Jewel of the Gods

As I recall, Mark Philips may have final mixed this movie soundtrack, but I recorded location sound for it... Neil Thain mbks. I cannot be sure who my boom swinger was... perhaps Dieter Keck?

It was a low budget production celebrating in a way the adventures of Harrison Ford in Jewel of the Nile. We had a number of memorable moments during filming, not the least of which was deep in an old gold mine.

Keeping out of the way when a tour would come through, our German SS colonel, in full uniform decided to have some fun with them. He waited out of sight in the shadows, and then stepped out to ask the tour group "Is ze war over yet?", while nervously scanning the tunnel!

I cannot imaging what the German tour group must have thought, but our actor sure gave them a story to relate for years.

This is certainly one of the strangest movies I have ever seen in my life. I saw it like 2 years ago on a sunday afternoon. Why the station was playing an obscure South African Indian Jones ripoff is a mystery. Well, I'll just say everything I can remember about the film in the hopes that it may help some poor soul who vaguely remembers it.

1) - at the start it has some crude Aborigines running up a hill. They find a jewel. I assume it is the jewel of the gods. A crude pink laser shoots out of it. A simpleminded viewer is confused.

2) - a comic relief Arab walks through an Australian desert. He is attacked by a snake. The "tough" hero cuts its head off with a boomerang. The snake's head slides down a sand dune and past the Arab's hammin'-it-up face. The tough hero then, without explanation, says "Bloody Gibson Desert!"

3) - the hero and the Arab are on a plane. The plane shakes. The Arab asks, "What was that?" The hero replies, "Nothing mate, the engine just fell off," like it happens every day. The thing is, I'm not sure if this is an actual comedy.

4) - the hero and the Arab swim from Australia to Africa. I'm not joking. There's some lame joke about sharks. It's at this point I stopped watching. I wish I had continued. The folly of youth.

Anyway, that's all I have to comment on. In hindsight it was extremely funny, but any bogstandard South African adventure movie has to rate at most a 1.

Call me........ In His Blazer!

Dull, exposition-heavy, low-rent South African Indiana Jones copy, with a few token scenes with a native thrown in to feign a connection with "The Gods Must Be Crazy!" films; it does reunite the two leads of the first of those, Marius Weyers and Sandra Prinsloo, and they do still have some chemistry (plus Prinsloo displays impressive cleavage in the entire second half of the picture), but the rest of the cast is basically one ethnic stereotype after another (British, German, Indian, etc.). There is also some nice scenery and some good stunts, but this film is still only for the terminally curious. *1/2 out of 4.

Another bizarre entry in the "Gods Must BeCrazy" series. If you are obsessed with all of the Gods movies (1-5, that Zulu one, etc...), then you have to seek this one out and rent it. Otherwise, forget that you were ever here. Ha ha ha. This doesn't have the lovable bushman, but it has a Caucasians male and female character that were in the original movie. Merius Weyers played Andrew Steyn in the original film, and Sandra played Kate Thompson in the original film. Their characters are almost exactly the same in this one. It is available on DVD, but there are rumors that it is out of production (the copies that are out there may be all that are going to be made).