Maciste In King Solomon's Mines (1964)

Hmmm. Reg Park certainly looked the part as the muscle man dragooned - thanks to a magical anklet - into working in the mines of the nasty “Queen Fazira” (Wandisa Guida) after he had travelled all the way deep into the jungle to rescue his fellow prisoners. They are all digging like mad in the hope that they can find the legendary treasure of the biblical king, but thus far aren’t having too much luck. She’s getting fed up waiting so he’d better get a move on, or better yet - find some way to remove his malicious enchantment so he can start throwing the polystyrene scenery around and get into the action. Aside from the ropey production standards and the equally over-scripted dialogue, that’s really the problem here. What action there is is largely reserved for the last ten minutes and by then the whole thing is entirely procedural. What this does have in it’s favour is a bit more quality from the studio sets, and some imagination has certainly gone into these to give the thing a better look than many of this genre, but little use is made of any real African scenarios and the stage-bound nature of the storytelling robs this of most of it’s pace or distinctiveness. It’s an hybrid of ideas and well trammelled stories that seems a good deal longer than ninety minutes.