Treasure of the Amazon

This Mexican adventure is a real treat for fans of cult movies.It has plenty of gore and violence including decapitations,throat cuttings etc.The scene where one guy has his eyes gouged out by some bloodthirsty crabs is the goriest bit and it reminds me the spiders sequence from Lucio Fulci's masterful "The Beyond"(1981).The cast is decent-a horror veteran Donald Pleasance("Halloween","Paganini Horror")shines as a Nazi adventurer.So if you are a fan of gory adventure movies like "Mountain of the Cannibal God" or "Cut and Run" give this one a look."The Treasure of the Amazon" is not easy to find though!

Gratuitous nudity, violence, gore, "action," over the hill stars looking of a payday and unintentional comedy. With that said it's at least 20 minutes longer than it needed to be which will test your feelings of it's so good it's bad to just bad. Luckily it saves the best for last with a third act filled with crosses and double crosses.

This Mexican gorefest is probably the funniest and most entertaining adventure movie ever made. In the 1950s, different people are looking for the treasure of the Amazon. For example a dubious woman, an elder man who knows the jungle (Whitman) and an old Nazi from Germany (great as ever: Pleasence). Not only are they trying to outwit each other, but they also have to fight blood thirsty crabs, crocodiles and other animals, and not to forget a vicious tribe of Indios who like to behead their victims as soon as they capture them.

Rene Cardona jr. surely didn't have that a big budget for this film, but he certainly does the best with it. Concerning gory effects, that is. In the most outrageous scene, a hapless adventurer gets his eyeballs ripped out by the vicious crabs, a scene which has to be inspired by Lucio Fulci's notorious spider-scene in "L'Aldilà - The Beyond".

This film is very trashy, but it's better entertainment than any other adventure film I know (the "Indiana Jones"-trilogy included), and it boosts a great role for horror veteran Donald Pleasence (as a really unpleasant guy) and enough nasty bloodshed to please every gorehound who wants to see something else for once.

That's what I call good, mindless fun!

A pretty decent adventure film from 1985 offers us several small groups of characters, each going into the wilds of the Amazon seeking different kinds of treasure. The movie is downright imaginative in the unpredictable kinds of trouble they encounter seeking out gold, diamonds or oil.

The good thing about the movie is how it depends on characterization although the visuals are great too. It's much better than most of the clueless action movies of 2007. For one thing the camera holds steady instead of shaking all over creation trying to fake suspense. Most of the 2007 era cheap tricks --- such as the vim vim vim vim sound tracks weren't invented yet.

Expect a disparate bunch of characters, mostly bad, a couple of girls with legs, and more fearful jungle creatures than you ever guessed existed.

After the movie, buzz down to Manaus, Brazil and spend a few days seeing things first hand.

There are those who would compare The Treasure of the Amazon to Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). They would be wrong. OK, This could have been an excellent movie, but it is not. The cast is great and at times actually demonstrates it, but the plot is so thin and ridiculous that it is extremely difficult to get into it at all.

Stuart Whitman stars as your typical aging adventurer who leads a group of misfits into the Amazon to find lost WW2 treasure. Most of the group is killed in various horrible and ridiculous ways. The only way I would recommend this film is if you are interested in seeing some top notch actors doing their best to make something of nothing.

The cast includes Whitman, star of such wonderful films as Rio Conchos and The Comancheros as the bull headed leader. Bradford Dillman, who starred opposite Robert Redford in The Way We Were, makes an appearance. Donald Pleasence, star of many classic films such as The Great Escape and The Eagle Has Landed, plays an evil Nazi. Rounding out the cast are John Ireland(Gunfight at the OK Corral 1957),Pedro Armendariez Jr.(License To kill 1989)and none other than Harold(Odd Job)Sakata.