(77 min) Released 1937-06-17
Directors: Robert Stevenson, Geoffrey Barkas
Stars: Paul Robeson, Cedric Hardwicke, Roland Young, Anna Lee
Genres: Action | Adventure | Drama | Musical | Romance | Thriller
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029081/
This not really a musical; PR sings 3 (or 4?) songs. But he's such a powerful presence in all ways, that his singing seems natural somehow.
This, of course, is an H. Rider Haggard adventure story, much remade, as I discussed on She (1935), 8 {nm}.
The process shots, intended to place the actors in dangerous terrain, do not match the studio lighting very well. However, it IS impressive that they did remote 2nd unit shooting (dir. Barkas) to capture moving pictures for that effect, rather than just painted matte shots. And, the special effects of the volcano are very good.
Lots of black actors got employed as natives, great in number, ready to kill our would-be miners.
[Spoiler]The event that saves our protagonists came from Haggard's 1885 novel, and is used in 1889's Mark Twain novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, a Bing Crosby movie released in 1949. Because I'm familiar with both, that made the event seem overused to me, but apparently not. I'm not familiar with any of the other movies on this list about this topic.
As with all my ratings, the rating is for the movie overall, not as a musical.
Gaumont British Picture Corporation, dir. Stevenson & Barkas; 7
