Allan Quartermain (Stewart Granger) is a guide and hunter in Victorian Kenya. Elizabeth Curtis (Deborah Kerr) hires Quartermain to find her husband, who disappeared searching for King Solomon's legendary treasure. Quartermain, Ms. Curtis and a small party journey into the hinterland, joined by mysterious African Ignosi (Siriaque). Eventually they stumble across the Kukuanas, a lost tribe ruled by the tyrannical King Twala (Baziga), guardians of the legendary treasure.
King Solomon's Mines makes mincemeat of Haggard's novel, changing the backstory so Quartermain's a reluctant mercenary, rather than the quest's initiator. Love interest Elizabeth's an added character, swapping stylish dresses for perm and safari gear, along with a Conradian white chief (Hugo Haas). It also reduces Ignosi, Quartermain's lifelong sidekick, to a tag-along spear carrier. And there's far more emphasis on the band's travels than their dealings with the Kikuana, the book's meat. Again, Hollywood uses a famous title to sell a barely-related film.
If King Solomon's Mines gets an F in faithfulness, it's still a fun adventure. Filmed in Kenya, Uganda and the Congo, it features spectacular wildlife footage (with some aberrations, like an American alligator menacing Elizabeth!) and dozens of Tutsi extras, captured in Robert Surtees' glorious photography. It presages a decade's worth of East African travelogue adventures, from The African Queen to Simba. With its cast visibly on location, there's an authenticity missing in most.
Directors Compton Bennett and Andrew Marton pile on the excitement. Mines handles the expected set pieces well: tribal rituals, leopard attacks, a zebra stampede. The somewhat rushed climax provides a diamond mine cave-in and a spear duel in the Kikuana kraal. Helen Deutsch's script mixes existential ponderings with caustic humor: Elizabeth wonders if prowling lions are hungry. "If they eat you, they're hungry," Quartermain cautions.
Stewart Granger does well in a role intended for Errol Flynn. Granger imbues Quartermain with cynicism befitting later antiheroes, while remaining suave and likeable: a mercenary with an ironclad code. Deborah Kerr has a thankless character, either issuing haughty putdowns or screaming for rescue. Richard Carlson is bland but Hugo Haas plays a colorful weirdo. Mines also lacks a strong African character, like Paul Robeson in the 1937 version, to play off Quartermain.
Purists wail that King Solomon's Mines scarcely resembles the source, and they're right. Still, the film's beautifully shot and breezily enjoyable, the perfect Saturday matinee movie.