Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls

Just look at the poster for this movie and straight away you'll notice the resemblance to the Indiana Jones posters, and the resemblance doesn't stop there. This is a blatant attempt to cash in on the recent return of the superior film franchise. Its not the first time the adventures of Alan Quartermain have been used to scrape some of the profits off the top of the Spielberg movies. When the original films where released a remake of "King Solomans Mines" was rushed out shortly after with Richard Chamberlain hamming it up as Alan Qaurtermain.

Although I don't really like the Indiana Jones movies I think its in very bad taste to copy them in order to milk some of there profits. This movie was pushed out faster than a novice skydiver on his first jump. Slapped together in under 8 weeks, and you can tell! this is a poor effort at storytelling. Sets and cinematography are quite passable but the plot has more holes than a tea bag, therefore Im not even going to mention any of the story because what you don't know wont bother you as the kind of person who enjoys this rubbish are those with the intellectual capacity of a retarded goldfish.

I have given this film 1 star... as the IMDb wont allow me to give it none! Give this movie a wide birth at all costs!

Haven't seen such an awful film for ages. It is so bad it almost has the potential to become a cult classic. You should watch it with a bunch of good friends and a lot of beer, and then you might just get through it.

I struggled to understand what historical period it was set in; the political references suggest 1940's, but Umbopa wears modern dress and Quatermain's school bill is of a modern order of magnitude. The effect was surreal. We were given very few clues as to the plot. There were so many loose ends or things unexplained. The unpreparedness of the Fearless Four as they embarked on their quest was laughable. Acting was either wooden or OTT.

It was as though a bunch of people met on safari in the bush with a camcorder and said, "hey, let's re-enact that old King Solomon's Mines movie" and didn't bother to plan or rehearse it much or edit the results.

Having said that, I thought the scenery (and Wittley Jourdan) was strikingly beautiful, and the cast clearly had a lot of fun making this movie!

This film has a lot of memorable, really fun scenes, the characters are very likable, the acting was good, especially the villain... he was AWESOME, very entertaining. I could watch his scenes over and over again! The main actor was very true to the character of Allan Quatermain in the original book by H.R. Haggard. I thought he did a really solid job. This film was very well directed, had some beautiful cinematography, and is overall a really good, fun film that I would highly recommend.

This is by far the best film that the Asylum has ever done. I was very surprised at the quality of the story, the acting, the directing, everything was at a distinctly higher level than any of the previous films I've seen come out of The Asylum. I would say that this is a director to watch in the future. Very talented.

What a mammoth stuff-up!

There's a place to record goofs on IMDb but, come on guys, there isn't enough space for them all! What period was the movie actually set in? There was a modern motion detector in one scene and a working steam train in others. (I like steam trains, by the way, so I'll give the movie 3 just for those shots!) When Lady Anna sprains her ankle, the supposed-to-be real "Indiana Jones" character is so stupid that he removes her boot out in the middle of nowhere! I'm no bushman but even I wouldn't have done that. It stands to reason that, if the ankle is injured, once the compression of the boot is removed, it will swell up to the point where getting the boot back on would be impossible. So, when the party moves on in the next scene, Anna is not wearing her boots (neither of them!). What she IS wearing isn't easy to see but, since the group had no extra gear with them, it must have been someone else's socks! But guess what? In the very next scene climbing a steep and rugged escarpment, there's Lady Anna with her boots on again!

Then, after suffering lousy screenplay, pathetic acting (from EVERYONE - with the possible exception of Wittley Jourdan). awful continuity and sad attention to detail, viewers are presented with a whole sequence of scenes in the bowels of the earth where no one took any sort of lighting, yet everything was brilliantly illuminated enough for the protagonist to see a black "beheading glove" with which to win the battle! Wow! The excitement was just too much for me!

Now, in most action movies, it is customary to have a bit of glamour somewhere so what went wrong here? By no stretch of the imagination could Natalie Stone be described as glamorous! Come to think of it, did South Africa EVER make a hit movie? The best I can think of was "The Gods Must Be Crazy" and that wasn't all that great!

If anyone is reading this before contemplating watching this movie, take it from me - DON'T!

I need to go and lie down! I just hope I don't fall asleep - I might have nightmares about being a cast member in a Mark Atkins movie!

Picked this up in a five-buck Echo Bridge 6-movie pack at K-Mart that also had some TV versions of Robinson Crusoe and mummy movies. Never laughed so hard in my life. Highly recommended for connoisseurs of bad cinema.

All those who give this movie a negative review should watch those abysmal big-budget studio Allan Quartermain movies in which Richard Chamberlain plays H. Rider Haggard's main character as a guy who wants to bed all of his male co-stars, in which Sharon Stone wears far too many clothes, and in which James Earl Jones plays an African tribal chieftain with such obvious embarrassment you can practically see the tears in his eyes and hear his thoughts saying, "Remember, Jim, this is paying for that vacation house in Old Saybrook, Conn."

And really, all that money invested in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" still didn't make it make a damn lick of sense, and made me feel like George Lucas screwed me. "Star Wars made me very rich and very fat. Thanks. Here, I dressed up some of my feces as Indiana Jones for you to look at for two hours."

At least this one doesn't pretend to be anything other than crap, and on that level, it's a helluva lot more enjoyable than "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

Stuff you gotta love:

-- The swarm of millions of somethings that are as big as birds, buzz like bees but looks like a pixellated screensaver, which causes the entire cast to cower under a rock but which poses no threat or danger whatsoever.

-- The leading lady says she twisted her ankle and couldn't possibly walk on it, and in the very next scene is hiking up a mountain.

-- The leading lady's makeup is heavier than that lady's in your town who drives the pink Mary Kay car. Honestly, she looks like she's auditioning for a role as a Tammy Faye drag queen.

-- They reach the fabled King Solomon's Mines by walking in a general direction up a dirt road. And when they get there, they just stand around and do nothing.

-- Earthquake! For no reason!

-- Two white guys found captive in the African tribe who do absolutely nothing for the rest of the movie.

-- Everything collapses! For no reason!

-- The big fight between Allan Quartermain and the villain that looks like an improvised b-slap match between the Burger King and Abe Vigoda.

-- Finally, there is no Temple of the Skulls. It's never sought. It's never reached. It's never mentioned.

Folks, five bucks at K-Mart. Can't buy a Happy Meal for that.