So I fired up King Solomon's Mines last night (free off the roku app for now) and damned if that isn't a fun ride. It starts off rough (the zoomed in pan and scan doesn't help) feeling very much like a cheap Indiana Jones knock off, down to Jon Rhys-davies and even the musical beats, but by act 2 it finds its footing in the just insane (I'm sure 100% well researched and culturally accurate) embrace of the colonialism with the native tribes, the ones who live upside down, the giant stew pot for the cannibals, all the silly booby traps and jungle danger tropes, etc. Helps that Sharon Stone is PEAK hotness (well, maybe Total Recall a couple years later).
You can see these elements played up even better a few years later in The Mummy, which is probably my personal fav of these types of "exotic exploration" films (naturally, the Indy films exist in a tier all by themselves) that juggle comedy, action, romance, and a bit of horror. It's a surprisingly difficult formula, I feel like we only get a few really good ones every decade and they rarely can capture the essence even for sequels. (Mummy 2, Jewel of the Nile, later indy movies, even Jumanji 2).
