King Solomon’s Mines (1950)
On a very late re-release and at the prompting of my mom (who must have recalled it as particularly good family fare from when she watched it on its original release date, so she insisted we go even when I don’t remember anyone else being particularly interested in it,) we went to see this theatrically.
I’ve must have been expecting something more fantastic as my memory was that it was basically a sort of travelogue movie. Having grown up watching Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and National Geographic specials, the feature didn’t seem particularly impressive to someone expecting more extraordinary content. I suppose in its own time it would have been considered much more exotic that what I perceived sometime in the late 70s.
As the film was namedropped in Desk Set (1957), and as it was already on the backburner, we took a break from the Hepburn/Tracy set and put this one on.
Looking at it with more mature eyes I was able not only to appreciate it better: Starting with actual footage from an elephant hunt, (hopefully one wasn’t killed just for the sake of filming it!); a stunt featuring a trained elephant, (Asian, with fake ears to pass it as African as was often done at the time); authentic locations and wildlife (though it’s also easy to see usage of footage from unrelated sequences to augment the present one, in addition to artificial setting up additional wildlife for the camera to capture,) but also a delightful, ridiculously fake giant spider; minimal use of bluescreen and dangerous stunts (involving stunt extras, one might safely assume), most impressively a stampede which surely must have inspired the dinosaur-based one in Jurassic Park; etc.
The story deals with an expedition to find the fate of a lost explorer intent on locating a mythical diamond mine, not that there’s much of a mystery there as the apparent widow is clearly meant to begin to develop a romantic relationship with famous hunting guide Allan Quatermain who is initially reticent to accept and never includes women in his safaris, but after the quite disturbing introductory elephant hunt has decided he’s has enough and is ready to retire.
Yes, it’s still pretty much an African highlands travelogue but it’s nevertheless better executed and more enjoyable than more fantastic or science-fictional features it has inspired like the, thinly disguised but still fun rip-off, Congo (1995) with its ridiculously executed talking ape, (was Bruce Campbell hired solely on his vague resemblance to Stewart Granger?), or the even sillier King Solomon’s Mines (1985) and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986) which today I cannot distinguish from each other and from which I mostly recall an infamous scene with a gigantic, improbable cannibalistic cauldron.
With Deborah Kerr, Stewart Granger, & Richard Carlson.
Check it out.
On a very late re-release and at the prompting of my mom (who must have recalled it as particularly good family fare from when she watched it on its original release date, so she insisted we go even when I don’t remember anyone else being particularly interested in it,) we went to see this theatrically.
I’ve must have been expecting something more fantastic as my memory was that it was basically a sort of travelogue movie. Having grown up watching Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and National Geographic specials, the feature didn’t seem particularly impressive to someone expecting more extraordinary content. I suppose in its own time it would have been considered much more exotic that what I perceived sometime in the late 70s.
As the film was namedropped in Desk Set (1957), and as it was already on the backburner, we took a break from the Hepburn/Tracy set and put this one on.
Looking at it with more mature eyes I was able not only to appreciate it better: Starting with actual footage from an elephant hunt, (hopefully one wasn’t killed just for the sake of filming it!); a stunt featuring a trained elephant, (Asian, with fake ears to pass it as African as was often done at the time); authentic locations and wildlife (though it’s also easy to see usage of footage from unrelated sequences to augment the present one, in addition to artificial setting up additional wildlife for the camera to capture,) but also a delightful, ridiculously fake giant spider; minimal use of bluescreen and dangerous stunts (involving stunt extras, one might safely assume), most impressively a stampede which surely must have inspired the dinosaur-based one in Jurassic Park; etc.
The story deals with an expedition to find the fate of a lost explorer intent on locating a mythical diamond mine, not that there’s much of a mystery there as the apparent widow is clearly meant to begin to develop a romantic relationship with famous hunting guide Allan Quatermain who is initially reticent to accept and never includes women in his safaris, but after the quite disturbing introductory elephant hunt has decided he’s has enough and is ready to retire.
Yes, it’s still pretty much an African highlands travelogue but it’s nevertheless better executed and more enjoyable than more fantastic or science-fictional features it has inspired like the, thinly disguised but still fun rip-off, Congo (1995) with its ridiculously executed talking ape, (was Bruce Campbell hired solely on his vague resemblance to Stewart Granger?), or the even sillier King Solomon’s Mines (1985) and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986) which today I cannot distinguish from each other and from which I mostly recall an infamous scene with a gigantic, improbable cannibalistic cauldron.
With Deborah Kerr, Stewart Granger, & Richard Carlson.
Check it out.
statistics: Posted by hermanthegerm — 3:18 PM - 1 day ago — Replies 4 — Views 370