19 replies to this topic

[PrinceKamalKhan]

Peter Hunt's 1974 adventure/thriller about the gold industry is presently available to view on youtube:



This is far and away the best print I've seen of it. It's letterboxed which is a plus. If you're a fan of Moore or OHMSS this film is a must see. It gives a vision of how a Peter Hunt-directed Moore Bond film or a South African-set one might've looked like.

[scaramunga]

Thanks for the post! Hopefully it ends up on blu ray in the near future!

[thecasinoroyale]

I've had this on DVD for a while but still not watched it - I think I bought it on a Bondhigh and for any new Roger Moore films I've not seen, but I've never has the urge to actually watch it, but I will!

[George Kaplan]

I've watched it on TV before and enjoyed it - of course that was pan & scan and w/commercials.

[dogmanstar]

Cool find! Thanks.

[PrinceKamalKhan]

Thanks for the post! Hopefully it ends up on blu ray in the near future!

You're welcome. And hopefully they'll use a print as good as this one and rightly letter box it.

[Templar]

Even though YouTube has successively been corrupted (=dilapitaded) since Google bought them up, it's nice to see users who upload movies of the more "non-mainstream" kind. I originally saw Gold some years ago through Cinemageddon as well as The Naked Face as well as the Shout at the Devil. Both The Man Who Haunted Himself and The Man Who Wouldn't Die I have on official Swedish DVD.

[scaramunga]

Hopefully a blu ray is on the way at some point. 

[jrcjohnny99]

Not a bad film at all and definitely has some high points including the great Elmer Bernstein score and title song...very Bond like

[plankattack]

Not a bad film at all and definitely has some high points including the great Elmer Bernstein score and title song...very Bond like

Lyrics by Don Black, I think (too lazy to look it up).

Gold is always a lot of fun, and a good performance by Sir Rog. I remember as a kid it seemed to be on TV alot, but it very rarely gets an airing these days. I always thought Wilbur Smith's book would be there for a remake (not that the original is bad) - Hollywood could do worse when putting together a big-budget action flick.

[jrcjohnny99]

Not a bad film at all and definitely has some high points including the great Elmer Bernstein score and title song...very Bond like

Lyrics by Don Black, I think (too lazy to look it up).

Gold is always a lot of fun, and a good performance by Sir Rog. I remember as a kid it seemed to be on TV alot, but it very rarely gets an airing these days. I always thought Wilbur Smith's book would be there for a remake (not that the original is bad) - Hollywood could do worse when putting together a big-budget action flick.

Funny you should say that; I was just thinking when I posted how little of Smith's work has gotten to the screen;

Eye of the Tiger, Hungry as the sea & Wild Justice were all books I enjoyed and altho I haven't read it a friend always raves about The Seventh Scroll...

[plankattack]

As to the OP's comment about Gold being what Peter Hunt-Moore Bond might look like - going through IMDB, you can easily find a number of names with an EON connection, including Glen, Binder, Sid Cain, and even Bernard Horsfall!

[S K Y F A L L]

Glad I watched it, its like AVTAK meets Dante's Peak. 

[AMC Hornet]

Funny you should say that; I was just thinking when I posted how little of Smith's work has gotten to the screen;

Eye of the Tiger, Hungry as the sea & Wild Justice were all books I enjoyed and altho I haven't read it a friend always raves about The Seventh Scroll...

Dark of the Sun, with Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux & Jim Brown.

 

And, As Templar mentioned, Shout at the Devil.

 

And yes, Plankattack, the title song as well as two others were written by Don Black. It sounds to me like a cross between Jose Feliciano's song 'Old Turkey Buzzard' from MacKenna's Gold and the theme song from The Green Slime (starring Luciana Paluzzi).

[jrcjohnny99]

Funny you should say that; I was just thinking when I posted how little of Smith's work has gotten to the screen;

Eye of the Tiger, Hungry as the sea & Wild Justice were all books I enjoyed and altho I haven't read it a friend always raves about The Seventh Scroll...

