King Solomon's Mines was followed by a sequel (filmed back-to-back), Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986). It was originally planned to be the first in a trilogy, and there were two attempts to film a third movie: first, a film that would have been based on She and Allan, another Haggard novel, and then a film which would have been titled Allan Quatermain and the Jewel of the East, to be directed by producer Menahem Golan. Neither attempt was successful, in part due to the financial failure of Lost City of Gold.
Jesse Huston (Sharon Stone) has hired Allan Quatermain to find her father, believed lost on an expedition to find the fabled King Solomon's Mines. Together with his companion, the mysterious Umbopo, they penetrate unknown country, following a map believed to be genuine. It transpires that Professor Huston has been captured by a German military expedition on the same quest, led by Bockner (Herbert Lom), a single-minded knackwurst-munching, bald-headed Colonel and a ruthless Turkish slave-trader and adventurer, Dogati (John Rhys-Davies), who is a long-standing adversary of Quatermain. Huston is being forced to interpret another map, also believed to be genuine.
The two rival expeditions shadow each other, clashing on several occasions, but Quatermain's group manages to rescue Professor Huston, who confirms the mines are indeed real and he implores Quatermain to stop Bockner and Dogati from finding them. After a few harrowing encounters with both the Germans and some of the local native tribes, they finally enter the tribal lands of the Kukuana who capture them. The tribe is under the control of the evil priestess, Gagoola, who has Quatermain hung upside down over a pond full of crocodiles. Just when all seems lost, Umbopo arrives and after defeating Gagoola's warriors in combat, reveals his identity as an exiled tribal chief and the rightful ruler of the Kukuanas.
As the tribesmen submit to him, Bockner and Dogati attack the village in full force. Amid the ensuing chaos, Gagoola captures Jesse and flees into caves in the depths of the Breasts of Sheba, the twin mountain peaks where the mines are located. Quatermain and Umbopo give chase after them and they are in turn pursued by Bockner and Dogati. They follow Quatermain and Umbopo to the entrance to the mines, but are hampered by a moat of quicksand. Bockner orders his men forward into the moat, but they have trouble crossing it. Dogati then shoots down all of Bockner's soldiers, as well as most of his own men, and uses their bodies as stepping stones to cross the moat safely. As they approach the entrance, Bockner shoots Dogati and takes command of what little remains of the party.
Inside the mines, Quatermain and Umbopo rescue Jesse and find the resting place of all the former tribal queens, including the Queen of Sheba herself, encased in crystal. Umbopo explains that Gagoola had attempted to sacrifice Jesse in order to keep her power as the Kukuanas' ruler because of Jesse's strong resemblance to the Queen of Sheba. Then Gagoola appears and taunts Umbopo, who pursues her through the caverns.
As Bockner and his men arrive next, Quatermain and Jesse flee for safety, but end up in the cavern's treasure chamber, which is full of raw diamonds and other priceless treasures. As they gather some of the diamonds to take with them, Bockner hears their voices from outside the chamber, but before he can enter, Gagoola activates a hidden rock switch and seals Quatermain and Jesse inside the chamber. The switch also triggers a trap that causes the ceiling of the chamber, which is lined with stalactites to lower on them. Quatermain and Jesse manage to stop the ceiling trap, but then the chamber begins filling up with water. Just as the chamber fills completely, a lit stick of dynamite set by Bockner outside the chamber door explodes, sending them both spewing out of the chamber in the resulting flood to safety.
Bockner enters the chamber and quickly lays claim to the treasure, only to be confronted by a wounded, but very much alive, Dogati, who was wearing a protective vest that shielded him from the bullets. He then forces Bockner to swallow some of the diamonds, intending to cut him open to retrieve them later on. Meanwhile, Umbopo finally corners Gagoola. But rather than face his judgment, she instead leaps down one of the volcano's shafts and is incinerated when she lands in the molten lava below. However, the reaction causes a series of eruptions throughout the mines. Dogati is partially buried when the treasure chamber's ceiling collapses, but Bockner is unharmed. He gloats to Dogati after claiming a few more diamonds for himself, then leaves the chamber. But not before firing his gun at the ruined ceiling, burying Dogati alive. Quatermain, Jesse and Umbopo quickly flee for their lives through the collapsing caverns. They cross over a small booby- trapped lake (which one of Bockner's men fell victim to earlier), only to be stopped by Bockner, who demands they surrender their diamonds to him. Quatermain places the diamonds on the central stepping stone that triggers the trap and tells Bockner to come take the diamonds himself if he wants them. Bockner does so and falls into the lake, only to be seized in the jaws of a Mokele-mbembe and dragged beneath the water. The trap resets itself and the diamonds rise back to the surface, but Umbopo warns Quatermain and Jesse not to take them, saying they belong to the mountain.
The trio continue their escape through the caverns, which becomes even more dangerous as the lava chamber they are in is full of fire and falling rocks. Quatermain tells Umbopo to take Jesse through to safety while he follows them. But before he can do so, he is struck down by Dogati, who survived the cave-in. A brutal fight between them ensues, but Quatermain gains the upper hand at the last instant, sending Dogati falling into the chamber's lava pit to his death. Quatermain manages to escape from the mines at the last minute, just as the volcano explodes, sealing the entrance forever.
