Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986)

(In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) I don’t often criticize a film’s set design, but then again Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold isn’t your usual film. It’s much, much worse than most of them. Even offered as a tongue-in-cheek take on the kinds of adventure films made red-hot in the 1980s by the success of the first two Indiana Jones films, this second Richard Chamberlain-as-Quatermain film is terrible no matter how you look at it. So terrible that some canyon action sequences are clearly shot in the studio with obvious flooring barely covered by dirt, taking away any tense of tension that it could have. So terrible that even the comedy falls down with a thud, looking more puzzling than amusing. So terrible that the dialogue is trash, the plot developments painful and even Cassandra Peterson can’t save the film’s last half. So terrible that you can’t even appreciate a young Sharon Stone as the female lead. So terrible that… well, you get it by now. It’s clear that the film aims far higher than what it can deliver on its budget and special effects: the “thrilling” adventure through the African landscape to reach a mysterious city feels like a cut-rate amusement park ride. The progressiveness of the 1980s compared to earlier repulsive takes on the Quatermain character isn’t obvious at all considering James Earl Jones’ role as a tribal warrior. Chamberlain escapes mockery, but not by much – after all, he’s stuck with the same terrible dialogue as everyone else, and has to react to the same unconvincing papier-maché threats. Indifferently conceived and ineptly executed, Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold is perhaps best watched as a convincing argument about the skill required to make a decent adventure film: pulp-fiction tropes aren’t nearly enough to satisfy.