King Solomon's Mines

Wow!!! This movie was incredible!!! I heard about it awhile back and had

made many Allan Quatermane jokes about it before I finally saw it. I was expecting a terrible low budget novelty flick but what I got was breathtaking!!! King Solomon's Mines is one of the most relentlessly action packed campy films I've ever seen...and I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in all my life. From the opening sequence to the last frame I was rolling on the floor laughing like a madman at Allan Quatermane's crazy exploits!! Richard Chamberlain is great as a two-fisted treasure hunter\romantic icon with an adventurous twinkle in his eye. Sharon Stone is the next Kate Capshaw!!! J. Lee Thompson is a brilliant Director!!! Why may you ask? See this film, it never slows down...when I finished it I sat speechless for a moment of reflection and realized that the movie I just watched was in real-time!!! All that high energy fun took place over an hour and a half. This is a cinematic gem and it better have a 2-disc special edition DVD because I'll be first in line to buy it. So if you want the fastest, funniest, entertainingnest darn movie around King Solomon's Mines is the ticket!!!

This is one of my favourite films, as it is so easy to watch, i think the director was being Padraic of other action/adventure films and that is why it appears cheesy. I think the areoplane scene which we can tell is really fake, is meant to make you laugh. I particularly like the way secretly Sharon Stone's shorts within the film start as clam diggers and by the end of the film she almost has hot pants on (typical Hollywood male gaze of woman). I think for that time the special effects were excellent for an action/adventure treasure hunter film. I like the narrative of this film, as its not really complicated, i also like the way light is used in the tree tops when sharon & quatermain meet the upside-down people. This film is perfect to watch hungover eating warmed up pizza from the night before.

Please refrain to take this movie seriously. I repeat: please refrain to take this movie seriously. Any person who is unable to watch a movie without taking it seriously is advised to go watch something else. This one here was meant to be ridiculous. And if it was not, then it is a fine piece of unintentional comedy.

Based on H. Rider Haggard's novel, King Solomon's stars Richard Chamberlain as adventurer Allan Quatermain, who is enlisted by blonde babe Jesse Huston (Sharon Stone) to help find her father, who has gone missing while searching for the fables mines of King Solomon. Herbert Lom plays Nazi Colonel Bockner, who, with the help of wicked Turk Dogati (John Rhys Davis, sending up his own role in Raiders of the Lost Ark), also hopes to locate the legendary treasure.

When I first saw this film (back in the '80s at my local Cannon flea-pit), I thought it was abominable, a shoddy Indiana Jones clone thrown together in a hurry to make a quick buck. I now realise my mistake: instead of being a cheap rip-off, it is in fact a sly send-up that mercilessly mocks the conventions of the genre, which explains the ridiculously hokey script, the incredibly far-fetched action scenes, the cruddy effects, and the camp performances from a cast who are obviously in on the joke. When viewed as such, one's enjoyment of the film is greatly enhanced.

Director J.Lee Thompson certainly keeps the bonkers action moving along at a decent lick, with a silly sequence aboard a speeding (NOT!) train, a ridiculous scene that has hero Quatermain hanging onto the wing of a biplane piloted by a petrified Jesse, a tribe that lives upside-down in the jungle, a hilarious moment involving a cannibal tribe's massive cooking pot, and a really unconvincing giant spider attack. The film also boasts a surprisingly decent score from Jerry Goldsmith, who effectively mimics John Williams' famous Raiders theme, and benefits throughout from the appealing sight of the pre-fame Stone in tight shorts (that get shorter and shorter as the movie progresses).

I have seen this movie and I think it is a great spoof. I think we need a little clean humor in this industry of movie making. The lines are great and why not have a little fun with it? Sharin Stone may have been starting out but hey, you have to start somewhere and why not do it with a little fun. I think making the movie must have been hilarious. Granted Indiana Jones has some classic lines and Harrison Ford pulls it off most excellently, there are still some great jokes in the movie. Give the producers a break. They probably had to start out somewhere as well. Take the movie for the comedy and silly acting for what it is: entertainment, because, after all the is what it is all about.