Marco Polo (1962)
This should've come out a lot more fun than it was.....a Italian produced costume epic brimming with richly designed colorful sets and costumes.....and looking way more expensive than all those many cheapjack Hercules peplums.
Like much Euro-Junk, it featured a scrambling-for-a-job American actor desperately seeking work that dried up for him in Hollywood. Here, it's amiable hunk Rory Calhoun in the title role, strolling through the film like he's taking a bemused tour through the 'Chinese Kingdom' section of a theme park.
The choppy script, credited to six writers who probably never checked each other's work, presents Marco Polo as randy chick magnet who escapes the babes by heading for the mysterious Orient.
Quicker than kids in the pool can shout "Marco!....Polo!", our boy is up to his neck in all sorts of intrigue going on in the Imperial Palace. (With the Emperor and evil, backstabbing Prime Minister played by Italian actors).
On the plus side (and in all honesty, the only reason we bothered watching this movie at all), Marco's entranced by the beyond-stunning Princess Amurroy, played by that infinitely drop dead beautiful international actress-model Yoko Tani
As lifelong, lovesick fan, we've sighed in adoration wa Astching Tani parade through every variety of 1960's multi-nation co-productions. (Everything from sci-fi, Eurospy, even a German Dr. Mabuse thriller.) Charismatic to the max, when she's on screen, you don't look at anybody else.
Lost our train of thought while dreaming of Yoko.....what was this movie again we're talkin' about? Oh right, Marco Polo.
One other good thing, Angelo Lavagnino throws in a great, suitably flavorful score.....we especially loved his use of percussion during one the fight scenes.
But the rest of it, overall? Mostly a dull, dreary pageant with pretty costumes and some marvelously larger-than -life sets.
If you're a Yoko Tani fan, or course, give it a watch. If not.....look a little harder for a better movie than this one. (For far more tasty Chinese take-out, try 1965's "Genghis Khan" with Omar Sharif, or 1963's "55 Days at Peking")
1 & 1/2 stars (*1/2) (Strictly for Yoko, who drives us loco....)
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