Kipling's 'The Jungle Book' and 'The Second Jungle Book' are out of copyright and so are freely available on-line. They are actually collections of short stories: only about half of them concern Mowgli and Co (as Kipling might have put it). I personally preferred some of the others, particularly 'The White Seal' and 'Rikki-Tikki-Tavi' - although I can quite understand that they wouldn't interest Hollywood. Kipling was a brilliant writer of short stories, for young children (Just So Stories), older children (The Jungle Books) and adults (Plain Tales from the Hills). I recommend them all. Alan
Maybe Kakapo is refering to the first movie version of the Jungle Book, made in 1942 and directed by Zoltan Korda, It had Hindu actor Sabu as Mowgli and a great musical score by Miklos Rozsa. I saw it over 40 years ago, but i seem to recall that the bandarlog were rhesus macaques not chimps. Here is a link to an article on this film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Book_(1942_film)
If the monkeys depticted were macaques, that's not that movie. I only saw the (incomplete) film while zapping on TV and probably is more recent that the Disney's one, and the primates shown here was chimps. Here is the list of movies based on The Jungle Book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:The_Jungle_Book_films I'm not sure at all but I think that I'm talking about the 1994 film.
Thanks Chli! I see in the front cover of the movie in your link, another shocking fail that I didn't remembered while seeing the film (many years ago): Baloo is an American Black Bear!!!!!!!!
The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story from 1997 also had chimps as the Bandar-Log (as well as a whole slew of other out-of-place animals: The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story (Video 1998) - Goofs - IMDb), so that might have been the one you saw instead but I think the first movie I said is more likely. I'm not sure how distinguishable they would be from one another though... I was sure I had seen a live-action Jungle Book movie when I was still at school which had an American Black Bear as Baloo, but the only ones which I thought would fit would be the two I mention above (from 1997 and 1998), both of which are far too late to be right. Turns out it was the 1942 movie starring Sabu as Mowgli - I just found a single photo on Google showing Baloo and he was a brown-coloured American Black Bear.
I finally got around to watching The Jungle Book, and I average at least 2-3 movies per week.* A hugely enjoyable film and it was equally a treat to go back and re-read this entire thread. I'm surprised that no one mentioned Mowgli finding a cowbell just before he meets King Louie. The "cowbell sketch", featuring the legendary actor Christopher Walken, is regarded as perhaps the greatest ever skit in the history of Saturday Night Live although maybe the "easter egg" surprise was too subtle for those that have never seen the show. * I specialize in watching Oscar-nominated movies, having seen almost every single one of the 528 Best Picture nominees of all time. Every year I see all the movies in all the major categories...going back for decades. The flip side is that usually of the 20 biggest box office hits of any given year I only see approximately 5-10 of them. My time period for watching films is November-February...Academy Award season!
If your film-watching method is akin to your zoo-visiting method I'm guessing you watch each film for 30 minutes to an hour in order to pack more in per day
