Heston Over Lode
When their friend heads into the wilderness of British Columbia but doesn't return, young adventurers Jean Dupree (Nick Mancuso) and Andrea Spalding (Kim Basinger - Charlie St. Cloud) fly up there in Jean's dilapidated plane in search of him. But after the plane lets them down and they end up crash landing in to a lake they end up in the home of McGee (Charlton Heston - Two-Minute Warning) a crazed old Scottish miner who has been working the tunnels in the hills for many a year looking for gold and willing to do anything to protect what he believes to be there from any unwanted visitors.
Great movies stand the test of time, good movies remain watchable but lose something and those movies which were only okay on their original release rarely maintain that okay level of entertainment for those who watch them for the first time many years later. It is something which I have found to be the case more often than not and so when it comes to the movie "Mother Lode" from 1982, well to be honest it only just scraped in at being averagely entertaining watched all these years later. Although like with many a movie I am sure many who watched "Mother Lode" back in the early 80s still have fond memories of it.
The trouble for me when it comes to "Mother Lode" is that whilst billed as an adventure movie it now comes across like a vehicle for Charlton Heston and also his writer/director son Fraser Clarke Heston. Heston puts on a full of character, heavy accented performance as McGee and for a few scenes he captures your attention but then it becomes clear that whilst this story has twists and turns it is a Heston vehicle it starts to become a little annoying. Here is how annoying it gets as the lovely Kim Basinger barely makes an impact despite the fact that for most of "Mother Lode" there are just three characters in it.
Now in fairness "Mother Lode" had potential with some decent stunt work. An early scene involving a plane crash landing in to a lake is extremely impressive whilst explosions in a mine shaft also deliver some excitement. But I felt there could have been more and a lot more artistic camera work when it came to taking in the location. But what I really wanted more of was gold mining insanity as unfortunately Charlton Heston's wild eyed performance didn't convince me of his character's obsessive insanity and certainly failed to make him seem dangerous despite this obviously being the case.
What this all boils down to is that "Mother Lode" really had some problems for me and truth be told many of those revolve around Charlton Heston's performance. But there were some plus points which helped keep "Mother Lode" just about still entertaining.
