Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986)

The Canon Group intended to release an Allan Quatermain trilogy, but even before this 1986 sequel to King Soloman's Mines is over, there are signs the money has dried up and number three isn't going to happen, for example, while Quatermain (Richard Chamberlain) and his fiancée, Jesse Huston (Sharon Stone, reprising her Razzie Worst Actress-nominated role) trek across Africa searching for his brother (Chamberlain's partner at the time, Martin Rabbett), the dangers they face are not massive Indiana Jones boulder setpieces but just incredibly low-budget things like the ditch they stumble across which they simply jump, or the bats they find which simply fly away, or the snakes, two Cecils-the-Lion, and cannibalistic tribespeople they encounter which Quatermain simply shoots, and if anyone remains hopeful for a third in the series after all these underwhelming things, the climactic wire fu endscenes with their conspicuous wires, undisguised safety harnesses, and golden porridge remove all doubt.

★☆☆☆☆

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The Hunt For Red October (1990)

In this first of the Jack Ryan movies, released in 1990 with Alec Baldwin as Tom Clancy's hero, Jack Ryan is a mere "expendable" analyst but even so he is the only one among CIA heavies and the navy elite of two countries who can intuit what is really going on (nothing terribly thrilling) when a Russian nuclear submarine, the Red October, goes awol.

★★★☆☆

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