DVD Reviews

Allan Quartermain And The Lost City Of Gold

Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold is the film equivalent of watching the local neighbourhood kids as they act out scenes from their favourite movie in the schoolyard. The little tykes have a lot of energy and its kind of fun to watch at first, but after awhile it just gets a little ridiculous. In this 1987 sequel to King Solomon’s Mines, Richard Chamberlain plays the title character and is surrounded by a pretty decent cast including Sharon Stone as his archeologist girlfriend and James Earl Jones as a guy with a huge axe named Umslopogass. Quatermain finds out that his brother is living in the mystical Lost City of Gold and puts together a team of adventurers to find it. Needless to say, they discover the city after a treacherous journey and find that it has been taken over by a gold-crazed madman (Henry Silva) and Elvira herself.

Everything is set for a rip-roaring adventure, but unfortunately the screenwriter is too busy seeing how many times he can rip off Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom to even remotely bother about creating something new and exciting. Do we really need another sacrificial pit filled with molten liquid, gold this time, getting in the way of our heroes? Yet, the film is gloriously goofy (at one point the team is attacked by giant killer worms) and has quite a few unintentional laughs (they don’t even bother to hide the wires when characters get tossed into the air). Most importantly though is the fact that the cast seems to realize they are in a schlock film and they make the most of it. Henry Silva’s maniacal laughter is rather infectious and James Earl Jones really loves that axe. So, while it is far from being a good movie, Allan Quatermain certainly isn’t the worst way to spend an hour and a half.

Fortunately, MGM has treated this film pretty well. The film is presented in Anamorphic widescreen and the image is quite nice. The jungle footage looks fantastic, and my only complaint is that the image was a tad soft in a few spots. The 2.0 surround is serviceable. The music cues come through loud and clear.

The only special feature is a theatrical trailer, but it’s one of those trailers that included tons of footage that isn’t in the movie. Because of this fact I was dying to see some deleted scenes (including an action scene that looks awfully similar to one film’s mine cart chase), but alas that will probably never happen.

Review By Corey Brown