Mother Lode

Mother Lode (1982)

The lure of Gold can make a man do anything. Anything.

A couple of young adventurers go into the wilderness of British Columbia in search of a lost colleague. Their plane crashes and they find themselves at the mercy of a crazed old Scottish miner, who has lived in isolation for many decades searching the mountain caves for a chamber of long lost gold. He is prepared to do anything - including murder - to keep his gold for himself.

Date of release
1982-08-06
TMDB
5.7 / 10 (39)
Runtime
1h 43m
Genres
Action, Adventure, Thriller
Director
Charlton Heston

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $9M
  • Filmed in: British Columbia

Mother Lode is a 1982 adventure thriller film directed by and starring Charlton Heston. It was written and produced by his son Fraser Clarke Heston. The film also stars Nick Mancuso and Kim Basinger as a gold-hunting couple.

Production

Mother Lode involved members of Charlton Heston's family. While he directed and starred, his son Fraser Clarke Heston came up with the idea, wrote the script and acted as producer, while his wife Lydia is credited as still photographer.

Filming for Mother Lode took place primarily at Lake Lovely Water near Squamish, British Columbia, with most aerial scenes filmed along the Fraser River Valley. Additional photography took place near Vancouver, British Columbia.

The de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver floatplane used in Mother Lode was not intended to be crashed, nor was a crash part of the original storyline. Trying a "glassy water landing", the pilot reduced his descent too late as the left float contacted, created drag and hooked, followed by the right float doing the same, whereupon all control was lost and the aircraft slewed around, flipped over, and sank.

The Beaver floatplane was recovered from the lake and transported to Kelowna, British Columbia, where it was fully restored, put back on wheels and sold to an American business, which licensed the aircraft as N323RS.

The aircraft which is landing when the Mollyco Cessna 206 wanders onto its runway is a Cessna 185, which performs an abrupt "firewall" (application of full power) and pull-up to clear the 206. Neither the Cessna 206 nor 185 was normally rated for such aerial maneuvers as depicted in the film.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended