Rory Calhoun
Marco Polo
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Adventure
Italian explorer rescues the daughter of the Mongol leader Kublai Khan, meets a hermit who has invented gunpowder and builds a cannon.
Top Billed Cast
| Release Date | 1962-04-13 |
|---|---|
| Runtime | 1h 35m |
| Directors | Piero Pierotti, Hugo Fregonese, Riccardo Pallottini |
| Producers | Luigi Carpentieri, Ermanno Donati |
| Writers | Oreste Biancoli, Ennio De Concini, Eliana De Sabata, Antoinette Pellevant, Piero Pierotti, Duccio Tessari |
Someone obviously thought that the "Conqueror" (1956) wasn't a bad idea, so decided to assign B-movie stalwart Rory Calhoun the task of portraying the legendary Venetian explorer Marco Polo as he ventures into the Chinese empire. As history has rather defined the man, there is not a great deal of jeopardy to this story - it's all about the creative narrative, and that delivers us a perfectly enjoyable adventure film with plenty of Oriental mischief-making, plotting, intrigues - a smattering of gunpowder, and a little romance with the dazzling Princess "Amurroy" (Yôko Tani) who is daughter of the all-powerful Kublai Khan (Camillo Pilotto). It is an Italian production, but that doesn't seem to have added much authenticity to this - it is still a relatively low budget affair that centres around a star who really wasn't big enough to carry the role (if not the part) leaving us with, well, just a little too little. That said, it's watchable on a the telly on wet afternoon, just be aware - historians need probably not bother.
— CinemaSerf