King Solomon's Mines (1950)

Wow! Such a good movie.

Very best movie i ever watch

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

While King Solomon's Mines is a pretty famous movie, and arguably the inspiration for the Indiana Jones franchise, it's not really favorites of mine. Still, someone else might like it, so I'll try to be unbiased. H. Rider Haggard's famous novel has seen several film adaptations, but the 1950 version is the most famous. Sorry, Richard Chamberlain. In it, the adventurous hero Allan Quartermain, played by Stewart Granger, is hired to find a man who's gone missing while searching for the legendary mines in Africa. The man's wife and brother-in-law, played by Deborah Kerr and Richard Carlson, accompany the search party, and all three find an abundance of adventures along the way.If you like adventure movies, and don't mind if they're a touch slower than they were in the 1980s and 1990s, you can rent this one and see the inspiration behind your modern favorites. If you're just looking for a good Deborah Kerr movie, you can try From Here to Eternity or The Grass is Greener instead.

First Off...Famed Adventure Novelist H.R. Haggard (the source material) was a Man's Man and the Book had NO Female Characters. So MGM in Their Typical Know it All Manner Hires a Woman to Write the Screenplay for this Manly Adventure Story. Sheesh.Secondly, although the Movie goes to Great Lengths and Spends a lot of Money going On Location to Africa and gets some Extraordinary Footage of the Wildlife and the Terrain, but then Assembles it into a Bland Romantic Story with an Ending that is Anti-Climatic. Sheesh.The Movie is Stilted with a Montage that is Clunky and Sophomoric and the Film Ends Up not much Better than a Tarzan Movie with its Positioning of the Dangers of the Dark Continent Paraded Out in Low-Budget Fashion Quickly and with Little Suspense. Sheesh.Look there is a Lion...Look there is a Snake...Look there is a Giraffe...Look there is an Crocodile and so on. These Things Happen so Quickly and without Setup that it is Nothing More than an Excuse. Sheesh.Overall the Native Africans and the Native Wildlife and the Native Landscape Steal the Show from the Adventure and the Romance. It is an Overrated Movie that is OK and Worth a Watch for some Travelogue Eye Candy. Don't Blink or You will miss King Solomon's Mine, but it isn't Missing Much because it isn't Much. Sheesh.

This is a run-of-the-mill Hollywood production where the emphasis is on the colourful trip to inner Africa. The most interesting parts are clearly the tribes choreographies and the safari shots, which makes King Solomon's Mines OK as family entertainment, but makes the movie dull on the action side.With the difficulty to shoot on location most of the scenes it was a real challenge to do better than this flat continuity of talky scenes interspersed with beautiful shots of the African wildlife and local people. The story results quite boring: being a family movie it can't stem away from its clean line and thus you are only waiting for the prize in the title to materialise. And even then it is far from climactic since most of the movie has long before been let to tell a African story of its own.

This film makes my special list: One of the worst pictures ever nominated for best picture. Obviously, it didn't win. "All About Eve" was in a totally different superior class.To say that this film is dull is to put in mildly. We are subjected to all kinds of animals and Deborah Kerr spends most of the film fainting, falling and gradually coming to love Stuart Granger.The premise is good. Kerr and brother, Richard Carlson, go to Africa to locate her missing husband. He ran off to explore and hasn't been heard from in over 2 years. Wait until you discover his fate! Kerr had to find out the very hard way. Of course, there is animosity between Kerr and Granger at first. She had hired him to lead the way.Suddenly, we're into a civil war between the tribes. Luckily, it was a very brief one.The cinematography is nice. I guess the Academy needed this film to round out the 5 required at that time. Come to think of it, there had to be something out there that was better than this junk.