Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986)

Quatermain (Richard Chamberlain), now frequently called just 'Q' by friends and family, is back.  While he and Jesse (Sharon Stone) are planning a trip to America to get married, Dumont, a colleague of his Q's brother, stumbles to their home.  Q fights off a pursuer and captures a peculiar blade.  Dumont is feverish but explains how he and Roberson - that would be Q's brother - found the lost city of gold.  In the morning, Dumont is dead - murdered!  Much to Jesse's disappointment, Q opts to go in search of his brother rather than sail to America.  Recruiting Umslopogaas (James Earl Jones) along the way, he ventures into darkest Africa and discovers the lost white race as well as his brother.  Unfortunately, gun runners and cannibals are eager for the lost city's gold.  Can Quatermain fight off the greedy hordes?

Whereas King Solomon's Mines was campy fun, this is campy cringe.  Jesse was only just tolerable in the last one but has now devolved into a screeching nag.  Where Herbert Lom was fun as a comic German villain, Robert Donner is disastrous as the obviously deceitful and greedy Swarma who is nonetheless a member of the party.  Cassandra Peterson - best know as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark - has a small role as one of the queens of the Lost City but is little more than a prop.  Despite being queen, she is just a minion of high priest Agon (Henry Silva).  Now there is an interesting choice in casting.

At one point, the party ventures into a stone tunnel that has an uncanny resemblance to the trap-laden tunnel from the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  And sure enough, there are traps that kill a couple of nameless luggage handlers.  However, when the action resumes, the party is now in canoes.  What?  They never got more then 10 yards into the lethal tunnel but now they're on the river?  Where did they get the canoes?  Did the tunnel end on the river's edge with canoes awaiting?

Quatermain carries a revolver that seems to shoot a dozen rounds or more before needing to be reloaded.  He had a rifle this time around but has misplaced it before the climactic battle.  Beneath the castle is a pool of molten gold.  Uh, that's going to be really hot.  Gold melts around 2000 degrees!  You don't just walk walk around that.  Somehow, Q hammers a gold figurine of a lion on the top of the temple and that unleashes streams of molten gold to slay those sieging the city.  There is no explanation for this unless Umslopogaas' axe had the magical ability to melt gold when struck by lightning.  Yeah, it was like that.

This was tremendously bad and nixed the idea of a third film.  I'm sure all involved were glad they didn't have to make another turkey like this.

Hard pass

King Solomon's Mines (1985)

Allan Quatermain (Richard Chamberlain) has been hired by Jesse Houston (Sharon Stone) to locate her father in deepest Africa.  Not until he rescues her from being kidnapped by Dogati the Turk (John Rhys-Davies) and Colonel Bockner of the German Army (Herbert Lom) does he learn that her father is searching for King Solomon's Mines.  Of course, that is a myth so her father must be some crackpot.  However, he is now committed and zany adventures ensue.

Made in the mold of the Indiana Jones movies, this is non-stop action.  There is a chase through an African city that goes through crowds, on rooftops, on a horse-drawn cart, and even in a truck.  Later, we have the fight on the train.  Sneaking under the train, across the train roof, on the side of the train, and so on.  Then there is the biplane with Quatermain dangling from a wing while Jesse attempts to fly.  Of course, it is mostly campy action.  Sometimes the silliness just goes over the top, such as when Quatermain bluffs his way through a train car full of Germans by acting the fool with a cheap horn.  While John Rhys-Davies mostly plays it straight as a villain, Herbert Lom is a comic relief villain.  Sharon Stone is dressed in exactly the way a woman in the 1910s wouldn't dress.  This is early in her career and she isn't given much to do.  She is no Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen).  Chamberlain wasn't the right man for this role.  The beard doesn't look right on him and he is too cheery and upbeat.  What sort of big game hunter is armed with a sawed-off shotgun and a revolver?  Though meant to be campy fun, he is the butt of too many jokes and is more often portrayed as an incompetent bumpkin who gets lucky rather than a skilled adventurer.

Cheesy fun.