Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986)

Title: Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986)

Director: Gary Nelson

Cast: Richard Chamberlain, Sharon Stone, James Earl Jones

Review:  

 Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold is a sequel to King Solomon’s Mines (1985) which in turn was a cheesy, low budget Indiana Jones wannabe, mind you an enjoyable one. Yeah, these movies were cashing in on the popularity of the Indiana Jones movies in the same way that all those cheesy Italian Indiana Jones rip offs did during the 80’s, films like The Mines of Kilimanjaro (1986) or The Ark of the Sun God (1984). Cool thing about these Quatermain movies is that no matter how silly or stupid they maybe, I find them incredibly entertaining. Why? Well, probably because nobody takes themselves too seriously here, it’s all in good fun. The point of these movies is to be stupid and silly. Both of these Allan Quatermain movies were shot back to back and released various years apart. The first film, King Solomon’s Mines, received better reviews then its sequel, which many consider to be a lesser film. But if you ask this Film Connoisseur, I really can’t tell the two apart in terms of mood or quality, to me they are both goofy adventure movies, both of them are super fun in my book.  

On this one, Allan Quatermain must travel to Africa in search of a lost civilization, a “lost white tribe” that lives in a hidden city of gold. Apparently, his brother, who’s also an adventurer (adventure runs in the family it seems) went searching for the mythical “lost city of gold”, problem is he never came back. So of course, Quatermain must go in search of his sibling. On his journey he’s accompanied by his trusty sidekick/lover Jesse (Sharon Stone), an African adventurer, professional axe wielder and warrior called ‘Umslopogaas’ (James Earl Jones) and an Indian “wise man” who is more like a wise ass/comedic relief type of character; together they go in search of fortune and glory and Quatermain’s long lost brother. Of course perils await them along the way, including a tribe of blood thirsty cannibals! Will they ever make it to the City of Gold alive and find Quatermain’s brother?

The thing about this movie is that while most of the time it manages to be fast paced, adventurous and entertaining (with some silly dialog to boot!) what makes watching this movie a funny affair is that sometimes its low ‘budgetness’ is so blaringly obvious! For example, there are a couple of moments in which Allan Quatermain has to jump great distances, or hang on for dear life at the border of a cliff or something and right there above him you can see these huge fat cables holding the actor! I wouldn’t mind so much if it happened maybe once, but god, you can see those freaking cables so many times on this movie! They didn’t even bother hiding those suckers with lighting or trick photography or nothing, they just left them there! No time or money to hide them in post-production! It’s just hilarious when you can spot them, so knock yourselves out trying to spot them! Funny thing is that this movie comes to us from director Gary Nelson, the director who also made Disney's The Black Hole (1979), a film that also suffered from visible cables! 

Hey mister, Gene Simmons wants his hair back!

Another thing is that some truly nonsensical things will happen from time to time. For example, there’s this moment in which the characters are making their way through a cave, and these snake like monsters pop out from the ground and the walls! I say this is nonsensical because this is not a fantasy film or anything, this is an adventure film, not a monster film, so suddenly seeing these crazy snake monsters (that resemble NOTHING from the real world) popping out of these walls, you tend to question what the hell they are and why the main characters don’t even question their existence? They just chop them up and kill them and move on to the next action sequence. He he…those little creatures felt so out of place on this movie! It’s as if the filmmakers just looked for the silliest excuse to make the film more interesting, so yeah, let’s throw some snake creatures in there! Too funny! Another set piece hasthe ground open up for no reason whatsoever, as if some sort of earthquake suddenly occurs or something, but you can tell it’s just this big ass set, and the floor opens up like some giant ass elevator door! It doesn’t look like an earthquake; it looks like revolving doors opening up to some secret underground lair or something! Not realistic in the least!