Returning to the village, Umbopo assumes his rightful place as the ruler of the Kukuanas and he and his people bid a fond farewell to Quatermain and Jesse. As they exit the village, they each reveal they had kept a diamond from the mines as a souvenir of their adventure and the movie ends with them kissing outside the village gates.
It was Richard Chamberlain's first feature since The Last Wave. "I haven't seen any scripts of anything I wanted to do", said Chamberlain prior to filming. "But I love doing miniseries, so it's not as if I've been pining away all this time. King Solomon's Mines is not a remake of the old Stewart Granger trek through the jungle. It's a sensational script. It's very much a Raiders of the Lost Ark type of movie – very tongue-in-cheek and full of adventures and stunts.... Bullets flying, lions eating people, witches up in the trees. All that stuff."[5]
Kathleen Turner was reportedly offered $1.5 million to play the female lead but turned it down because the role was too similar to the one she played in Romancing the Stone.[6]
The film was shot on location in the Mashonaland region of northeastern Zimbabwe over ten months. The crew included many Israelis and South Africans, which caused some objections from the local Arab population. The Arab League protested the depiction of all the Arab characters as slavers. Richard Chamberlain said, "I happen to think that people are people and I don't care where they come from as long as they do a good job.... This is a comedy, and one of the best defenses against out-of-date stereotypes is to poke fun at them. It shows how absurd they are."[2]
The film's score was composed and conducted by Jerry Goldsmith, and performed by the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra. Restless Records issued an album on LP and cassette; Milan later released it on compact disc minus the cue "The Ritual" and paired with Alan Silvestri's The Delta Force. In 1991 Intrada Records released an expanded version, later reissued in 1997; Prometheus released the complete score in 2006. Quartet Records issued a two-disc edition in 2014 with the Prometheus content on disc one and the original album presentation on disc two.
Quartet release
Tracks in bold premiered on the Intrada CD, tracks in italics premiered on the Prometheus edition.
Disc 1: The Film Score
Main Title (3:40)
Welcoming Committee (0:51)
No Sale (3:38)
The Mummy (1:15)
Have a Cigar (3:39)
Good Morning (2:32)
Under the Train (3:08)
Dancing Shots (3:38)
Pain (3:07)
The Chieftain (1:03)
Percussion Sweetener (0:40)
Pot Luck (3:23)
Upside Down People (5:04)
The Crocodiles (3:08)
The Mines (1:25)
Pre-Ritual/The Ritual, Part I/The Ritual, Part II (6:16)
Low Bridge (3:28)
Falling Rocks (1:07)
Final Confrontation (3:11)
No Diamonds (4:14)
Bonus Track: Ride (3:06)
Bonus Track: Theme From King Solomon's Mines (3:40)
Disc 2: The Original Album
King Solomon's Mines (Main Title) (3:39)
Upside Down People (4:51)
The Crocodiles (3:07)
Pot Luck (3:23)
Forced Flight (5:22)
Dancing Shots (3:38)
Good Morning (2:33)
No Pain (3:07)
The Ritual (5:05)
No Diamonds (End Title) (4:21)
Reception
Box Office
The film earned $5 million in its opening weekend.[8] The film overperformed in every single media market in Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, Wisconsin as well as some media markets in southeastern Minnesota. That overperformance was largely attributed to the Cannon Group, Inc. overspending on marketing in those media markets before reining in their own spending. The overperformance at the box office in those media markets allowed the film to not only make all of the production money back, but to go even further and make several million dollars in profit for the Cannon Group.[9]
Critical
King Solomon's Mines holds an 8% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 13 reviews with an average rating of 3.7/10.[10] On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 29 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[11] Though it made a profit, the film was panned by critics, many of whom felt it was not as good as the 1950 film version with Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr.[12] The film "did significantly better with general audiences than it did with critics" as audiences were "far more forgiving a movie that was 'intended' to be extremely cheesy" while professional critics "correctly pointed out that it wasn't nearly as good as the Stewart Granger version of the same movie, while failing to acknowledge that it wasn't supposed to be as good, and at no point took itself seriously as movie."[13]
It was nominated for two Razzie Awards, including Worst Supporting Actor for Herbert Lom and Worst Musical Score for Goldsmith.[14]
The Cannon Group had originally planned a trilogy of films, the third film was to be an adaptation of She and Allan but this was ultimately abandoned after the extreme negative reception of Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, coupled with the financial difficulties of the company at the time.
In 2011, a new sequel was proposed by Menahem Golan called Allan Quatermain and the Jewel of the East. The script was written by Golan and Richard Albiston, to be directed by Golan himself. The plot concerned Quatermain attempting to rescue his daughter from Chinese treasure hunters in the Congo. According to the 2015 documentary Golan: A Farewell to Mr. Cinema, Richard Chamberlain had agreed to return as the title character, but Golan died before the film began shooting.[15]
Releases
MGM released the film on DVD on February 10, 2004.[16]
On December 3, 2014, Umbrella Entertainment in Australia released a Region 4 DVD of the movie.
