Review of Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold

Introduction

It`s a little insight into the glamorous world of the reviewer, but we rarely get the finished article to review. One in ten discs might come in an Amaray case, complete with packaging and inlay, but what we usually get is just the disc in a CD case, or occasionally in an envelope. The discs are plain silver too, with none of the labelling or artwork, just the name of the disc and a serial number crudely stencilled on. Of course this results in hours of headache trying to resolve by eye whether a film ratio is 1.85:1 or 1.78:1. But rarely, the crude label usually mis-spelt is enough to alleviate the boredom and even cause a brief giggle. I found myself inserting Allan Quatermain & City Of God into my player last night, and found it quite amusing. Suffice it to say that was the last laugh I had that evening.

Allan Quatermain And The Lost City Of Gold as it should be labelled on the final product was shot back to back with its prequel King Solomon`s Mines, a film that I have already reviewed elsewhere on this site. They were Cannon`s attempt to get in on the Indiana Jones fever with their own brand of cut-price action adventure, based on H. Rider Haggard`s novels. I found King Solomon`s Mines to be naff in the extreme but cheesy tongue-in-cheek fun. The sequel could go either one of two ways, plough the money in to make a better, bigger movie as did the X-Men sequel, or once you got the suckers hooked, land `em with a hastily patched together sequel with a cheaper director, stock footage and a monkey with a typewriter for a script. Guess which one this is. Given the quality of the original, I`ll need painkillers by the end of this review.

Quatermain and Jessie are relaxing in giggly bliss, contemplating their impending nuptials, when a sweaty feverish bloke stumbles panicked from the jungle, raving about a mythical city of gold that Allan`s brother Robeson was looking for. Well you can`t keep a good adventurer down, and with Jessie in tow, Quatermain gathers a motley crew of an out of place Indian Fakir and an African Warrior with his retinue of jungle fodder. The nameless characters will soon bite the dust, but the four adventurers soon find themselves on the trail of the Lost Aryan, I mean White Tribe, despite the usual jungle perils.

Video

It`s a cut and paste job for the second film with a couple of exceptions…

Surprisingly, (Allan Quatermain & Lost City of…) gets exceptional treatment of its 2.35:1 anamorphic picture on this single layer disc from MGM. It`s clear and colourful throughout, but some serious print damage in a few scenes knock a mark off. There is a hint of grain at times, and the picture does seem inordinately soft, though that may have been an intentional decision.

But the great transfer only serves to show up the films many flaws. The stunts are worse than the first film, you may wonder at the presence of a trapeze, but those are actually the not so carefully hidden wires in the falls and somersaults. The film itself is badly edited making little or no pretence at continuity. The effects are almost amateurish, with some particularly flimsy blue screen work where not only can you see the joins, but you also get the feeling that the wallpaper has peeled completely.

Some of the scenery`s pretty nice though.

Audio

More cutting and pasting…

DD 2.0 English German, French and Spanish, present the sound in all its mundane glory.

Jerry Goldsmith`s theme is adapted in this film by Michael Linn but it`s still irritating though, and you get the feeling that you`ve heard it all before. I would characterise it as a heavy helping of Supergirl with just an added soupcon of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, basted at gas mark tedium for 90 minutes. Actually another thing that made me laugh was the proclamation in the end credits that this was filmed in Ultra Stereo.

Features

A trailer and subs, though the trailer has a few hints at scenes not in the film.

Conclusion

They should show this film in dentists` surgeries. You`d save a fortune in anaesthetic. Dull! Dull! Dull! It has all of the flaws of the first film and none of the little quirks that gave me a reluctant enjoyment. It`s still blatantly un-PC, with most Africans fodder for Quatermain`s hand cannon. Richard Chamberlain is still woefully miscast as the eponymous hero, and it still rips off Indiana Jones with no shame. Actually there is some shame, as while the booby-trapped floor of Raiders, and the slaves from Temple Of Doom are here still toiling away in a mine, Quatermain brandishing a whip is consigned only to the trailer. I guess they finally realised what a lawsuit could do to their meagre profits.

But the things that gave me a guilty pleasure in the first film are missing here. The fun that permeated the first film vanishes into a dull series of action set pieces with little or no suspense. The characters are dreary, Chamberlain and Sharon Stone look as if they are just going through the motions, as opposed to the liveliness they displayed in the prequel. The villains are anonymous, Henry Silva who was Killer Kane in Buck Rogers and the 25th Century, merely grimaces occasionally as the evil priest Agon. As for the rest of the cast, what James Earl Jones was doing in this I can`t begin to ask. All I can say that it was actually a relief that his accent was incomprehensible, though the character`s name, Umslopogaas sounds like an illness of the bowel. Then Robert Donner blacks up to play the comedy Indian Swarma, the bandy legged fakir. One performance manages to set back race relations by a century. Compared to this, Mind Your Language was the pinnacle of tolerance and understanding.

King Solomon`s Mines occasionally descends into parody and spoof, and is borderline entertaining. Allan Quatermain And The Lost City Of Gold is played with po-faced seriousness, and as a result just sucks. Yuck!