Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls (2008) (V)

This movie looks like something to come out of a film school project where each first year student does a small part of the job. The casting was downright abysmal because the hero looks like a drunk with swollen, slit-like eyes, and the female lead who is supposed to be an English lady of rank looks like, and is made up like, a Fleet Street tart. The wooden dialogue sounds more like high school remedial English or a Berlitz audio for Hungarians planning to visit London. The plot bristles with mistakes, like four travelers making a three-day trek on foot across the blazing African wilderness but not carrying so much as a thimble full of water. Forget about tents and supplies. There's a bad guy who chases them in his truck when they're on a train, and he's driving with one hand, swaying all over the road and firing a rifle with one hand -- like it was a pistol -- all of which gives him absolutely no control and poses no threat. But hero Quatermain, crouching behind a steel railroad car with a pistol, who could easily finish off the bad guy with one shot from his protected barrier, decides he and the tart should jump from the train -- which they do. Now what could be stupider? The sound effects. The sound effects are stupider. Every time somebody fires it sounds like a cross between a muffled cough and a fart.

H. Rider Haggard was a terrific writer, but this rendition of his work is so clumsy, amateurish and silly that its most useful application should be for film students: How NOT to write/produce/cast/direct a movie.