Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Wuchak "King Solomon's Mines" tells the story of a woman (Deborah Kerr) and her brother (Richard Carlson) who hire a white hunter (Stewart Granger) in central Africa in the late 1800s to track down her missing husband who went in search of the fabled mines.It should be understood that this classic 1950 adventure film is just that – a realistic adventure film and not an action movie, although there are some brief action scenes, of course. I say "realistic" in the sense that the story is taken seriously; there's no Tarzan or Indiana Jones and practically everything that happens is within the realm of possibility.The film was shot in central Africa – Congo, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania –with desert scenes shot at Death Valley and nearby Lone Pine, CA, and the cave scenes at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. The locations are incredible, to say the least, but the desert scenes beg the question: What desert did they run into in the jungles of central Africa? The only possible answer is that they went so far south they hit the Kalahari Desert.Like I said, this is a realistic adventure film (there's a slight romantic subplot but it's hardly worth mentioning). As such, be prepared for a cool hike into remotest Africa and the various fascinating tribes and animals thereof. Some criticize the film for showcasing too many animals, as if it's a zoological tour as much as a story, but the film was shot in 1949 and deepest Africa was still a mystery to the average person outside of Africa, which is why it's known as the "dark continent." Speaking of which, this was before Western Civilization reached (or infected) all the tribes in the interior and so the tribespeople appear authentic. If you were to go there today you'd see them walking around with tennis shoes, jeans and AC/DC shirts.Speaking of authenticity, the filmmakers made the wise decision to omit a conventional score and utilized percussion-oriented tribal music. This keeps the film from being unnecessarily dated with one of those horrible old-fashioned scores from the period.As far as the tribespeople go, the towering Watutsi are magnificent and the sequences at their awesome kingdom are a highlight.Lastly, you have to take into consideration that the story is condensed into a 103-minute time frame and certain segments of the story take much longer than shown, like the cavern sequence or the hike across the desert. The filmmakers obviously didn't want the film to bog down with overlong sequences.BOTTOM LINE: This is a great film for when you're in the mood for a realistic old-fashioned African adventure without Tarzan, Cheeta or Indiana Jones. Granger stands out as the uber-masculine hunter and Kerr is striking as the adamant redhead, but she's revealed as too weak at times, which isn't cool today.GRADE: B+

seanmoliver64 This 1950's version of King Solomon's Mines is unusual in a couple ways. First, there's no symphonic music score whatsoever. Film music is typically used to tell us what we as the audience should feel about activity on screen, and also tell us what the characters themselves are supposedly feeling. In this way both audience and characters share the same emotional reactions. Music on film is such a common and natural expectation (or substitute?) for an audience's emotions, that some reviewers here think the movie was bland and boring!Secondly, the MGM crew of about 30 people and 7 cargo trucks spent months in 1949 filming this on the Dark Continent itself, at locations hundreds of miles from civilization in eastern Africa instead of the usual Hollywood lots. They enlisted the inhabitants of remote villages as actors, asked them to perform communal dances, and took many close-up shots of their faces, hair, headgear, jewelry and body paint. This amounts to some of the most magnificent - and rare - color and sound footage of "old" untouched African culture I've seen. Not long after this, during the 1950's-1960's these villages gradually became part of the modern world, and by the 1980's, remote tribesmen were filmed as they hunted with spears - wearing "Michael Jackson" t- shirts.The movie is generally pretty good, but the Africans steal the show.

