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DaviK24
Reviews
I pirati della Malesia (1964)
Not better than Part 1 but more action
The second part of the Sandokan films has more action and more fighting than the first one. The story is the same as in Part 1, maybe a bit less romantic and with a bit less background story but Sandokan and his men fighting for the freedom of his people and country against the even more evil British colonial forces. This time we saw three major battles here. The first one on a Dutch ship, occupied by British soldiers. The pirates attack the Ship where Sandokan is still on board and massacre the British soldiers in series on deck. This continues in the second battle when the imprisoned Sandokan escapes from a labour camp with a mine. Once again the Malayan fighters take over a machine gun and Sandokan begins a mass slaughter of the British soldiers. During the machine gun raid and in a fight after this almost 100 Britsh soldiers (I count 96!) were massacred. Red British uniform en masse lying around in the yard of the camp, completely and one-sided defeated by Sandokan. The is violently stuff but the action is cool and a must have in this kind of movies I think. At the end of the movie there is another battle (or should I say another massacre?). Sandokan and his men free a noble Malayan from a mountain fortress. Once again we saw a mass kill of soldiers, slaughtered everywhere by the natives and this means a final triumph of the natives over the British rule.
Tough and violent action in this movie. If you like mass battles and 60's Italo Trash Movies, this is the right one for you.
Sandokan, la tigre di Mompracem (1963)
Good Italian Trash Movie
First of all: The Sandokan movies from 1963 and 1964 are trash- cinema of the 60s, which nowadays appears once again cultic. You notice the low budget, but you will be abducted to beautiful original locations in India and Sri Lanka. Also the look of the costumes is very worth seeing.
To the content (WARNING: SPOILERS from now on!):
Sandokan, the pirate but also native prince, whose family was deposed and killed by the British, leads his people (a bunch of faithful, pirates, and adventurers) in the fight against the British colonial masters, who are as evil as the Nazis are in some US productions. It is very refreshingly one-sided and wonderfully politically incorrect, that the British here are only bad guys. The first part is, as far as the action is concerned, a little lame, up to the last 15 minutes, but then it's really right. The Malayan natives, supported by Sandokan's men, storm the mighty British fort. The portrayal of the violence in this battle is already quite violent. The British soldiers are really massacred here, which I have not yet seen in this mass of kills. Particularly noteworthy is the scene in which Sandokan fires with a conquered machine gun in a bunch of soldiers in the yard of the fort also backwards and mercilessly mowed them down, which is all shown by the camera. Here is no shading of the camera, you see them going down and in other scenes their dead bodies lying around overall in the background around the whole fort. The Stuntfights are partly quite amateur, but this does not stop the spectacle of this mass struggle.
However, the second part is still a little more violent when Sandokan breaks out with his men from a prison camp with a mine and a quarry. There he used also a conquered British machine gun, which he mounted on a truck and then firing around on a ride through the mine, killing British soldiers in rows with it. This goes even further when he slaughters nearly the entire British garrison alone in the yard of the camp with the MG, so that the court is covered with the bodies in red British uniforms. The fight is quite one-sided but this machine gun raid is really suspicious. There are three of these battles in the second part, one on a ship, in the prison camp and in the final battle. In all three battles the British soldiers are completely slaughtered by the pirates and the natives, something which would been no longer shown in this intensity and political incorrect size of the massacres. Infortunately we have only one battle in part 1. A few more battles would be better but the Fort battle here is probably the best.
Overall my conclusion is: Good entertaining films, in which the natives are the really one-sided good ones, which I find very refreshing.