SANDOKAN (O.S.T.)

Oh my...I would have never thought to see an album by the De Angelis brothers featured on PA. At the time of the release of this soundtrack they were quite famous, even if I think very few people had actually seen their faces, including myself.

They have spent almost their entire career making soundtracks other than few "one summer" hits on the disco music side.

Few words about Sandokan: it's a novel of the first years of the 20th century by an Italian writer who were used to write about exotic places like Malaysia, Indonesia and so on without having never left his town during all his life. The character is a pirate fighting against the British colonialists and in the movie it's interpreted by the Indian actor Kabir Bedi who in Italy became a sort of sex-symbol.

Said so, this soundtrack is a collection of short pieces written for the movie. There's a combat sequence, a love sequence but what is remarkable and had a great commercial success is the title track. It features a Sitar and has some Indian feeling. Probably it's the reason why somebody has considered it "progressive". Also the love theme can qualify in some ways.

The lyrics are what you can expect from the main title of a TV movie which was broadcasted in at least 5 parts, if I remember correctly, for about 8 total hours. In an age without internet and without streaming services, where people didn't have many choices, this soundtrack had a very lot of advertising.

I don't want to minimize the composing skill of the Oliver Onions, but sitar apart, I still don't see how this could be of any interest for a proghead.

I have to admit that if you blow the title track down any road in Italy, people would still recognize it. 2-stars is I think the appropriate rating.

Collectors of Italian movie soundtracks of the 70s only