If you’re a regular reader you will know that on March 23th Uwe Boll is planning to destroy Indiana Jones 4 at the box-office with Postal his twenty million dollar “trashy, video game, anti establishment” masterpiece! Could they both be eclipsed on April 29th by the micro budget, epic, Alan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls? Popular option (and basically everyone except myself) says No! It doesn’t look like its going to topple Indy out of the box-office but it dose look like one hell of a good time! Director Mark Atkins has been working day and night trying to finish the film but he took some time off to give us some details:
“The story follows the arc of the original H.R. Haggard novel KING SOLOMON’s MINES…with the additions of a love interest for Quatermain (the 1950’s version with Stuart Granger and Deborah Kerr does this also) and we added an enemy for Quatermain…the evil Hartford who is tracking Quatermain and his party through out the film. In our film Quatermain is hired by Lady Anna and Sir Henry to find Lady Anna’s lost brother Neville who disappeared while searching for the legendary and mysterious King Solomon’s Mines…Quatermain reluctantly agrees to take the assignment and they venture across Africa in search of the lost brother. Using scraps of an ancient map they cross into uncharted territory to all the while being tracked by Quatermain’s nemesis, Anisley Hartford. I don’t want to go into more detail but like the novel the story culminates with Quatermain and his gang (which includes the mysterious Umbopa character) entering Zulu territory and meeting the despotic Zulu King Twala and his tribe.
The production was shot with a micro crew on HD, on a marathon shoot of two weeks traversing a good part of South Africa, we did our best to film in the locations of the novel or locations which emulate H.R. Haggard’s South Africa of the novel.
We tried to make an old fashioned adventure film inspired by films in the thirties. particularly I was inspired by the western, DESTRY RIDES AGAIN with Jimmy Stewart and Marlene Dietrich…for the relationship with Quatermain and Lady Anna…
We had a tiny budget but we filmed on Steam Trains and high mountains, deep caverns and in a real Zulu village so we believe are film will have an authenticity that many Allan Quatermain films has been lacking… and yes, it is a B MOVIE (the studios have kind of taken over the B’s in some ways too) but we hope it stands out in the tradition of the great B MOVIES…an entertaining story with characters you enjoy. CAST:
Sean Cameron Michael – Allan Quatermain
Christopher Adamson – plays Anisley Hartford Bbad guy)
Natalie Stone — Lady Anna (Allan’s love interest)
Daniel Bonjour – Sir Henry
Wittly Jourdan – Umbopa
Nick Everhart – Neville
King Twala – Thomas Fakude
General Infadoos – Phiwayinkosi Gumede
LESLIE MORRIS 31.03.08
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