King Solomon's Mines Reviews

Should have stayed buried with the volcano. This rather odious last remake of the famous adventure story is decidedly less spectacular than the Stewart Granger epic and, despite some rousing chases through the jungles, should never have been made. Chamberlain is Allan Quatermain, a hunter hired by the distressed Jessie (Stone) to find her father. He's an archaeologist who knows where a great treasure can be found but who has been kidnaped by Col. Bockner (Lom) and his army of German thugs. Bockner, meanwhile, has formed a nervous alliance with Turkish mercenaries led by Dogati (Rhys-Davies), and they are hot in pursuit of the legendary treasure trove of King Solomon. Of course this is just what Quatermain is after too. We do have a few funky, harrowing scenes here, but there's something incredibly sloppy about the production and direction of the whole film. The pacing is uneven and the dialogue often unspeakable, a fact one wishes the cast had figured out. Richard Chamberlain likes to think of himself as a serious actor and seems embarrassed appearing in this Indiana Jones ripoff. The "fiercely intelligent" (by her own assessment) Sharon Stone, meanwhile, has all the charisma of cream cheese. Listening to her deliver dialogue is like sucking on helium balloons: you get lightheaded from the vacuity of it all. Most of the cast follows these stellar leads and just goes through the motions while those canny qualitymongers (!) Golan and Globus count the profits they rake in from chintzy stuff like this. The film inspired (if that's the right word) a 1987 sequel (actually shot at the same time), ALLAN QUATERMAINE AND THE CITY OF GOLD. Believe it or not, this film is better than that one.