jc-osms A little old-fashioned by today's standards but still a watchable and entertaining dramatisation of H Rider Haggard's popular adventure which seems to borrow rather a lot from the story of David Livingstone's discovery by Stanley.There aren't a great deal of bona-fide action sequences to speak of but the mystery of missing explorer Curtis's disappearance and the deepening of Stewart Granger's relationship with the missing man's wife Deborah Kerr, all set against an authentic African backdrop and their interaction with a variety of indigent tribesmen, keep the viewer interested.The leads play off each other well within the confines of their stereotypical roles, Granger the commanding, aloof adventurer Quatermain and Kerr the initially starchy but also feisty Englishwoman abroad. Unfortunately she typifies the clichéd image of representing the weaker sex by screaming, fainting and falling down rather a lot. Richard Carlson is however very good as Kerr's common-sense brother.The film location camera-work is generally good, particularly the night shots in the desert although there are, not surprisingly, a fair number of reaction shots of the leads intercut into scenes of danger and a fair number of not always successful process shots too. The local natives are happily given plenty of screen time, speaking in their own tongue more often than not, which adds a little to attempted authenticity.It winds its way to a, being honest, less than nail-biting conclusion but in these days of C-Gen backgrounds, it was good to see this adventure in natural settings, although I'm willing to bet a fair number of animals were harmed in the production.

David Allen King Solomon's Mines (1950 MGM) starring Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr is the greatest movie about modern day Africa ever filmed, even though it was set in 1898.It shows the grandeur and perfect culture (and satisfaction) of the local natives....it is not about politics or social revolution, to it's credit.This movie is about how beautiful, how perfect Africa at the Equator level, but elevated to heights which make it comfortable ("It's like England," states Deborah Kerr!), and about the fact that Africa is where all civilization and human origins occurred.It is still the perfect place to live, and this movie shows that.Hooray! The story is a dumb Hollywood version of much more intelligent (but discarded) version of the story written by H. Rider Haggard.Too expensive to film the Haggard story, so Hollywood in 1950 made a love story out of it, and who cares? The movie still came out perfect, perfect, perfect, and people should see it and reverence it.Hollywood does the best it can with modest resources, especially mental and intellectual resources.This movie turned out good.I loved it. Screen it often. You should also.------- Written by Tex Allen, SAG Actor. Visit WWW.IMDb.Com and choose "Tex Allen" "resume" for contact information, movie credits, and biographical information about Tex Allen. He has reviewed more than 42 movies posted on WWW.IMDb.Com (the world's largest movie information database, owned by Amazon.Com) as of January 2011. These include: 1. Alfie (1966) 29 July 2009 2. Alien (1979) 24 July 2009 3. All the Loving Couples (1969) 17 January 2011 4. All the President's Men (1976) 16 November 2010 5. American Graffiti (1973) 22 November 2010 6. Animal House (1978) 16 August 2009 7. Bullitt (1968) 23 July 2009 8. Captain Kidd (1945) 28 July 2009 9. Child Bride (1938) 24 September 2009 10. Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) 22 September 2010 11. Destination Moon (1950) 17 January 2011 12. Detour (1945) 19 November 2010 13. Die Hard 2 (1990) 23 December 2010 14. The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993) 19 November 2010 15. Jack and the Beanstalk (1952) 26 July 2009 16. King Solomon's Mines (1950) 1 December 2010 17. Knute Rockne All American (1940) 2 November 2010 18. Claire's Knee (1970) 15 August 2009 19. Melody Ranch (1940) 10 November 2010 20. Morning Glory (1933) 19 November 2010 21. Mush and Milk (1933) 17 January 2011 22. New Moon (1940) 3 November 2010 23. Pinocchio (1940) 6 November 2010 24. R2PC: Road to Park City (2000) 19 November 2010 25. Salt (2010) 24 August 2010 26. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) 21 January 2011 27. Sunset Blvd. (1950) 1 December 2010 28. The Forgotten Village (1941) 21 January 2011 29. The Great Dictator (1940) 1 November 2010 30. The King's Speech (2010) 19 January 2011 31. The Last Emperor (1987) 20 January 2011 32. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) 9 January 2011 Written by Tex Allen, SAG-AFTRA movie actor. Visit WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen for more information about Tex Allen. Tex Allen's email address is TexAllen@Rocketmail.Com.See Tes Allen Movie Credits, Biography, and 2012 photos at WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen. See other Tex Allen written movie reviews....almost 100 titles.... at: "http://imdb.com/user/ur15279309/comments" (paste this address into your URL Browser)