Such a frustrating disappointment

Simply Perfect

As Good As It Gets

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I rate this film as about average for the genre at the time of production, although its major failures are from its adherence to the premise of the 1950 Stewart Granger version of King Solomon's Mines. King Solomon's Mines is a 20th Century modernization of the H. Rider Haggard novels set in the 19th Century. As a VERY LOW BUDGET African project, the two movies maintain the consistency of an imaginary Africa that may have seemed reasonable to a 19th Century English audience.I especially enjoyed some of the quips that reference a not so hidden casting of Hollywood camp in serious roles. Elvira is cast as Sorais, and Richard Chamberlain as Allan Quatermain declares on meeting her, "I've seen some amazing things in my life, but never anything to compare with this!" The films are full of the cliché scenes that filled Tarzan and earlier jungle films, clichés that have since become attached to the Indiana Jones films by those unfamiliar with the earlier genre. Some of the earlier jungle films were produced under extraordinary duress, and attempts here to produce tongue in cheek replicas of the earlier works can certainly be missed by those whose only familiarity with film is through the post 70s media.

What a mess! Almost everything about Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold is a complete and total disaster. In the movie, Quatermain puts a group together to search for his brother in the wilds of Africa. After facing several dangerous and near-death obstacles, Quatermain finds his brother living in the seemingly idyllic and Utopian Lost City of Gold. But appearances can be deceiving as the city is really under the control of a ruthless warlord intent on making the citizens his slaves to mine the gold he is taking out. Can Quatermain and his band of adventurers save these people? If I were to just make a list of everything that doesn't work in Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, my list would go on for pages. I'll begin with the acting. To put it bluntly, it's terrible. I've never thought much of Richard Chamberlain as an actor and this movie does nothing to change that. As for Sharon Stone, I'm sure she would like to see this thing buried. I doubt she considers it a highlight on her resume. James Earl Jones is an actor you can usually count on to give a quality performance regardless of the material. Here, he just comes across as embarrassed to be associated with this drivel.Technically, the movie is train wreck. Direction, editing, and everything else you can come up with are as bad as I've seen. But the special effects take Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold to a new low. The blue screen effects are as bad as I've ever seen. The rear projection used in the 1930s is 10X more realistic than the blue haloed actors on a bad looking backgrounds seen in this movie. The puppet snakes make Kermit look like a real frog. And, wires, harnesses, and the like are readily evident. Like I said when I started, it's a mess.I haven't even gotten to the plot, but why bother? It's as poorly written as you can imagine.The only thing that keeps me from rating this movie a 1/10 are the groovy outfits worn by Cassandra Peterson. It's too bad she's only got 10 or so minutes of screen time because I dig some of those costumes.

Is it just me, or does this seem like a bad takeoff of Indiana Jones to anyone else? Exploring jungles..... looking for treasure..... near-death experiences..... sound familiar to anyone else? I just thought this was a cheesy, idiotic movie. At first, I thought it might be interesting, but after the rather hard-to-follow introduction, it just kept going down in my view. I find Indiana Jones much more satisfactory movies. They're easy to understand, have action that is a bit more believable (I said a bit more, not totally!!), and better actors. But then I may be a bit biased as I was forced to view this movie, I didn't watch it by choice. Just my views!!

Someone's lame attempt at cashing in on the original classic "King Solomon's Mines" (1950's version) and/or "Indiana Jones" interest.As I said in the title of this post, the only redeeming post is the 3 hot women besides Sharon Stone.One of whom is Cassandra Peterson (Elvira).James Earl Jones' acting talent (voice of Darth Vader) is wasted. He is relegated to walking around looking like a big, dumb, African. How insulting.I picked this movie up as a $5.50 Wal-Mart bargain bin DVD buy.That's about right.Pay no more than $8 for this movie if you actually want to buy it.