Rod Slater is the newly appointed general manager of the Sonderditch gold mine, but he stumbles across an ingenious plot to flood the mine, by drilling into an underground lake, so the unscrupulous owners can make a killing in the international gold market.
Oro, Altin, The Great Gold Conspiracy, Gold - il segno del potere, A Maldição do Ouro, Aranybánya, זהב, Guld, طلا, Золото, 골드, Χρυσάφι Και Αίμα, Zlato, Złoto, 金矿
Germany16
Netherlands
UK12
Sweden
France
Ireland15
USA
Finland
Spain
JapanG
Finland
France
Germany
Ireland
Japan
Netherlands
Spain
Sweden
UK
USA
Overlong, but the extended action of the 3rd Act is expertly handled and genuinely exciting. Bradford Dillman brings real eccentricity to his amoral corporate dickhead character, and Roger Moore…I don’t know, I guess he wasn’t great, but he was always game. He was my Bond, and I loved him.
Talk about suspense, this one opens in a legit gold-mine with an amputation in a cave-in. Yikes. It does skip the gritty part, however. Turns out Roger Moore was quite active in his Bond years, he made this hot little South African Gold-Mine actioner the year he and the immortal Christopher Lee made The Man with the Golden Gun. While act two of this one comprises summarily of a romance that would surpass any Bond flick, act three is really good as Moore and another solid protagonist in one Simon Sabela's character re-enter a mine rapidly being flooded from an underground water strike. Beyond that intro there's several other suspenseful scenes, a story about the corrupt rich disregarding life for…
J'adore 1974 #2
Top shagger, Rod Slater (Roger Moore) finds himself general manager of the Johannesburg Sonderditch gold mine, after the previous manager is badly hurt in a tunnel collapse. Owner Hurry Hirschfeld (Ray Milland) isn't so keen to put him in charge, but his son-in-law Steyner (Bradford Dillman) convinces him otherwise. Steyner has ulterior motives, he's part of a sinister cabal who believe they can manipulate the market value of gold by flooding the mine. Slater is the perfect patsy, of course the fact he's pumping Steyner's missus (Susannah York) will inadvertently benefit the conspirators.
An interesting romantic conspiracy thriller, starts and ends with a bang, but meanders too often in-between. The underground filming creates a great feeling of…
As a fan of Roger Moore and his portrayal of James Bond, I've been keen to check out some of the other films that he made over the course of his career. Gold was one of the first films that Moore made after making his debut as Bond. I didn't really know much about Gold prior to watching it and, as a result, didn't know what to expect from it. I was hoping that it would be good but was left feeling disappointed.
The film follows Rod Slater, the newly appointed general manager of the Sonderditch gold mine in South Africa. Slater is instructed by his boss Steyner to break through an underground dike into what he is told is…
Once Roger Moore became Bond, nearly every non-Bond film he did for years was a 007 imitation. Gold is no different. A boardroom of bad guys with an economy-manipulating plan, exotic locations, a heavy, a bureaucratic old man mostly on his side, a minority Quarrel-like friend/employee, Lothario tendencies, stealing the other side's woman, and so on. Gold depths the mines beyond story and plot though, digging into behind-the-camera talent as well. Hunt, Glen, Binder, Cain, Mitchell, Cornelius, and Engelen are all Bond veterans.
While the film fails as a Bond knock-off and as its own thing, I have to admit a certain amount of comfort watching Moore somewhat charismatically bump around this thin storied plot to a decent (with surprising carnage) climax. Nothing special here.
Gold is an interesting, and better companion film to Shout at the Devil, which I watched yesterday. Gold is set in South Africa and almost manages to side-step all of the problems that should entail for a film of 1974, unlike Shout at the Devil, which steered into the issues.
Roger Moore plays Rod Slater, a character who owns a variety of shirts and none with buttons, a General Manager of a South African gold mine, who is instructed by his boss Steyner (Bradford Dillman) to break through an underground dike into what he is told is a rich seam of gold. Meanwhile, he falls in love with Steyner's wife Terry (Susannah York).
The film doesn't really know what it…
A minor international action/conspiracy thriller that's finally available in a Blu-ray restoration after years of terrible public domain transfers, GOLD was made between star Roger Moore's first and second turns as 007 (LIVE AND LET DIE and THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, which would be out in theaters a couple months later). Starting with Moore, GOLD goes out of its way to take advantage of having James Bond onboard, with director Peter Hunt (ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE), second-unit director and editor John Glen (who would direct all the 007s of the 1980s, including Moore's final three turns), three songs with lyrics by frequent Bond contributor Don Black, and a very 007-ish opening title sequence designed by none other…
Kind of wild they actually filmed this in South Africa, I mean sure it's set there and it's nice that it's a location shoot in that case... but during the Apartheid era? Wild.
I really didn't know anything about Moore's film career outside of Bond, turns out he was a proper busy beaver during his tenure in his most famous role, he was putting films out right through the 70s and into the 80s, this one is even directed by another Bond alum with Peter R. Hunt helming proceedings, he of course perhaps most famous I imagine it would be fair to say for directing On Her Majesty's Secret Service. You know for all the talk about Moore's age being…
Compared to Shout at the Devil, Gold, an earlier collaboration between Peter Hunt and Roger Moore is maybe a bit easier to swallow, in that it offers some semblance of self critique for choosing to film in Apartheid South Africa. Here, the gold mining industry is depicted as a purely amoral enterprise, the kind that is happy to kill off its own employees for short term gain, or, you could infer, maybe do business with a repressive regime. And it shows at least nominal sympathy for its black characters (and treats them as actual characters). A lot of the movie is about traversing through corporate politics, which I probably find more interesting to watch than the average viewer (a bizarre…
Before diving into The Man with the Golden Gun, I thought I'd take a look at another gold related Roger Moore vehicle from 1974, coincidentally directed by Peter Hunt of On Her Majesty's Secret Service fame. With a few tweaks to the script, this could almost be a Bond film, complete with Moore's cool, self assured performance mirroring how he played the spy and Susannah York as a very Bond Girl-esque love interest. Hunt's camerawork is often remarkable (particularly in the aerial shots and scenes inside the mine) but aside from that, the film has almost nothing else going for it. I'm not familiar with the novel this is based on, but so much could have been done with the…
what the FUCK
Was this Britain's entry into the seventies disaster movie cycle? A film about gold mines shot in apartheid South Africa. Certainly all the ingredients were there for a disaster.
Until the final half hour this is more a character study of big business types manipulating the gold markets than it is any sort of disaster / action movie. There's talk of what will happen and why but the build up is slow as various British acting types (John Gielgud, Tony Beckley, Bernard Horsfall and Susannah York) spar with American moguls Ray Milland and the always slimy Bradford Dillman, with good old Roger Moore stuck in the middle being played by all sides. This was produced under the Lorimar banner who…