Things get more hilarious when Quatermain and crew arrive at the titular “Lost City of Gold”. This is where things get just a little nuttier. The leader of the tribe is this crazy religious nut who looks like Gene Simmons from KISS, you gotta see this guy, he likes to dip people in gold for some reason. The religion he’s created for the people of the lost city require human sacrifices, but the people don’t want them anymore, so suddenly the film turns into a film about boycotting this crazy religious leader. Even crazier, the queen of this city is played by Cassandra Peterson! That’s right my friends, Elvira is their queen! By the way, she looks great in her queen regalia. To top things off, the City of Gold looks like a really cheap ass set, with stair cases meant to look imposing, but ultimately end up looking unimpressive. Want more nonsensical events? How about Quatermain charging up a sword with lightning like He-Man and then using the lightning infused sword to melt a golden statue? So he can bathe the bad guy in Gold? Crazy I tell ya! Bottom line with this movie for me is that it’s so bad it’s good. It’s so bad, it’s hilarious! This is the movie that Sharon Stone doesn’t want you to see, well, this and Catwoman (2004), but who cares what Sharon Stone thinks of this awesome slice of 80’s b-movie madness? I say give it a spin if you want to laugh yourself silly and have a fun night of cheese.

Rating:  2 1/2 out of 5  

Action Jackson (1988)

Title: Action Jackson (1988)

Director: Craig R. Baxley

Cast: Carl Weathers, Craig T. Nelson, Vanity, Sharon Stone

Review:

Every time I watch an action movie from the 80’s it just dawns on me how different they were from what passes for an action film today. Read my review for A Good Day To Die Hard (2013), and you’ll see what I mean, today’s action films are so soft, so tame when compared to the action films of the 80’s which were so violent and so explosive! These films had no CGI explosions; I’m talking real fire and brimstone here, so hot you can almost feel the heat coming from that screen. Action Jackson was the return of the black leading action star, something that had been sorely missing from American theater screens back in the 80’s when the blaxploitation films of the 70’s had completely disappeared. Yeah, there were black action stars, Eddie Murphy in the Beverly Hills Cop and 48 Hours movies and Danny Glover in the Lethal Weapon series, but in these movies we always had the black guy teaming up with a white guy, this is not so with Action Jackson. In Action Jackson we had Carl Weathers playing the leading role all by his lonesome, he wasn’t playing second banana to anyone, here he was the star of the show, and boy what a show! This movie was pure black dynamite!

Never mess with a man holding a flamethrower!

I was wondering why Action Jackson was such an explosive film, then I realized it was directed by a guy called Craig R. Baxley, the director behind Stone Cold (1991), another explosive (and extremely fun) action flick from the 90’s that had a very 80’s sensibility to it. You watch that film and you feel it could have come straight out of the 80’s because it was all about explosions, guns and cleavage. Why were Craig R. Baxley’s films so action packed? Well, the answer is simple; the guy was a stunt coordinator before he turned into a director. He did the stunts for many films and television shows before he ended up behind the cameras to direct Action Jackson and Stone Cold, his two most recognized films. He also directed an obscure film that mixed sci-fi and action called I Come In Peace (1990). That film starred Dolph Lundgren playing a cop who’s chasing an alien that’s committing a series of murders across the city. I’d love to get my hands on that one; I haven’t seen it in years! Point is, Baxley is a director who understands action because of his extensive experience as a stunt coordinator, and he brought that experience to Action Jackson, making sure that this was one explosive, ‘balls to the wall’ action film.

Director Craig R. Baxley

How action packed was this movie? Well, this is just an example: Jackson is chasing a villain who’s driving a taxi, so Jackson starts running after the taxi! The guy runs pretty fast because the taxi is going at full speed, and he’s keeping up with it perfectly fine! Then, Jackson leaps into the air and falls on the cars roof, as Jackson is doing this, a truck filled with gas tanks just happens to pass by and it crashes with another car, a huge explosion ensues, but this is just background noise, the focus of the scene is Jackson, holding on to his life on top of this taxi! The villain driving the taxi starts shooting his gun through the roof of the car trying to hit Jackson, who is still dangling from the roof of the taxi! Then, Jackson, while still holding on to the roof, smashes the windshield of the car with his bare fists and knocks out the bad guy! I mean, this scene is actually more action packed then I’m describing it, you have to see it to believe it. I mean, this is a movie that starts out with a body being hurled out of a window, as it bursts into flames! But basically, this movie is all about exaggerated 80’s style action; the kind that feels excessive but is also excessively fun.

