Gary Nelson, who directed my beloved The Black Hole, directed the sequel to 1985’s King Solomon’s Mines, Allan Quatermain & The Lost City of Gold, which was filmed back to back with the first film.

In fact, it steals a large portion of Jerry Goldsmith’s score for the first film as a way to save on production costs. In fact, there are a lot of cost-cutting measures throughout the film. For instance, despite the film being shot in Africa, the film doesn’t get a chance to show off any of the locations in which they shot.

Knowing that it’s a Golan-Globus production you realize going in that you’re getting a B-movie tied by small budget constraints, but wow, this one really scrapes the bottom of the barrel.

Richard Chamberlain returns as Quatermain with Sharon Stone’s Jessie by his side. They are preparing for a trip to America so they can get married, but when Allan receives word that his long-lost brother may have been found, and possibly discovered a lost tribe and their city of gold, he sets off into the jungles.

He and Jessie are joined by Umslopogaas (James Earl Jones – who wanted the paycheck, and a chance to see Africa) and they set off through shoddy sets and goofy action beats, not to mention some pretty bad special effects and model work, to find his brother, and the lost city.

The lost city itself is run by the tyrannical Agon (a wild-haired Henry Silva!) who is joined by two lovely ladies, Nyleptha (Aileen Marson) and Sorais (Cassandra Peterson!!), and it’s here that they find Allan’s brother, Robeson (Martin Rabbett, Chamberlain’s partner).

Everyone was attempting to cash in on the resurgence in adventure films following Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the sad thing about this series is that there’s a whole collection of novels written at the turn of the 20th century by author H. Rider Haggard which could serve as the basis for a franchise of films, but no one has ever really put a solid budget and script behind it.

And my big thing about the first film is that Chamberlain just doesn’t seem believable in the action hero role. It looks like he’s having fun, but I just don’t buy it, and the script doesn’t do him any favours.

This one ends up being a deeply flawed and downright bad movie, arguably worse than the first film, but it does have a great score by Goldsmith, with a half-hour of original music by Micheal Linn.

It’s a disappointment, but I’m sure someone liked it. And maybe, just maybe, someone, somewhere can throw together a solid Allan Quatermain film and then launch a franchise.