Taglines: Everything they touch turns to pure excitement!
Gold movie storyline. The film begins with a tunnel collapse at the world-famous (but fictitious) Sonderditch gold mine outside Johannesburg, in a scene that establishes the courage of Slater and his chief miner, ‘Big King’, and the bond of trust between them. This is contrasted with the contempt with which some other white racist managers treat the black miners.
It is soon revealed that the collapse was no accident, but part of a plan by a London-based criminal syndicate, which includes the previous general manager who is killed in the abortive first attempt and the mine-owner’s son-in-law and director manager Manfred Steyner, to destroy the mine so that the foreign syndicate members can profit from share-dealing and raising the price of gold on world markets. This will be done by drilling through a deep underground greenstone wall or ‘dyke’ which is all that prevents an adjacent reservoir of water from flooding the mine.
The mine’s general manager, an accomplice in the plot, was killed in the tunnel collapse. Steyner then interviews Slater, who at this stage is underground nanager, for the now vacant post of general manager, although the mine owner / chairman of the board Hurry Hirschfeld (Ray Milland) has the next regular man in seniority in mind as another candidate.
At this point during his initial interview, Slater first meets Steyner’s wife Terry at their luxurious mansion home and is attracted to her, but she does not at first return his interest. However, Steyner arranges for them to meet again, in the hope that Terry will influence her grandfather, the mine owner/ board chairman, an old curmudgeon whom she lovingly calls “Poppsie”, in Slater’s favour.
The plan works, with two consequences: Slater becomes general manager, and he and Terry start a love affair. Slater, unaware of the criminal plan, agrees to carry out the drilling but is cautious enough to plant a safety charge that will block the tunnel in case of a water leak. Steyner soon finds out that Slater is having an affair with his wife, but allows it to continue because it will keep Slater away from the mine, so that the safety charge can be disabled without his knowledge.
While Slater and Terry are holidaying together over a warm Christmas, the final breach is made in the underground dyke and a wall of an ocean of water roars into the interconnected mazes of tunnels and shafts and the mine begins to flood, trapping a thousand workers. Slater hears of the disaster on the radio news, and flies with Terry in her small private plane back to the mine making a hair-raising emergency landing on the mine access road.
There is a tense scene in which Slater and Big King descend the mine, amidst rising flood waters, to repair and reconnect the electrical line to the explosive safety charge that will seal the ‘dyke’ hole. They succeed, but only because Big King sacrifices his own life to detonate the charge, letting Slater fall injured into a rubber boat in the flooded tunnel and escape.
Gold is a 1974 British thriller film starring Roger Moore and Susannah York and directed by Peter R. Hunt. It was based on the 1970 novel Gold Mine by Wilbur Smith. Moore plays Rodney “Rod” Slater, general manager of a South African gold mine, who is instructed by his boss Steyner (Bradford Dillman) to break through an underground dike into what he is told is a rich seam of gold. Meanwhile, he falls in love with Steyner’s wife Terry, played by York. In the United States, the film was only released as part of a double bill.
Gold (1974)
Directed by: Peter R. Hunt
Starring: Roger Moore, Susannah York, Ray Milland, Bradford Dillman, John Gielgud, Simon Sabela, Bernard Horsfall, Tony Beckley, Norman Coombes, George Jackson, Ralph Loubser
Screenplay by: Stanley Price, Wilbur Smith
Production Design by: Syd Cain, Alex Vetchinsky
Cinematography by: Ousama Rawi
Film Editing by: John Glen
Costume Design by: Marjory Cornelius
Art Direction by: Robert W. Laing
Makeup Department: Paul Engelen, Ramon Gow
Music by: Elmer Bernstein
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Allied Artists (USA)
Release Date: September 5, 1974
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