Indiana Jones and the Clones

Today, let’s time travel to the days of yore and bad filmmaking at its best.  Here are the last emailed questions from my curious and mysterious friend concerning the incredible (as in ridiculously unbelievable) film, Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold:

Renee, … you said the QUATERMAIN LA shooting was about “the grand finale in the gold mine.” …that is very interesting for me, because there is no such thing as a gold mine grand finale in the finished movie! …BUT… there are definitely scenes in the theatrical trailer that take place in the gold mine set(s) that did not make the final cut…there was some elaborate fight sequence between Richard and Sharon and some bad guys, with Richard using a bullwhip ala Indiana Jones…You can see glimpses from that sequence in the trailer here: http://www.commeaucinema.com/bandes-annonces=6247.html…Someone once suggested to me that maybe all these scenes were deleted for fear of a lawsuit from George Lucas or Paramount… was it ever a concern when you worked on QUATERMAIN? I mean, trying to avoid “Indiana Jones” similarities? When you said you worked on the gold mine set with the molten god pit, I’m a little bit confused. In the movie, I can see two separate sets:  one is the gold mine set itself (A), with some aerial tram/cable car system and another one is the big hall of the temple (B) right above the mine, with some giant circular trap door that opens and people falls into a smaller pit of molten gold, which is surrounded by some platform were golden statues are exposed (C) (which, in the story, are made from the people that fell into the molten gold).Did you work on set A or B+C…or both? Here is one of the only two scenes in the movie where set A is seen in the final cut: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tkX_9N1nkE Do you remember what was occurring in the gold mine scenes that you worked on? Was the tram/cable car system used?…because, other than one establishing shot, the YouTube clip from above is the ONLY scene from the finished movie where we can see it working/operating!!! Was Quatermain maybe supposed to free some slaves from the mine at some point? Because, once again, this part was not used in the movie.  Speaking of deleted scene[s], I am also very interested in the bedroom set you built “for a love scene between Sharon and Richard.”… Cassandra Peterson allegedly filmed some seduction scenes with Richard Chamberlain (that, again, were not used), so maybe they also took place in that bedroom set of yours? Ever heard of such scenes?
I definitely remember the “gold ingots” that you sculpted. As a matter of fact, someone is still selling some of those on eBay! http://cgi.ebay.com/Allan-Quatermain-The-Lost-City-Of-Gold-Gold-bar_W0QQitemZ120000058115QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0

And now, my answers!

First, I’d like to say (in a voice dripping with sarcasm), “Thanks, Netflix, for ruining my experience of Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold.  You sent me a DVD that failed at exactly the final two sections of the movie that mattered to me: the gold mine and the molten gold pit action.  Now I have to make do with incomplete information for my Very Important Professional Blog.  Maybe you should have checked the DVD out before you sent it, because someone apparently lit it on fire and left a spectacular melted gash.”  However, despite the failure of the DVD, I think I can safely answer the emailed questions.

Hi There, You! I didn’t know that the only set I worked on, which would be your “Set A”, the goldmine, wouldn’t be used in any but two scenes of the resulting movie.  Not that it would have made any difference in how hard and how long we worked on it.  At one point I had the sculpting crew split into two shifts, and we went almost 24 hours a day, first because of the gold ingots, and then for the big push to carve out the goldmine after the set was spray-foamed.

Yes, we had trams, cables, whip-lashings, stunts galore, slaves all over the place, lots and lots of action.  The specifics I can’t recall, but yes, there was a definite Indiana Jones vibe and it was purposely created.  Nobody ever seemed worried about copyright infringement on Indie’s moves, whip-mastery and style of dress.  We shot all of the action with trams fully knowing who and what it resembled, and Cannon, I’m sure, hoped to profit by the resemblance.

The fact that none of this stuff showed up in the film may speak to the possibilities that the lawyers for Lucas, Spielberg, et al finally caught wind of the show’s similarities to the Indiana Jones franchise, but truly, I don’t know if that mattered so awfully much.  Spielberg and Lucas have freely admitted to taking their inspiration from earlier films back in the day of the Saturday matinee serials, so why should it matter that Cannon did the same with Lucas and Spielberg’s earlier film?