Related Research Articles
Sir Henry Rider Haggard was an English writer of adventure fiction romances set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a pioneer of the lost world literary genre. He was also involved in land reform throughout the British Empire. His stories, situated at the lighter end of Victorian literature, continue to be popular and influential.
King Solomon's Mines (1885) is a popular novel by the English Victorian adventure writer and fabulist Sir H. Rider Haggard. It tells of a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party. It is one of the first English adventure novels set in Africa and is considered to be the genesis of the lost world literary genre.
The Cannon Group, Inc. was an American group of companies, including Cannon Films, which produced films from 1967 to 1994. The extensive group also owned, amongst others, a large international cinema chain and a video film company that invested heavily in the video market, buying the international video rights to several classic film libraries. Some of their best known films include Joe (1970), Runaway Train (1985) and Street Smart (1987), all of which were Oscar-nominated.
Allan Quatermain is the protagonist of H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines, its one sequel Allan Quatermain (1887), twelve prequel novels and four prequel short stories, totalling eighteen works. An English professional big game hunter and adventurer, in film and television he has been portrayed by Richard Chamberlain, Sean Connery, Cedric Hardwicke, Patrick Swayze and Stewart Granger among others.
Al(l)an Qua(r)termain(e) may refer to:
Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold is a 1986 American adventure comedy film directed by Gary Nelson and released in West Germany on December 18, 1986, and in the United States on January 30, 1987. It is loosely based on the 1887 novel Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard. It is the sequel to the 1985 film King Solomon's Mines.
Sir Henry Curtis is a fictional character in a series of adventure novels by H. Rider Haggard. His Zulu name is Incubu, which means "Elephant". He is the constant companion and fellow traveller of Allan Quatermain.
Yoram Globus is an Israeli–American film producer, cinema owner, and distributor. He has been involved in over 300 full-length motion pictures and he is most known for his association with The Cannon Group, Inc., an American film production company, which he co-owned with his cousin Menahem Golan.
Watusi is a 1959 American adventure film, It is the sequel to the 1950 film King Solomon's Mines. The film was directed by Kurt Neumann and starring George Montgomery, Taina Elg, David Farrar and Rex Ingram. It was produced by Al Zimbalist and Donald Zimbalist. The screenplay was by James Clavell loosely based on the 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard.
The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines is a 2006 American made-for-television fantasy-adventure film and the second in The Librarian franchise of movies starring Noah Wyle as a librarian who protects a secret collection of artifacts. The television film was released on American cable channel TNT on December 3, 2006. Gabrielle Anwar, Bob Newhart, Jane Curtin and Olympia Dukakis co-star. It is a sequel to 2004's The Librarian: Quest for the Spear. The third film in the trilogy, The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice, was released in 2008.
Gene Quintano is an American screenwriter, actor, film producer and director. He is best known for writing sequels to the film Police Academy and directing the western Dollar for the Dead and action parody Loaded Weapon 1, both starring Emilio Estevez.
King Solomon's Mines is a 1950 Technicolor adventure film, and the second film adaptation of the 1885 novel of the same name by Henry Rider Haggard. It stars Deborah Kerr, Stewart Granger and Richard Carlson. It was adapted by Helen Deutsch, directed by Compton Bennett and Andrew Marton and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
King Solomon's Mines is a 2004 American two-part television miniseries, the fifth film adaptation of the 1885 novel of the same name by Henry Rider Haggard. Starring Patrick Swayze as Allan Quatermain and Alison Doody as Elizabeth Maitland, the film was produced by Hallmark Entertainment, and originally aired June 6, 2004, on Hallmark Channel.
Honeymoon Academy is a 1989 American adventure comedy film directed by Gene Quintano, starring Robert Hays and Kim Cattrall.
Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls is a 2008 American adventure film directed by Mark Atkins and starring Sean Cameron Michael, Christopher Adamson, Sanaa Lathane, Daniel Bonjour, and Wittly Jourdan. It was created by The Asylum. The film follows the adventures of explorer Allan Quatermain, and was filmed entirely on location in South Africa. It was released directly to DVD.
Conan and the Treasure of Python is a fantasy novel by American writer John Maddox Roberts, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in trade paperback by Tor Books in November 1993; a regular paperback edition followed from the same publisher in August 1994.
King Solomon's Treasure is a 1979 British-Canadian low-budget film based on the novels King Solomon's Mines (1885) and Allan Quatermain (1887) by H. Rider Haggard. It stars John Colicos as Allan Quatermain, as well as David McCallum, Britt Ekland, and Patrick Macnee who replaced Terry-Thomas.
Allan Quatermain is an 1887 novel by H. Rider Haggard. It is the sequel to Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines.
Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films is a 2014 Australian-American documentary film written and directed by Mark Hartley. It tells the story of cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus who headed The Cannon Group. Those interviewed lay tribute to the brash, unconventional immigrant filmmakers who gave young actors a chance and give unflinching anecdotes of both the hits and the low budget and often crass films created.
References
↑ Andrew Yule, Hollywood a Go-Go: The True Story of the Cannon Film Empire, Sphere Books, 1987 p95-96
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