Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986)

"I've seen some amazing things in my life, but never anything to compare with this." - How true., 12 January 2006

What a mess! Almost everything about Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold is a complete and total disaster. In the movie, Quatermain puts a group together to search for his brother in the wilds of Africa. After facing several dangerous and near-death obstacles, Quatermain finds his brother living in the seemingly idyllic and Utopian Lost City of Gold. But appearances can be deceiving as the city is really under the control of a ruthless warlord intent on making the citizens his slaves to mine the gold he is taking out. Can Quatermain and his band of adventurers save these people?

If I were to just make a list of everything that doesn't work in Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, my list would go on for pages. I'll begin with the acting. To put it bluntly, it's terrible. I've never thought much of Richard Chamberlain as an actor and this movie does nothing to change that. As for Sharon Stone, I'm sure she would like to see this thing buried. I doubt she considers it a highlight on her resume. James Earl Jones is an actor you can usually count on to give a quality performance regardless of the material. Here, he just comes across as embarrassed to be associated with this drivel.

Technically, the movie is train wreck. Direction, editing, and everything else you can come up with are as bad as I've seen. But the special effects take Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold to a new low. The blue screen effects are as bad as I've ever seen. The rear projection used in the 1930s is 10X more realistic than the blue haloed actors on a bad looking backgrounds seen in this movie. The puppet snakes make Kermit look like a real frog. And, wires, harnesses, and the like are readily evident. Like I said when I started, it's a mess.

I haven't even gotten to the plot, but why bother? It's as poorly written as you can imagine.

The only thing that keeps me from rating this movie a 1/10 are the groovy outfits worn by Cassandra Peterson. It's too bad she's only got 10 or so minutes of screen time because I dig some of those costumes.

2/10