Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls

I bet this movie made a killing at the box office! Mainly the careers of anyone associated with it!

OOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!! I am seriously in PAIN.

Show this movie to suspected terrorists and you'll get an immediate confession! The plot was so predictable it wasn't even funny! Even what I'm sure the director considered to be plot "twists" was predictable! The "bad guy" was seriously NOT evil. Gun play was laughable. The "natives" were not at all convincing.

As for sound? Please! The sound of their footsteps walking down the road was louder than the conversation!

I've always loved the legend of Allan Quartermain, but a 10 year old could have done a better job!

Picked this up in a five-buck Echo Bridge 6-movie pack at K-Mart that also had some TV versions of Robinson Crusoe and mummy movies. Never laughed so hard in my life. Highly recommended for connoisseurs of bad cinema.

All those who give this movie a negative review should watch those abysmal big-budget studio Allan Quartermain movies in which Richard Chamberlain plays H. Rider Haggard's main character as a guy who wants to bed all of his male co-stars, in which Sharon Stone wears far too many clothes, and in which James Earl Jones plays an African tribal chieftain with such obvious embarrassment you can practically see the tears in his eyes and hear his thoughts saying, "Remember, Jim, this is paying for that vacation house in Old Saybrook, Conn."

And really, all that money invested in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" still didn't make it make a damn lick of sense, and made me feel like George Lucas screwed me. "Star Wars made me very rich and very fat. Thanks. Here, I dressed up some of my feces as Indiana Jones for you to look at for two hours."

At least this one doesn't pretend to be anything other than crap, and on that level, it's a helluva lot more enjoyable than "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

Stuff you gotta love:

-- The swarm of millions of somethings that are as big as birds, buzz like bees but looks like a pixellated screensaver, which causes the entire cast to cower under a rock but which poses no threat or danger whatsoever.

-- The leading lady says she twisted her ankle and couldn't possibly walk on it, and in the very next scene is hiking up a mountain.

-- The leading lady's makeup is heavier than that lady's in your town who drives the pink Mary Kay car. Honestly, she looks like she's auditioning for a role as a Tammy Faye drag queen.

-- They reach the fabled King Solomon's Mines by walking in a general direction up a dirt road. And when they get there, they just stand around and do nothing.

-- Earthquake! For no reason!

-- Two white guys found captive in the African tribe who do absolutely nothing for the rest of the movie.

-- Everything collapses! For no reason!

-- The big fight between Allan Quartermain and the villain that looks like an improvised b-slap match between the Burger King and Abe Vigoda.

-- Finally, there is no Temple of the Skulls. It's never sought. It's never reached. It's never mentioned.

Folks, five bucks at K-Mart. Can't buy a Happy Meal for that.

Haven't seen such an awful film for ages. It is so bad it almost has the potential to become a cult classic. You should watch it with a bunch of good friends and a lot of beer, and then you might just get through it.

I struggled to understand what historical period it was set in; the political references suggest 1940's, but Umbopa wears modern dress and Quatermain's school bill is of a modern order of magnitude. The effect was surreal. We were given very few clues as to the plot. There were so many loose ends or things unexplained. The unpreparedness of the Fearless Four as they embarked on their quest was laughable. Acting was either wooden or OTT.

It was as though a bunch of people met on safari in the bush with a camcorder and said, "hey, let's re-enact that old King Solomon's Mines movie" and didn't bother to plan or rehearse it much or edit the results.

Having said that, I thought the scenery (and Wittley Jourdan) was strikingly beautiful, and the cast clearly had a lot of fun making this movie!

Not just Allan Quatermain, but anyone who would watch this movie has to be out of their skull. This was such a terrible movie that I wanted to walk out of the theater and go home. The problem was I was already home, watching it on a DVD.

There were so many things wrong with this movie that it would be impossible to list them all, but I'll give you a few examples.

How about going off for a hiking expedition without taking any supplies, not even water or food. They didn't even carry canteens. All the bad guy, who was after them, had was a rifle and pistol and the clothes on his back - but no hat. I thought it got hot in Africa? No one was sweating. I know this because the leading lady's heavy eye makeup never ran.

How can the bad guy take out two crew members of a moving train with two shots but never hit Quatermain even when Quatermain is standing still or is only a few yards away. This happens several times in the movie.

And where did the earthquake come from? Just thrown in for good measure, was it? And when was the last time you explored a dark cavern without any lights? If Quartermain took the job to get the tuition money for his son and then gave it to his housekeeper to mail, what happened to the envelope when the housekeeper went on the trip with him.

At least they didn't have any trouble finding the unknown land where King Solomon's mines were, as a wide dirt road had been created for them to follow. The bad guy had a truck, so why did Quatermain and his party have to walk on the road? Since his house is in the country, you would think he would have a vehicle too.

I have watched many movies where the actors had to walk to get where they were going. I'm surprised that Quatermain's party ever got anywhere. I have never seen people move this slow. I walk faster inside my own house.

And what was that terrible flying swarm? Bloodsucking locusts? Day flying bats? Enraged hummingbirds? Would have been nice to know.

I could go on, but why? So I'll sum it up.

No plot. No character development. No one with any acting ability. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a -3.

"King Solomon's Mines" is one of the great adventure novels of all time, but it seems so difficult to successfully adapt to the screen, for no reasons that I cannot fathom. This may be the weakest version yet, paling even to the pathetic 1985 Richard Chamberlain/Sharon Stone debacle. While the director brags about using the same African locations as the classic Steweart Granger/Deborah Kerr version, it's clear that this was a misuse of the $50,000 budget. The acting and overall production values are so weak, that it's clear all of the money has gone into travel costs. A better, more spectacular movie could have been made in the deserts of the American southwest and jungles of Hawai, and none would have known the difference.

Of the no name cast, only the actor playing Allan Quatermain acquits himself reasonably well. His performance is perfectly adequate, and he has screen presence. The rest of the cast is abysmal, and the changes from Haggard's book don't even serve to make the story more contemporary or exciting. This is the kind of film that gives the straight to DVD industry the reputation it has, and it's likely only the opportunity to cash in on "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (hence the title) , which opened around the same time.

Skip this one, and see either the Granger version, or the made-for-TV Patrick Swayze version. Or even "Police Academy 6: City Under Siege". All do a better job of capturing Haggard's book, and are just more fun.