| Kummeli: Kultahuume | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Matti Grönberg |
| Produced by | Markus Selin |
| Written by | Heikki Vihinen Timo Kahilainen |
| Starring | Heikki Vihinen Timo Kahilainen Heikki Silvennoinen Heikki Hela Vesa-Matti Loiri Jukka Puotila Mari Turunen Kari Heitalahti |
| Cinematography | Petri Rossi |
| Editing by | Kauko Lindfors |
| Distributed by | FinnKino |
| Release date(s) | 1997 |
| Running time | 92 min. |
| Country | Finland |
| Language | Finnish |
Kummeli: Kultakuume (Kummeli: Goldrush) is a 1997 Finnish comedy film starring Heikki Hela, Heikki Silvennoinen, Timo Kahilainen and Heikki Vihinen, stars of the Finnish sketch-series Kummeli. This was their second cinema-release after 1996's Kummeli: Stories. Unlike Stories, Kultakuume has a single plot whereas Stories was composed of long-sketches.
The story is set in 1984. Elmeri Hautamäki (Silvennoinen) is a man who has lived his entire life in a mental institution. He escapes with his homosexual nurse Janne-Petteri Broman (Hela) and is joined by the Kagelberg-twins Jönssi and Dille (Vihinen and Kahilainen) on a quest for the hidden gold treasure of his father Kyrpä-Jooseppi Hautamäki, who was killed by a fleeing German soldier Peter North (Jukka Puotila) back in 1944, in Lapland. Their escape leads them to be pursued by not only the Mental Institute's doctors Rasikangas and Kulokoski (Mari Turunen and Kari Hietalahti) but by the police as well.
The motley crew arrives at Elmeri's father's site but are unable to extract a reasonable amount of gold from the river. At the dead of night Jönssi stumbles on a buried German motorbike and the bodies of two dead SS-troopers. They find out that the motorbike's side-cart carries a chest full of Third Reich gold.
Later a police-pursuit lands the group on the grounds of gay baron Eugen von Lahtinen (Vesa-Matti Loiri) during a poetry-themed spring-celebration. The gold-exchanger that the group goes to, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge (Oiva Lohtander), turns out to be working for a secret Nazi-organization. Through this contact Peter North , still alive and well, learns that Elmeri has found his gold and he returns to Finland. When Hautamäki returns to exchange the rest of the gold for cash he ends up in hand-to-hand combat with North. Hautamäki wins the fight (by asking North for a cigarette).
The gold is split among the good guys, Broman marries baron von Lahtinen, becoming the mistress of his estate. Jönssi becomes the owner of the food-processing plant from which he and his brother were fired from at the beginning of the film. Dille becomes a professor at the University of Tampere. Elmeri marries a call-girl named Vanessa and has many children. He takes Peter North's name in order to stay out of the mental asylum. Peter North ends up locked up in a Mental Institution under Hautamäki's name for the rest of his life.