Friday night around my house is Sci-Fi Friday. One of the local PBS television stations plays sci-fi movies from the 1930’s through the 1950’s and I get to relive my childhood through those movies.
When I was a child, my Mom used to wake me up on Friday nights to watch whatever ‘monster’ or sci-fi movie was on. She knew they were my favorites, but I think she just didn’t like being home without Dad, he worked the midnight shift and I suspect Mom just didn’t want to be alone.
Anyway, this was back in the mid to late 50’s, back when make-up and special effects were a true art form. Don’t get me wrong, computer graphics can do some pretty amazing things but when I was a kid it all seemed real and somehow more believable than today’s computer graphics.
Tonight’s movie isn’t about prehistoric monsters or nuclear-caused mutants but it is a pretty good adventure story called King Solomon’s Mines.
This 1937 film follows the original novel – written by H. Rider Haggard – much better than the two remakes of 1950 and 1985. Allan Quatermain (Sir Cedric Hardwicke), as the ‘great white hunter’ and his guide help a young Irish woman locate her missing father in unexplored Darkest Africa. A little sappy but still a good story.
The story takes place in 1882 when Irish dream chaser Patrick "Patsy" O'Brien (Arthur Sinclair) and his daughter Kathy (Anna Lee) fail to strike it rich in the diamond mines of Kimberley, South Africa. They persuade a reluctant Allan Quatermain to give them a lift to the coast in his wagon when they meet up with someone who claims to have found the fabled mines. The hunt for riches is on, along the way they run into ‘restless natives’, death, treachery, and romance.
Fairly tame by today’s standards, but it’s a good escape from reality anyway.