Action Jackson is not what I’d call an original film, in fact, its plot is quite formulaic, this is the kind of action film that uses its plot as an excuse for the crazy action antics, and that’s just fine by me really. With this kind of film, exposition is just something that happens to get me to the next big action number.  The plot is all about a car manufacturer played by the one and only Craig T. Nelson, who starts killing off members of the workers union so he can gain political power. It’s up to Jackson to stop him. Jackson plays the hard to control cop who gets just a little too crazy with the villains. In fact, last mission he was involved in he almost ripped the arm off a sexual predator! When he introduces himself, he tells people that some people like to call him ‘Action’ as in Action Jackson! So Action Jackson is not just a clever title for the film, that’s actually his nickname in the movie!  Jackson plays that atypical cop who gets the job done, but destroys half of the city while doing it. You know the type, he’s the kind of cop who gets the police chief all angry and worked up, screaming “Jaaaacksoooooon!” Which is really a cliché of action films, the angry, overstressed police chief; kind of like Mel Gibson and Danny Glover got their police chief all angry in the Lethal Weapon movies. At the same time, Jackson is one smooth dude with the ladies, he’s apparently had some sort of fling with the character that Sharon Stone plays and he’s also having an affair with the villains mistress! In this movie we have a twisted love foursome thing going on! Everybody is screwing everybodies wives and mistresses! 

Same as Stone Cold, there’s tons of nudity on this one. All of it coming from the two main ladies of the flick: Sharon Stone and Vanity. Vanity was all sorts of things, a singer, songwriter, model, dancer and yes, actress. You might also remember her from a Kung Fu flick called The Last Dragon (1985). She had a singing career and even a couple of hits like the 80’s tune “Nasty Girl”. She plays the villains mistress, whom he keeps next to him by keeping her addicted to heroin! But yeah, this is that kind of a sleazy action film aimed at guys, so of course, there’s tons of T & A. This sort of thing is practically unseen in today’s action films (and films in general I might add) so it might come as a bit of a shock just how much nudity is on this one.  Sharon Stone looks extremely sexy, but she’s not in the film as much.  

Craig T. Nelson plays the lead villain, normally he plays a family man (like in the Poltergeist movies) but here he's this villain who wants political power, he’s even an expert on Kung Fu if you can believe! Ever wondered what Craig T. Nelson would look like kicking some Chinese dudes ass with Kung Fu? Look no further! Also starring in this film are a bunch of actors you’ve seen in films like The Goonies (1985), Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and Predator (1987), you know, not famous actors, but recognizable, practically every bad guy or hoodlum is played by some actor you’ve probably seen in some other movie from the 80’s.

  

This film was produced by famous action film producer Joel Silver, and for him and everyone involved,  Action Jackson actually made a profit, it cost 7 million to make, and made 20 million, which is actually more than double its budget! Unfortunately, this did not translate to sequels or a franchise. Too bad because this was a fun action movie that was so over the top that it’s fun just for that; it also has some great 80’s style one liners, my favorite one has Action Jackson about to burn some bad guy to a crisp with a flamethrower, so he asks the guy “How do you like your ribs?” before turning him into a ball of flame! Now that I think about it, Action Jackson is a pretty violent movie; Jackson resolves everything in extremely violent ways, I mean, this is a guy who has no problems with blowing some bad guy away. Well, let me put it this way, this is not the kind of movie where the main villain kills himself by falling off a building. But then again, Jackson’s being attacked by dudes with freaking flame throwers! What’s a guy to do? Recommend it if you want a heavy dose of 80’s explosive fun.   

Rating: 4 out of 5

Sphere (1998)

Title: Sphere (1998)

Director: Barry Levinson

Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, Sharon Stone, Live Schreiber, Queen Latifah

Review:

Some movies just fall flat no matter the amount of talent that’s behind them. That being said, I wouldn’t go as far as calling Sphere a failed attempt. In my opinion Sphere was simply not all that it could have been, still it ends up being an interesting film. Dustin Hoffman himself said that he had some issues in regards to the film, he felt it was not finished, that it needed to be worked on a bit more and I have to say that I agree with him because the film feels like a couple of short films strung together, without smooth transitions from moment to moment. This is probably the reason why they decided to divide the film with title cards that read “The Sphere”, “The Spaceship”, “The Monster” and so on. Speaking of ‘The Monster’ what a disappointment; but more on that later.

