King Solomon's Mines (The Cannon Version)

King Solomon's Mines (1985)

Runtime: 100 minutes

Directed by: J. Lee Thompson

Starring: Richard Chamberlain, Sharon Stone, Herbert Lom, John Rhys-Davies, Ken Gampu

From: Cannon

Finally, I was able to salute the late Menahem Golan by watching something made by him, and this was something I hadn't seen before. I hadn't seen any of the other movies based on the H. Rider Haggard novel, either. After seeing this, I don't know about tracking down the sequel, Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold, although it may happen one of  these days... or years. The IMDb plot description, then what I said about the film on Letterboxd:

“Fortune hunter Allan Quatermain teams up with a resourceful woman to help her find her missing father lost in the wilds of 1900s (around World War I, to be exact) Africa while being pursued by hostile tribes and a rival German explorer.”

I finally paid tribute to the late Menahem Golan by watching a Cannon production. Despite being a child of the 80's and 90's I hadn't seen this movie before. Oh, I saw plenty of Golan-Globus films during my youth, just not this one. But, as it was on an EPIX channel late last night I figured it was about time to see this and tip my cap to Mr. Golan.

Well, maybe I should have chosen a Cannon movie I was more familiar with. Sure, this had a lot of action scenes, a Jerry Goldsmith score where he tried really hard to be John Williams, nice scenic Zimbabwe scenery, and villains Herbert Lom and John Rhys-Davies wisely deciding to camp it up. But, I can't rate it higher than 2 stars.

My initial reaction after watching this was, “What the hell did I just watch?” I know they wanted to be light in tone like the Indiana Jones films but this went way over that and this was a cartoony ridiculous preposterous film the entire time, with many goofy things, some actually clever things, and many stupid things also. It can be fun in a campy way at times and it's a breezy watch but that doesn't mean it's a good film or something I'd see again, as there are also some real annoying things.

I always love it when the HEROES of a picture use racial slurs; in this case it's against an Arab guy, but as he's aiding and abetting the villains I guess it's OK... well, maybe back then but not now. Then again this is a film where many Africans of the time (around World War I) are portrayed as painted up people in huts who carry around spears and some of them even cook human beings in giant pots, so there's more than one questionable racial moment...

Richard Chamberlain was goofy as Allan Quartermain but Sharon Stone as the lady that tags along... the character and the performance made me realize that I shouldn't rip on Willie from Temple of Doom ever again.

If I saw this as a kid I'd probably think higher of it; as a 33 year old man, this was just juvenile and silly too often. The special effects, many of them are SO dated and some look really bad. That doesn't apply to a giant creature you briefly see that appeared to be straight out of Roger Corman's warehouse, where it's been stored since about 1960; then again something you see at the very end is also likely from the same warehouse and it doesn't have the kitsch charm that made me howl with laughter with the first thing... then again, there's many things here that are dated even by 1985 standards.

I'll return tomorrow night; what I think I'll do is that I'll post again on Friday night and I may have to do a long epic post where I review several films that are "smaller" than the one I know I'll review tomorrow night from now till then at the same time. It just depends on how things turn out.