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Zoltan KordaJungle Book (1942)

Teenaged Mowgli, who was raised by wolves, appears in a village in India and is adopted by Messua. Mowgli learns human language and some human ways quickly, though keeping jungle ideas.
Influential Merchant Buldeo is bigoted against 'beasts' including Mowgli; not so Buldeo's pretty daughter, whom Mowgli takes on a jungle tour where they find a treasure, setting the evil of human greed in motion.

Nominated for 4 Oscars. Another 2 wins


This movie is part of the collection: Feature Films

Director: Zoltan Korda
Producer: Alexander Korda
Production Company: United Artists
Sponsor: k-otic
Audio/Visual: sound, color
Keywords: Fantasy; Action; Adventure
Contact Information: www.k-otic.com

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: Shadows_Girl - - August 9, 2007
Subject: MOWGLI MANIA
I have loved this movie for MANY decades, just as I loved both of the "jungle Books" by Rudyard Kipling. And the "Just So Stories" and "Puck of Pook's Hill" and...ok I know it's consdiered uncool to actually read anything other than Harry Potter these days so I'll just leave it there.
Sabu (full name Sabu Dastagir...MAYBE there's some controversy about that---his BROTHER may have been Sabu Dastagir while HE was really Selar Shaykh Sabu---but either way he's a SABU) was one good looking guy when he was young (which may have helped attract me to this movie...leave us face it, it didn't HURT)was 18 when he made THE JUNGLE BOOK. This was the second time he'd played a role based on a Kipling story, incidentally---the first time was in 1937's ELEPHANT BOY (based on another short story from the FIRST "Jungle Book" (this one NOT about Mowgli) called "Toomai of the Elephants. There are many classic Kipling tales in the two Jungle Books that are NOT about Mowgli "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi", "The White Seal", "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat", but it is the Mowgli stories that really caught the imagination of the public. So much so that the Cub Scouts of America are set up based on these stories. But back to the movie.
It's a little difficult to spot "Dick Tracy" (Ralph Byrd) under the "Durga" makeup, but he's there. And that's Rosemary deCamp as "Messua" (Mowgli's human mother) she was also the mother in the original William Castle 1960 classic 13 GHOSTS.
Sabi's last film was A TIGER WALKS for DISNEY (he died of a heart attack in December of 1963, so he never got to see the finished film which wasn't released until 1964.
He is quite good in the Jungle Book (but he was ALWAYS good) there being more humor than fact in John Prine's song "Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone" :

The movie wasn't really
doing so hot
said the new producer
to the old big shot
its dying on the edge
of the great midwest
Sabu must tour
or forever rest.

Hey look ma
here comes the elephant boy
bundled all up in his corduroy
headed down south towards Illinois
from the jungles of East St. Paul. "

but I think Sabu would've gotten a giggle from it. Four stars for KORDA'S JUNGLE BOOK.

Reviewer: robcat2075 - - November 26, 2006
Subject: Starring Sabu!
I had only heard of this "Jungle Book" in discussions of Disney's version so it was great to actually see this one. I'm presuming this one is much closer to Kipling than the Disney. It revolves much more around the boy Mowgli than the animals. The interaction between him and the animals is very bare bones mostly done by editing separate footage of them together. But I imagine trained, talking panthers and tigers were in short supply in 1940.

The Indians in this movie sound quite odd. Their accent is nothing like we associate with Indians today.

Sabu does quite well as Mowgli and apparently had a fairly active film career afterwards.