Of course, being just a painter I can only speculate, or possibly make something up.  But I’ll just leave it all as theory.  I think the lawyers on both sides probably had a hand in keeping most of the goldmine scenes out of the final cut.  Which is sad, because who knows, maybe with those scenes left in, Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold would have garnered a snootful of Oscars!

Hmmm… I’m sorry, I’m hallucinating.  I’ve been watching the Oscars as I write this, and I think they’ve intruded into my train of thought.  I just saw most of Lost City, and nothing about it screamed “Oscar.”

Sets B and C were filmed in Africa, as you guessed, and Cassandra Peterson never made it on to our set, which was our loss because as you may or may not realize, she is most famous for her character Elvira Mistress of the Dark, who, for pure campiness, should get some kind of award, even if by being a television personality, she isn’t eligible to take home the Golden Boy.

The bedroom scene was between Richard and Sharon, then, without Cassandra, and the room was very like the one where we see Richard’s friend meet his demise, although his scene was filmed in Africa.  I don’t remember if our bedroom was supposed to be a match for the house they were staying in just before all the adventuring started, but I assume so, since it had French doors and mosquito netting.  The scene was at least partially nude, I believe, because nobody on the crew was allowed inside, and Sharon’s husband at the time, one of the producers, sat nervously in a director’s chair in front of the stage door, guarding against intruders, appearing very uncomfortable, and frequently returning to the bedroom set to make sure everything was hunky dory.

As to why they didn’t include that scene, your guess is as good as mine.  I would think they might have wanted to spice things up.  Also, at the time, even though Sharon Stone was unknown, Richard Chamberlain was considered very hot, and he hadn’t yet come out as being gay (although we all knew and kept it a secret, as it had to be kept, sadly, at that time).

Allan Quatermain did, indeed, free the slaves who were forced to work in the mine under threat of being thrown into the molten gold.  I saw the clip you linked to on YouTube, and although I was there during most of the filming, I didn’t see the actual dunking of any slaves, but a few unlucky souls did get thrown in as part of the action. The slaves were from central casting, and I recall noticing that a few of them were a bit paunchy for being starving, overworked miners.  I think you can see a couple of them standing next to the big doorway out of the mine if you check my website portfolio at www.reneeprince.net.  Click on the Portfolio button in the box labeled “Reel Life”.

I remember toiling away in my little corner painting some ingots and seeing a parade of slaves going by me on the way to their doom, when one of them called me by name.  “Don’t you remember me?” he asked, “I was the guy that got killed by Martians last year!”  He did look familiar, even though he was only wearing a loincloth.  But I have a terrible memory for names, and to be frank, a lot of people were killed by Martians the year before.  After all, the movie was called Invaders from Mars.

I hope to get an unmelted DVD of Lost City in the next few weeks, to see the other scene featuring the gold mine, but on the part of the DVD that worked, I did notice the river rafting trip through tunnels that you mentioned before as possibly being part of the re-used set from Journey to the Center of the Earth.  That was definitely not filmed in the Journey tunnels in Long Beach, California.  They were made of plaster and not capable of being flooded with water.  I think, though, that you might want to see the story of the making of Journey for some further clarification on the chronology of that film and the real connection between it and Lost City. Here is that link: Moria - The science fiction, horror and fantasy movie review site - Journey to the Center of the Earth (1988) .  That is another film that I’ve never watched.  I’ll have to add that DVD to my Netflix queue and hope nobody has tried to set it on fire…

I also saw the “giant worms” that were supposedly re-used from Journey.  When you said “giant”, I was thinking, well, GIANT.  I didn’t realize the “giant worms” would be stuffed foam things less than a meter long.  I was laughing so hard I missed what happened to the worms.  Did they just throw the things overboard?  I’ll have to (force myself to) re-watch that scene on the next DVD.

And as for the gold ingots—I did follow your link to EBay and oh yeah, that’s them.  It would be fascinating to follow their path from an ‘80’s sound stage in California to a strange little online store in 2009 Florida.  Sometimes, lost cities of gold and center of the earth notwithstanding, the strangest stories are the true ones.