Marco Polo Junior Versus the Red Dragon

Plot

Young Marco, a descendant of Marco Polo, and his companion Sandy the Seagull, sets off on a journey to the mythical kingdom of Xanadu, to help Princess Shining Moon defeat the evil magician, the Red Dragon.

Voice cast

Production

The film was conceived by Sheldon Moldoff who made the film as a co-production with Eric Porter in Australia. $60,000 of the budget was provided by the Australian Film Development Corporation. Preliminary story board work was done in the US but most of the film was done in Australia.

Over seventy artists were involved in the film. Sequence directors were Cam Ford and Peter Gardner, and animators were Paul McAdam, Yvonne Pearsall, Dick Dunne, Gairdon Cooke, Richard Jones, Gerry Grabner, Stan Walker, Cynthia Leech, Peter Luschwitz, Kevin Roper and children's illustrator Kilmeny Niland. Background work was by Graham Liney and Yvonne Perrin, sister of Disney's Sleeping Beauty background stylist Eyvind Earle. Production took place from mid 1970 until May 1972.

Only one voice, that of the Red Dragon, was provided by an Australian; actor and comedian Kevin Golsby.

Release

Shortly before the film's release in December 1972, an Australian/American cartoon special about the original Marco Polo screened on Australian television, prompting the film's distributors to make the title longer to avoid confusion. However commercial results were poor, largely due to insufficient promotion by the US distributors, although it did reasonably well in Australia and Europe. The low returns from the film persuaded Porter to undertake sub-contracted TV series work from America's Hanna-Barbera (Charlie Chan & the Chan Clan, Superfriends, plus several one-off animated TV specials), but a subsequent financial recession in 1975 finally saw Porter shutting down his animation studio.

Three books were published using art work from the film.

The film's title was changed to The Magic Medallion for its 1976 release on television.

Received its widest American exposure over the Showtime Cable Network in 1983 and 1984, before released on home video in 1984 under the Family Home Entertainment label of MGM/UA Home Video.

Marco Polo: Return to Xanadu

Many years later, the story was re-edited and extended by scriptwriter (and original co-producer) Sheldon Moldoff, in collaboration with Ron Merk and, with additional footage and subplot, was released as Marco Polo: Return to Xanadu (2002). The resulting version is generally considered to be vastly inferior to the original.