Diamonds Of Kilimandjaro — Diamonds Of Kilimandjaro(Blu Ray)
Diamonds Of Kilimandjaro aka The Treasure of the White Goddess was directed in 1983 by Franco(under the name of C. Plaut). And really like a lot of his films of this period, it’s a prime example of a director on autopilot- really lacking many of his more considered shots, surreal asides, and flowing structure. What the film does have in spades is a feeling of wonkiness, un-balancement, and confusion- to start with the dubbing is all over the place, and at times we have dialogue when the actor’s mouths aren’t moving. Next, we have the addition of badly cut stock footage- this opens up the film, with the highly unbelievable airplane crash, and appears throughout the film with nature footage, a badly stage crocodile attack, etc. Added to this there’s the often schizophrenic/ jarring placement of music cues- one minute you ’ll get eerier tribal-tinged avant jazz wonderings, the next campy & buoyant easy listening, the next weird synth noodling, the next twee euro folk-pop. And lastly and most importantly is the locations- a big part of the film is meant to be set in the jungles of Kilimandjaro, but clearly, it’s mostly filmed in a local park, or large garden- with vaguely tropical plants added into the foreground.
The plot, as it is, sees a rather sleazed take on the Tarzan story- swapping out the male ape-man, for a barely legal, teethy smiling & constant topless young ape women. Added into this we get the local tribe who worship her, the girl’s tartan hat wearing white uncle, and a group of slimy treasure hunters, who are after the diamonds which turn out to be rock crystals. We get a fair amount of nudity and a few instances of off-screen gore. For the most part, it’s just bad filmmaking with a bonkers charm, though there are a few flourishes of genuine unsettlement/ atmosphere, for example when one of the treasure hunters getting decapitated by a savage pare breasted native & her skull wearing followers.
This Blu Ray is very barebones, and all you get is original trailer along with a selection of other trailers from the MVD classic line. The scan, is I guess, as you could expect from this type of film- through the new scan I think does enhance unbalanced stock footage elements- but I guess this can’t be helped
Diamonds Of Kilimandjaro is far from a coherent, balanced, or anyway conventionally good example of the action-adventure genre- so if you’re here for a thrilling, daring stunt lined, action-packed film it’s best you look elsewhere. But if your looking for puzzling so-bad-it’s-good cinema from the 1980’s, then I think you’ll enjoy what we have here.