Cast:
Charlton Heston (Harry Steele), Robert Young (Stanley Moorhead), Nicole Maurey (Elena Antonescu), Thomas Mitchell (Ed Morgan), Glenda Farrell (Mrs. Winston), Yma Sumac (Kori-Tika), Michael Pate (Pachacutec), and Leon Askin (Anton Marcu) Directed by Jerry Hopper.
Review:
Inspiration is an interesting thing to define. When interviewed for her work as costume designer for the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, Deborah Nadoolman Landis talked about the costume of its main hero Indiana Jones and the inspiration for the character's clothing being this feature, adding "We did watch this film together as a crew several times, and I always thought it strange that the filmmakers did not credit it later as the inspiration for the series." Of course, when filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg wanted to guide the production crew on what the film should seem like in style and acting, this was one of the films, while the other was China (1943, featuring Alan Ladd), and it just so happens each movie was released by Paramount Pictures. Really though, looking at this feature under any eyes as some sort of proto-Indiana Jones is a bad idea, because it forgets the basic truth for this feature: it's just a mediocre adventure with a guy in a hat and leather jacket looking for fortune and glory (at least without an artifact that melts people's skin off). I don't mean to clog up a review for one film with stuff for another, but it is evident to see and say why one film has endured for forty years in the popular culture while the other has essentially languished in lesser stature after half a century, and it is the general energy in the adventure that makes that evident. I mean, we are talking a movie about a guy who likes to call himself a "tour guide" for gullible tourists coming off the plane in Peru who just happens to find part of a relic (which I will call the doohickey) that if found intact can help him find a shinier doohickey linked to the end of the ancient Incas; of course he has to find a way to travel there, so when someone conveniently happens to need to escape a person with a plane (so he can "borrow" it, get it?), he just happens to get himself to Machu Pichu to find the doohickey that already had archaeologists ready to find the doohickey for the natives. The only other thing that might make it seem different is the fact that the film was actually shot on location in Peru and that the film was for a time really hard to find on video formats. Besides, director Hopper would basically be more known for his work on television (ranging from Wagon Train to The Fugitive) more so than his features, with this being the fifth of his eighteen movies as director.
Technically speaking, there isn't anything too terrible to watch here for 98 minutes, it merely happens to just be a movie with very average marks for a film that lacks subtlety in the way one would expect from a noir, which fits the middling level excitement that you wouldn't think would happen in something meant to be an adventure. You get exactly what you would expect from a movie with blah chemistry and one clear unkempt adversary, which is really a whole bag of "okay, sure" - even having a random supporting character join in as a villain would have been a useful surprise to chuckle. This was the twelfth film role for Heston (who replaced Wendell Corey, initially cast as the lead), who by this point had cultivated a bit of success with features in the 1950s just before he became a bigger star. Even in a movie that resembles a B-flick, Heston still makes it a worthy time to at least try to watch, enterprising in his blunt approach to living that is in need of a lighter film or a noir with tension. This was actually the last film for Young, who had been acting in films since 1928; he might be best known for his second phase in acting on television, such as Father Knows Best (which he had the lead role in radio and television for eleven years). He really only shows up in the second half of the film (because remember, the film needs to spend quite a bit of time meandering before getting to the temple), and he seems a bit too quiet to really make an impression beyond just the blah-blah doctor role, and the idea of any chemistry with Maurey seems more like a father-daughter dynamic, really. Maurey plays a Romanian defector with the timing of a hat rack knocked down by a sloth. At least the Indiana Jones series would hone their craft in snappy chemistry between its leads without cribbing from the passé energy seen here. It might interest you to note that Mitchell was a prime star in film, television, and theatre (playing support roles generally just in the first category) that lasted for nearly half a century; he makes for an interesting unkempt kind of adversary, one that pops in from time to time to serve as a parallel to Heston of sorts (while being nearly undone by a terribly ironic last scene in which he is talking about gravity right before falling down a ravine).
It might interest you to note the presence of Yma Sumac, performing folk music native to Peru that had an octave range higher than most singers (four and half compared to most trainer singers with three). Of course, it also might not interest you to hear multiple performances of Sumac, because really it kind of drags the film down a bit in what we call "get to the point". The noir could probably get away with a song or two, but this is an adventure, not a stage show - now, if I watch a recording of an opera on film, then obviously I wouldn't make that statement. As a whole, there really isn't anything here that just screams for attention beyond just a mild experience with mild acting. If it wasn't for the "inspiration" part, it probably would have just lurked farther into obscurity, which means that basically this is a movie you watch to "look" for the moments or if one is interested in seeing Heston headline a movie before stuff like Ben-Hur (1959), I think. There's a plethora of movies from that era that are probably more suitable for a watch (good and... noticeably not good), and there are probably better adventure movies to sift through before/after this movie that one could probably look into, but if you really need to scratch the itch of curiosity over a somewhat obscure movie with a leather-clad fedora wearing hero, it might suit you. I can't endorse it as a winner, but I'm sure others will prove just fine (or less patient) with it.
Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.