Sphere tells the story of how the U.S. Government has found an abandoned spaceship resting deep within the darkest pits of the ocean. They quickly go ahead and gather a team of experts that includes a biologist, a physicist, a mathematician and a psychiatrist to deal with a possible alien encounter. But they don’t know if there’s aliens on the ship, they are simply speculating. Their purpose is to find out what this mysterious spaceship is all about, to take that first step, those first risks. They soon discover that the ship holds an ominous golden sphere inside of it, but what is it? What does it do? Who controls it?

So basically, Sphere attempts to be the kind of science fiction film I love the most: the philosophical science fiction film. This is not a science fiction film with light saber battles or the U.S. military shooting their guns at little green men, no, this film attempts to be something deeper and more thought provoking; which is always a plus for me.  Gotta love it when a film tries to go deeper then your regular dumb flick. Sphere actually wants to talk about important themes that I’m sure were better explored on the Michael Crichton novel on which the film is based on; I never read this book so my review is solely based on the film itself. I say Sphere is an ‘attempt at a deep film’ because I felt it didn’t fully get there in my opinion. It does ask some interesting questions, kind of in the same way that Prometheus (2012) did and I enjoyed that about it. In fact, it can be argued that this film comments on the nature of religion and the illusion behind it all. The use of fear to control the masses; the use of a book to bring our fears to life; I of course enjoyed that about the film.  Sphere starts out pretty cool because it achieves a level of mystery to the sphere that was reminiscent of the mystery revolving around the ‘Monolith’ in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969), unfortunately this film presents us with a promising premise…only to never truly deliver on the spectacle that we as an audience see on the horizon. This is always a letdown: the film that doesn’t deliver the goods.

The problem with this film is that it’s afraid to be what it is supposed to be. It’s like one of those vampire movies that is afraid to use the word ‘vampire’ for fear of sounding cheesy. Sphere is a brainy sci-fi film, but it is also has horror elements to it. Sadly, this is a monster movie that is afraid to embrace its monstrous side. If this is a monster flick, then by all means, show us some monsters! The film uses Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as a plot device, a character loves to read this book but is scared of reading the ending because it’s “too scary”. Through the use of the book, the film hints that we might be seeing a huge squid attacking the good guys, we hear the squid, we see it on a computer monitor, but we never truly see the creature. What the film does is tease us to death; it shows us everything but the monster. Can you imagine 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) without the scene where giant squid attacks the Nautilus? One gets the impression that the filmmakers behind Sphere didn’t have the money to show the monster? This wouldn’t surprise me; the film was in hiatus for a while. In fact, while this film was in hiatus, Levinson and Hoffman went off and did a whole other film called Wag the Dog (1997); which by the way was released before Sphere was! This gives you a pretty good idea of how long the making of Sphere was put off for; which of course points towards production problems, creative differences and a slew of other things that can slow a film down.    

A scene from Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)

Sphere has many similarities with films like Leviathan (1989), Deep Star Six (1989), Event Horizon (1997) and James Cameron’s The Abyss (1989). Let’s count the similarities between Sphere and The Abyss shall we? The film takes place in an underwater rig, with a small crew who end up meeting an alien life form. We get a strong willed woman in a lead role. The crew cannot resurface because there’s a huge storm going on above, a plot device seen in almost all of these underwater monster films. Somebody goes whacko at some point. And basically, Sphere was shot in similar fashion then The Abyss was, with giant water tanks and sets built on them. Extreme similarities can also be found with P.W. Anderson’s Event Horizon (1997), because it also deals with a sphere that augments our fears. Anderson’s style of making films is he steals ideas from his favorite filmmakers and authors and reworks them, then spews them out as if they were his own. He is the Tarantino of science fiction. I’m thinking Anderson read Crichton’s novel and then did his own version of it. Typical Andersonbehavior. Sphere came out one year after Event Horizon, it almost feels as if Levinson saw Event Horizon and said let’s do Crichton’s book the right way, let’s make an intelligent film! Which would explain why Sphere puts a lot of its emphasis on philosophical ideas. This is one of  Sphere’s strongest points, the philosophical angle. It asks questions like: Are we ready for the secrets of the universe? Are we ready to know it all? Or are we better off not knowing? Are we just babies in this universe? Are we a race of infants?

