5.8 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Fortune hunter Allan Quatermain teams up with a resourceful woman to help her find her missing father lost in the wilds of 1900s Africa while being pursued by hostile tribes and a rival German explorer.
Starring: Richard Chamberlain, Sharon Stone, Herbert Lom, John Rhys-Davies, Ken GampuComedy | Insignificant |
Adventure | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
J. Lee Thompson's "King Solomon's Mines" (1985) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of independent distributors Olive Films. There are no supplemental features on the release. In English, with optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".
Allan Quatermain
Presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, J. Lee Thompson's King Solomon's Mines arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films.
The release is sourced from a very nice master that must have been prepared fairly recently. My guess is that someone did some sort of a remastering job -- not a full-blown restoration job -- because some minor fluctuations remain but the entire film looks remarkably healthy. Many of the outdoor close-ups boast very pleasing depth, with density in particular being consistently very good (see screencaptures #1 and 8). The wider panoramic shots also retain good depth and fluidity is mostly very pleasing. There are no traces of recent problematic degraining and sharpening adjustments, but with some specific encoding optimizations grain could have been exposed even better. Nevertheless, the current presentation has a solid and quite convincing organic appearance. Colors are stable and natural, but I feel that saturation should be even better. There are no serious stability issues. Lastly, there are no distracting large cuts, debris, damage marks, stains, or warped/torn frames to report in our review. My score is 4.25/5.00. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free player in order to access its content).
There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided for the main feature. When turned on, they appear inside the image frame.
The audio is stable and clean. There are various action sequences where the dynamic intensity is quite good, though I have to speculate that the original mixing was probably far from from impressive because it seems like a lot of background action routinely gets dropped out. It is difficult to be absolutely certain but the important point is that the original sound design is in fact somewhat dated. The dialog is clean and always easy to follow. For the the record, there are no purely technical anomalies, such as dropouts or distortions, to report.
Most unfortunately, there are no supplemental features to be found on this Blu-ray release.
Someone needs to produce an in-depth documentary about the production history of J. Lee Thompson's King Solomon's Mines because this film is so atrocious that it actually seems like a brilliant project. It does everything wrong and yet all of the big actors that step in front of the camera appear remarkably enthusiastic about their characters. If you enjoy bad films with an attitude, you can't go wrong with King Solomon's Mines. It delivers big time, and then some. Olive Films' technical presentation of the film is very good. RECOMMENDED.
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