the silent era – but it’s one of the best, a hugely enjoyable romp starring Steve Reeves – then at the pinnacle of his fame – as the protagonist and Andrea Bosic (an underrated Yugoslavian character actor) as his Portuguese friend Yanez. As well as all the expected derring-do, this also features a lengthy jungle sequence which anticipates Lenzi’s later, more notorious work such as Eaten Alive<\/strong> and Cannibal Ferox<\/strong>; the jungle, it seems, was something that he was fascinated with well before the vogue for cannibal gut munchers took off in the 70s. Perfect Sunday morning fodder, Sandokan the Great<\/strong> was successful enough to spawn one official sequel and several unofficial ones as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Umberto Lenzi’s Sandokan the Great wasn’t the first film adaptation of his work – these had gone back to the silent era – but it’s one of the best, a hugely enjoyable romp starring Steve Reeves<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[623,260],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3766"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3766"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3866,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3766\/revisions\/3866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}