What I enjoyed about Event Horizon is that it is a film dealing with these phenomenal cosmic themes, like black holes and traveling to other dimensions through them, but it does it in a highly entertaining way, plus it never forgets that it is a horror movie. It didn’t forget to have some fun with its themes. Sphere needed a little more of that entertainment value seen in Event Horizon to it. Why shy away from showing the monster? I’m willing to bet that this films disappointing box office performance was due to audiences feeling cheated. Audiences were expecting a spectacle or a monster movie (or both) and what they got was Stone, Hoffman and Jackson playing scientists talking about the ultimate knowledge and the secrets of the universe; which is cool if you enjoy philosophical conversations, which I do, but if you don’t you’ll probably think this is a boring film, or that the film cheated you. If you want some spectacle, this movie does little in the way of giving it to you, find it somewhere else. For some reason, opportunities to give a little grandeur to the proceedings are thrown away and shown in a hurry, basically, the film feels like it was rushed; this is something I find surprising coming from such an accomplished director as Levinson, I guess his forte was never science fiction or the production problems ended up bringing the film down. Bottom line is that Sphere had potential, but wasn’t given the time and dedication needed to make a truly special film.

Rating: 3 out of 5 

The Quick and the Dead (1995)

Title: The Quick and the Dead (1995)

Director: Sam Raimi

Cast: Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lance Henriksen, Keith David, Tobin Bell, Gary Sinise

Review:

The Quick and the Dead isn’t one of those films that purely emerged from the mind and imagination of director Sam Raimi. It wasn’t like Evil Dead (1981) or Darkman (1990) both of which were films born and bred in Sam Raimi’s brain. Nope, on The Quick and the Dead Sam Raimi was a director for hire. He was personally chosen by Sharon Stone herself for this film because she loved what he did on Army of Darkness (1993). So here was Sam Raimi, coming out of the moderate success of Army of Darkness, doing his first “director for hire” picture. How did it go?

An awesome cast makes this an awesome western!

The Quick and the Dead centers around a shoot out contest that takes place in the Western town of Redemption. This contest attracts a varied group of gunmen from all over the Old West. The twist comes when we find out that one of these gunmen is actually a gun woman who goes by the name of ‘Lady’. She signs up for the contest but doesn’t reveal the true nature of her plans: exacting sweet revenge on the man who was responsible for the death of her father! It just so happens that this man is the towns mayor; an abusive politician named Herod who squeezes tons of tax money from peoples pockets and lives a life of luxury at their expense. Will she ever muster up the courage needed to go up against Herod and his men? Will she ever get the revenge that she came for?

One of the things that makes The Quick and the Dead special is the fact that it has a female lead in the role; normally western films have a male lead in them. I figure studios think females don’t really give a damn about cowboy movies so why make one with a female lead? But this one was just a little different. It has an ass kicking female playing the lead character in the form of Sharon Stone, who's one tough cookie on this movie. Though many of the men in Redemption enlists in the contest, somebody protests saying that ladies shouldn’t be allowed to enter. Herod, the towns mayor played by a scene stealing Gene Hackman says “we don’t have nothing against ladies entering the contest, it’s just that ladies can’t shoot for shit!” All the men in the room laugh when he says this. It's right then and there that , and Lady proceeds to show them what she’s made off by shooting her gun faster and quicker then all of them thought she could. So this movie is different that way. Sharon Stone carries the whole film on her shoulders. She’s the ‘Blondie’ of this film. She smokes a thin cigar, says very little and answers almost everything in two syllables. To her credit I will say that she was appropriately bad ass in this film, equal parts sexy and tough.

