Over the years, King Solomon’s Mines has gone through a lot. It started in 1885 as an adventure novel written by H. Rider Haggard. Some people refer to Haggard as the father of the ‘Lost World’ sub-rich and many others consider him a precursor to the type of pulp fiction that ruled the comic and newsstand ranges from the 1930s to the 1960s. There are six full-length films made from his book; however, the most popular ones were made in 1937 and 1950. This 1985 version is the first that tries to make its viewers laugh. To be honest, I doubt that the novel had much left in it to be adapted for the screen in this case.
With the help of Olive Films, I have recently revisited Cannon’s pulp adventure film, King Solomon’s Mines from 1985. I was quite looking forward to watching the movie after so many years, probably since the 90s, just to see how well the movie aged. The promise of Cannon movies is that they are never bad; to rephrase, there are a ton of bad Cannon movies, but there is an undeniable charm that they bring that just makes them so enjoyable to watch. Cannon Group was perhaps the biggest and the most successful in making exploitation movies in the history of cinema, bringing in decent talent and subsequently lowering the standards of most studios. They even managed to get Sylvester Stallone during his peak and then Schneider’s fake heir. From the perspective of someone who was around during the 80s, Americans had New Ninjas exploitation propaganda at American schools while they dutifully sent children to action movies during the summer, waiting for a new Temple summer blockbuster mishmash like Missing in Action, Delta Force, Cobra, Masters of the Universe, or my personal favorite, Bloodsport. If you are not in the loop about the documentary Electric Boogaloo, then you should literally run to head to Amazon and grab the unbelievably cheap DVD with rich Cannon history.
The studio was known to follow contemporary audience habits, and so it was with King Solomon’s Mines.
King Solomon’s Mines is a full-blown “fan film” (read as: reach-around) horror version of and wholly animated and I do mean completely animated was when The Mounties Tackled The Lost City of Gold, Kevin and Perry Go Large and Carry On Up The Khyber. It is so much of a tribute that whole scenes from those movies are captured recreated and reconstructed with some changes. Do you remember the scene in Raiders Ms. Adela Montgomery where Indy is on a wild chase to look for Marion who has been secretly captured and taken away in a basket made of wood? Well, here they have replaced the basket with a rolled-up carpet. Instead of running for his life from a herd of attack angry natives that are chasing him wanting the idol back, Alan Quatermain is being chased by a bunch of ‘cannibal savages’. There is no giant rolling boulder, but there is a giant rolling cooking pot. I am not joking.
If you found the Indiana Jones films overly serious and the production value too high, then this is the movie for you. There are moments of absurdity in King Solomon’s Mines, even amongst the occasional flashes of violence. The movie tries to do too much, and in doing so, fails to accomplish a lot of it, but there are still elements that do work. The film attempts to emulate the satire, and implausible stories of Indiana Jones, and in doing so, the camp part is overdone. That’s okay. It manages to be good enough to be entertaining. This is a B-movie with aspirations of being an A-movie.
The casting of King Solomon’s Mines is spectacular. Richard Chamberlain as Allan Quatermain and a fur-trimmed fedora-wearing Indy stand-in always did it for me. For some reason, Cannon was always able to land these actors at their most sought-after. In Chamberlain’s case, the years or so preceding this movie were exceptionally successful for him as the star of two television mini-series events, Shogun and The Thorn Birds. He was a TV Guide cover boy at the peak of his career and a lot of ladies, and some of the dudes, had a crush on him. Here, Sharon Stone makes what is essentially her major motion debut as the heroine, Jesse Huston (she’d done small parts, but this was her breakout). Famously, there’s a story relating how chaotic and fast the casting process was: Cannon co-owner and producer Menahem Golan wanted “that Stone woman” after Kathleen Turner’s performance in Romancing the Stone. The fact that Sharon Stone got hired by mistake further supports this story.
In King Solomon’s Mines, it was a clever choice to include an actor from Raiders of the Lost Ark John Rhys-Davis, who plays Sallah, and also the dwarf Gimli in Lord of the Rings. He seems to relish playing a villain in this film. Herbert Lom, who was in Spartacus, portrays the German Colonel who pursues the mines with his name in them.
To some, including myself, the most interesting part is perhaps the English actor Bernard Archard, who is uncredited in the film but plays Sharon Stone’s father. He was great as Marcus Scarman in my favorite Doctor Who serial, The Pyramids of Mars from 1975. Archard was such a great villain in the four-part story and it’s nice to see him in this different role as well. I am baffled as to why he went uncredited. He plays a major role which was necessary to kick off the entire plot.
One cannot speak of King Solomon’s Mines without touching on the score by Jerry Goldsmith. It’s vivid and exciting. It is, however, nearly identical to the score he composed for the Rambo: First Blood Part II film six months earlier. I wonder… well, I happen to enjoy both, despite how alike the two sound. In an ironic twist, both this score and the music for First Blood Part II were nominated by the Golden Raspberry folks for the WORST music awards. Sir? Are we, in fact, allowed to claim victory this time? With respect to Rambo, yes, you receive the award for worst song from a movie, but you have to share it with Frank Stallone. And how do you lead life? One day at a time.
It would be very relevant to mention J. Lee Thompson’s direction in relation to King Solomon’s Mines. While the strength of the author’s hand is hardly visible, Thomson was already quite a competent director, like many of his contemporaries, who directed a number of other cult classics such as Firewalker, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and of course, a whole slew of Bronson films from this period, (Deathwish 4 being the one which stands out the most). But the truth is, Thompson was already on the Higher echelon of Golden Age Hollywood, directing true classics like The Guns of Navarone, MacKenna’s Gold, and my personal favorite, the 1962 original version of Cape Fear, starring Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck. It’s fascinating to see how directors such as Thompson transitioned from old-school cinema into the sort of mainstream crowd-pleasing fare that Cannon pumped out.
To be honest, the Blu-ray version released by Olive Films looks on par with other nuances as I have never witnessed the movie in such pure quality. I never spotted any faults and the print looks clean. Even the projection photographs look decent and there is a bunch of it. Unfortunately, there were no extras included in the disc. I would have even appreciated a commentary track from whoever was there or from a fan, or an expert. However, that is not how Olive does things or why I admire the fact that they managed to release the movie in HD, after all, I am an avid cinephile.
Olive Films also released the sequel, Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, back in 2015. But, that disc is not a part of my collection yet. After watching and greatly enjoying King Solomon’s Mines, I do have to do something about that. These movies along with other like them are the exact types of movies this site was built around. And more importantly, which child growing up in the ’80s wouldn’t want a complete Cannon collection? After all. it belongs in a museum.
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