Gold (1974)

English gentlemanly hero, beautifully kittenish sexy heroine, outrageous, conspiratorial villain with audacious megalomaniac plan, crisp and colourful action-adventure, tribal dancing, grisly scenes, murder, sex, explosions, exotic travelogue locations, light aircraft aerial stunts, and an Oscar nominated score, and, of course Gold, and tonne$ of it. Trusted James Bond director and editor Peter R. Hunt gets the gig and delivers the action.

Roger Moore in a neat little thriller about the plot to manipulate the price of gold buy flooding a South African mine with an underground lake. Moore is the new troubleshooter brought in to run the mine unaware that Bradford Dillman has other plans. This film came out during the disaster craze back in the early 1970's. I remember seeing the TV commercials and wanting to see it because the scenes of the flooding mine made it look like another disaster film. I never saw the film and the film pretty much disappeared before it turned up on bargain DVD. Its a shame that the film isn't better known since its a super little thriller. To be certain the film suffers from the casting of Ray Milland and Dillman who seemed to be playing the exact same roles in everything at the time this was made, but other wise this is a tense little thriller with some good action sequences, good performances and a plot that keeps you watching. Its not the best film ever but it is is one that has been wrongly buried in the discount bin. Definitely worth picking up if you run across it.

The film takes us to South Africa, Sonderditch mine.Men are working there when the tunnel collapses.Soon we find out it was no accident.The crooks come up with a plan to flood the mine in order to make a killing in the international gold market.Rod Slater, the newly appinted general manager has to deal with this problem.Peter R.Hunt is the director of Gold (1974) and it was written by Wilbur Smith and Stanley Price.Roger Moore plays Rod Slater.There's that certain James Bond feel in this movie.And also Rod has some action with a beautiful woman.She's Terry Steiner, played by Susannah York.The legendary Ray Milland plays Hurry Hirschfeld.Also legendary Sir John Gielgud plays Farrell.This is not a masterpiece as a movie but it has something good in it.Those moments at the mine are somewhat claustrophobic.See this movie if you want some adventurous action.

With a plot partially lifted from The Towering Inferno, Gold is a man made disaster of a film in every sense of the word.Ray Milland is the hard as nails South African gold mine magnate, Harry Hirschfeld. He's done something to get the gold traders mad at him because they're planning to do him dirt. John Gielgud is head a gold buying syndicate and he's planning with the connivance of Bradford Dillman who is Milland's grandson-in-law, to blow a hole in the Sonderditch mine that Milland owns, letting in the ocean and flooding the mine. The price of gold will go up because of the sudden shortage. The fact that a thousand men might be killed is of little importance to Gielgud and company.Nor is it to Dillman who's found out that his wife Susannah York has been cheating on him with Roger Moore the new mine general manager.The film is a sanctioned glimpse at the former Union of South Africa as the old apartheid government would like to show you. The mining sequences are quite well done and I wish that they had stuck to a simple disaster film instead throwing in the romance.In fact Roger Moore, intrepid hero that he is, looks ridiculous because when the ocean flood starts, he's out having a romp with Susannah York. Instead of applauding him for his eventual heroism, Milland should have had him canned and banned from the industry. Unless you like Roger Moore, I'd give iron pyrites a pass.