Sadly, this film was a complete bomb at the box office and an abysmal failure for Sam Raimi who started to doubt his abilities as a director. “I felt like I was a dinasour. That I couldn’t change with each film” But Im guessing that wasn’t the case. Raimi remains a great stylist in my book, he’s kind of lost touch with that in his recent films (Spider Man 3 and Drag Me to Hell) but Im hopeful that he still has a couple of great films in him. The failure of this film can be attributed to a common ailment in action films: having a female in the lead in a genre whose target audience is mostly males. I don’t get this because, shouldn’t guys be happy to get a western with an incredibly beautiful actress in the lead role? But whatever, films like Supergirl (1984), Red Sonja (1985), Barb Wire (1996), Elektra (2005), Aeon Flux (2005), Catwoman (2004) and Ultraviolet (2006), with very rare exceptions, continue to bomb at the box office. But of course, this could have to do something with the fact that these movies are pretty bad to begin with. I guess the real question would be why doesn’t Hollywood make better films with female heroes in them? You make a good action film, with a female lead and it will be a hit just as much as the ones with male leads in them. Look at Salt (2010) and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), two examples of successful action films with a female playing the lead.

Sam Raimis stylish direction remains a major asset of this film

But forget that noise; Sharon Stone in The Quick and the Dead was bad ass. This film not finding its audience was a real tragedy because, not only is this film a great western, it’s also one of Sam Raimi’s best films. At least in my book it is. When Sharon Stone (one of the films producers) chose Raimi as the director for this project, she thought that Raimi showed promise in Army of Darkness and that The Quick and the Dead was going to be the film where he could really come full circle and fine tune his directorial skills, which he achieved wonderfully as far as Im concerned. The film is filled with many signature Sam Raimi camera moves. The lightning flash zoom in, quick camera moves and odd angles make this one a stylish western. Raimi gives it his own distinctive style by placing the camera in extremely interesting places. Like for example when characters load their guns, the camera is actually on the gun itself! In one scene a gunsman shoots his gun and the camera becomes the bullet…little things like that let you know that yes, you are watching a Sam Raimi film. That, plus it’s got the word ‘Dead’ in the title.

Aside from Raimi’s camera play, we also get memorable heroes and villains and a great story to go with them. The contests attracts all sorts of gunslingers to Redemption, each one of them a unique character. For example, Lance Henriksen plays a gunslinger named Ace, because he is renowned for being so great. He likes to do tricks with his pack of cards, which are all aces. We get another gunslinger who’s a gun for hire, another one is a ruthless ex-con, another one is a young kid, and so forth. Behind the characters lays a story of connected lives. They all live under the oppressive reign of Herod, the films villain played by the one and only Gene Hackman who eats up the screen whenever he appears. There’s this awesome scene in wich Sharon Stone is planning on shooting Herod down, but she is so intimidated by the words he speaks that she doesn’t even dare pull the trigger! Now that’s what I call a villain! On top of this, every other character on this film is played by a recognizable actor before they got famous. Russell Crowe is here playing a Priest who’s looking for redemption. He had an ugly past as a gunslinger and is looking to make his peace with God by becoming a priest. Leo DiCaprio plays ‘The Kid’ who also happens to be the son of Herod, the villain. Even Jigsaw himself is here playing a gunslinger who’s looking to kill ‘Lady’. All in all, this film has a solid cast! So much so, that if this film had been made today, with the exact same cast, it would have cost a hell of a lot more money then what it cost back in those days when a lot of these actors were virtual unknowns.

So let’s see, the cinematography is excellent, the music is top notch, the whole cast really makes the whole thing worthwhile, what’s not to like in this picture? Nothing! It is a great homage to Sergio Leone films and westerns in general. We have the lead without a name; we get the revenge that drives the plot of the film. We even get the helpless towns folk who can’t fight for themselves, so they end up looking for the right gunslinger to save them from the oppressive villain. And we got the showdowns at noon. Basically, everything and anything you could ever want to see in a western. This is a highly underrated Sam Raimi film in desperate need of some love and attention!

Rating: 5 out of 5