Dark of the Sun, with Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux & Jim Brown.

 

And, As Templar mentioned, Shout at the Devil.

 

And yes, Plankattack, the title song as well as two others were written by Don Black. It sounds to me like a cross between Jose Feliciano's song 'Old Turkey Buzzard' from MacKenna's Gold and the theme song from The Green Slime (starring Luciana Paluzzi).

Yep

but thats it just 3 film versions of a writer who was hugely sucessful for several decades;

Think how many Alistair Maclean, Robert Ludlum, John Grisham or Stephen King books have been filmed.

always surprises me

[Guy Haines]

I've got the original Wilbur Smith novel "Gold Mine", which I read ages ago, and the DVD, which dropped out of my Saturday newspaper a few years ago (Quite literally - it was one of those promotional DVDs you would get in the weekend editions.) I saw "Gold" in the cinema and enjoyed it. One of us above mentioned AVTAK, and I can understand the comparison, but at the time I saw it first in the 1970s I came away thinking, not surprisingly, of "Goldfinger" - AVTAK was, of course, eleven years away. A similar plot idea in both films - manipulating the price of gold through an "accident", though a much more realistic scenario than invading Fort Knox.

 

As to why it has rarely been seen on TV - I wonder if the fact that it was filmed, in part,in apartheid-era South Africa has anything to do with it? Even now there might be those in the media who disapprove of the film being filmed there at that time - certainly according to Sir Roger Moore's biography "My Word Is My Bond" there was some controversy. Answering my own question though, if "Gold" is kept off the screen because of the context in which it was filmed, how do we account for the many showings, on British TV at least, of "Zulu"? (At one time you could almost guarantee that one TV channel or another would be showing "Zulu" at some point over the Christmas holidays!)

[glidrose]

 

Funny you should say that; I was just thinking when I posted how little of Smith's work has gotten to the screen;

Eye of the Tiger, Hungry as the sea & Wild Justice were all books I enjoyed and altho I haven't read it a friend always raves about The Seventh Scroll...

Dark of the Sun, with Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux & Jim Brown.

 

And, As Templar mentioned, Shout at the Devil.

 

And yes, Plankattack, the title song as well as two others were written by Don Black. It sounds to me like a cross between Jose Feliciano's song 'Old Turkey Buzzard' from MacKenna's Gold and the theme song from The Green Slime (starring Luciana Paluzzi).

Yep

but thats it just 3 film versions of a writer who was hugely sucessful for several decades;

Think how many Alistair Maclean, Robert Ludlum, John Grisham or Stephen King books have been filmed.

always surprises me

 

I think it's 'cos producer Michael Klinger snapped up the films rights on Smith's work with promises that the money would roll in. Klinger was going to produce the films in Australia in the 80's but couldn't get financing. This resulted in angry words and and even angrier letters between Smith and Klinger about the deal.

[hoagy]

susannah york in the tub !  like a bond movie with some skin...she did look lovely...

[Professor Pi]

As to why it has rarely been seen on TV - I wonder if the fact that it was filmed, in part,in apartheid-era South Africa has anything to do with it? Even now there might be those in the media who disapprove of the film being filmed there at that time - certainly according to Sir Roger Moore's biography "My Word Is My Bond" there was some controversy. Answering my own question though, if "Gold" is kept off the screen because of the context in which it was filmed, how do we account for the many showings, on British TV at least, of "Zulu"? (At one time you could almost guarantee that one TV channel or another would be showing "Zulu" at some point over the Christmas holidays!)

 

I'm reading "My Word Is My Bond" too and Roger writes that, as part of his royalty deal, he now owns the rights to Gold.

 

Edited by Professor Pi, 17 April 2013 - 04:14 AM.

[PrinceKamalKhan]

Glad I watched it, its like AVTAK meets Dante's Peak. 

 

That's a pretty fair depiction of it. I wonder if Moore and John Glen experienced deja vu when shooting the mine scenes in AVTAK a decade later.