King Solomon's Mines (1985)

User Rating:

4.6/10   

Director:

J. Lee Thompson

Writers:

H. Rider Haggard (novel)
Gene Quintano (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

22 November 1985 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Comedy | Action

Tagline:

The Adventure of a Lifetime

Plot:

Fortune hunter Allan Quatermain teams up with a resourceful woman to help her find her missing father lost in the wilds of 1900s Africa while being pursued by hostile tribes and a rival German explorer.

Plot Keywords:

Africa | Tribe | Jungle | Eaten Alive | Legend

Awards:

2 nominations

Cast

Richard Chamberlain	...	Allan Quatermain
Sharon Stone	...	Jesse Huston
Herbert Lom	...	Colonel Bockner
John Rhys-Davies	...	Dogati
Ken Gampu	...	Umbopo
June Buthelezi	...	Gagoola
Sam Williams	...	Scragga
Shaike Ophir	...	Kassam
Mick Lesley	...	Dorfman
Vincent Van der Byl	...	Shack
Bob Greer	...	Hamid
Oliver Tengende	...	Bushiri
Neville Thomas	...	German Pilot
Bishop McThuzen	...	Dari
Isiah Murert	...	Rug Carrier

Runtime:

100 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Iceland:12 | Singapore:PG | South Korea:15 | West Germany:12 (f) | Australia:PG | Finland:K-14 | Norway:15 | Sweden:15 | UK:PG | USA:PG-13 | Canada:AA (Ontario) | Canada:G (Quebec) | Netherlands:12

Filming Locations:

Zimbabwe

Company:

Cannon Group

Trivia:

There were rumours that the six month shoot was cursed, so the director J. Lee Thompson had called for a witch-doctor, a N'anga, to lift the curse.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: That is an obvious black-haired stuntman when Allan Quatermain jumps out of the mine near the end.

Quotes:

Dogati: We must cross rivers, we must climb mountains. Must we listen to this, too?

Movie Connections:

References Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

9 out of 10 hoots on my Hoot-o-Meter

This is another love-or-hate film, with opinion fairly strongly tilted toward "hate". Media critics certainly did. As I'm fond of reminding people who read my reviews, what do media critics know? They hate almost anything that doesn't look like what's in some museum old movies hang in.

This particular film has plenty to hate. It's an obvious imitation "Raiders of the Lost Ark". It hasn't got a lot in common with the H. Rider Haggard book, much less the classic older film. It features Richard Chamberlain (some weird people find this a drawback). It's played for laughs. A lot.

These are actually positive factors, of course.

Allan Quatermain is the spiritual ancestor of Bernard Quatermass – if you know who that is. It doesn't help when people mispronounce the first 2 syllables of either name as if spelt "quaRter". There's evidence that the first syllable should be pronounced as //quā// (that is, //kway//), which is how the British pronounce it in the Quātermass films.

The film's plot, inasmuch as it barely resembles the original work, is irrelevant. It's merely a backdrop for snappy dialogue and funny business. This version of "Mines" is in fact a parody … not only a parody of the main title, but a parody of "Raiders of the Lost Ark". If the similarity of scenes in Cairo in the latter and the jungle-border city (whose name I forget) isn't a dead giveaway, the presence of John Rhys-Davies in both films, playing roughly similar rôles, should be (in the former he's a bad guy, in the latter a good guy).

I have no quarrel with parodying both "Mines" and "Ark" – which have enough similarity of plot to allow that – and one can certainly enjoy the film on its own. The problem is targeting the wrong flick at the wrong time – that is, parodying a recent film ("Ark") by parodying either an old film or an even older book. Alas, the object of the parody needs to be familiar to the audience, and actually few in this film's audience would have seen the old film (1937), much less read Haggard's book. (If anyone is thinking that I forgot the TV version, please note that it was a year later than the 1985 film.) This would have been a far better film at its root, as a parody of "Ark", had it been wholly unrelated to Quatermain and had a different title.

Speculation aside, this is a lighthearted and fairly funny film when taken on its own. It certainly has a good cast – and a good thing that is, too. Characters and dialogue are painted with very broad strokes, and in the hands of lesser performers would seem overly clownish. As it is, the line is perilously close to being crossed – and I daresay some will suggest it's actually crossed quite a bit. The title rôle is taken by the enormously talented Richard Chamberlain once (as Dr. Kildare) the heart-throb of thousands of hyper-hormonal young females in the '60s. Here the bloom of youth is gone, but the charm (not to mention the talent) is still there. As a parody, this is pretty much a farce – it doesn't entirely succeed in that venue, but to the extent it does succeed, it owes that to Chamberlain as well as other excellent talent.

Chamberlain's employer and later love interest, Jesse (sic)* Huston, is played by the delightful Sharon Stone. She and Chamberlain have a chemistry that helps things rollick along. Set in the 1890s, "Mines" has the Imperial German Army and German imperial ambitions replacing the only slightly more distasteful Nazis and Nazi ambitions in "Ark". These forces are personified by the cartoon cardboard of Col. Bockner, played by the wonderful Herbert Lom. His is the greatest comic talent here, and he succeeds almost beyond hope in making Bockner satirically funny instead of farcically stupid. John Rhys-Davies plays Dogati, the petty governor-dictator of the small African town of ***** (I forget; consider it a Senior Moment). This part is a marvelous parody of his rôle in "Ark". He plays it up well, always taking (insofar as possible) the comedic high rode. Rhys-Davies is one of those greatly talented Welsh actors who show up with greater frequency than the tiny population of Wales would account for. Finally there's the excellent South African actor, Ken Gampu. He plays Haggard's native character Umbopa (here misspelt Umbopo). This is, inexplicably, not a comic role – and Gampu carries it of with impressive dignity and physical presence.

((*Nowadays most people are clueless as to names -- for instance, those who spell the female name "Marian" (Latin Maria) as if it were the male name "Marion" (Latin Marius). Similarly, "Jesse" is a male name, as in King David's father. The female version is "Jessie". Of course, naming your daughter Jesse or Marion (shudder) is a damn sight better than saddling her with "Moonbeam Teapot Beach-Pismo" or "Wingnut Pramalot Black-Smith-Wesson" or whatever people are naming their kids nowadays.)) Another major talent, whose name puzzlingly doesn't appear in the credits, is the very talented Bernard Archard. Archard, who has had a long and distinguished career, has done very little in film or TV since 1987 and nothing since 1992. Here he plays a fair-sized minor role – Sharon Stone's father Professor Huston.

Side note: this film and Haggard's book make the common error of locating King Solomon's mines in Africa. Hogwash. Solomon's authority never extended even into Arabia, much less into the Dark Continent.

Ultimately, my advice in watching this film is: don't get up-tight about how it's not really very much like Haggard's original creation, how it's terminally silly, how … well, you get the idea. It's actually a lot of fun, and rather good fun at that, thanks to the high caliber of its performers.