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France
- Spain / 1986
Directors: Alain Payet, Jess Franco
Starring
Analía
Ivars
William Berger
Françoise Blanchard
Color / 82 Minutes
/ Not
Rated
Format:
DVD
/ R1 - NTSC
Shriek
Show
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If
you're hoping for something like Xena: Warrior Princess
—
only with titties —
well, forget it. If you're
expecting a Jess Franco-helmed slice of Eurosleaze (with all
the bad and good that may connote), think again. Franco
was involved with Golden Temple
Amazons, at least on the
margins, or so says Eurociné producer Daniel Lasoeur
in the on-camera interview included on this DVD; he participated
in crafting the none-too-original scenario. Although he's often
credited as co-director (with Frenchman Alain Payet, under the
collective alias "James Gartner") and the film itself
is labeled "A Jess Frank*
Presentation" in the opening titles, I seriously doubt
that Franco shot more than a few minutes of this crap —
if that.
The story's
pretty silly. Somewhere in present-day Africa, a troop of topless
(Caucasian) warrior-women on horseback ride up to an outpost
in the jungle and put a few arrows into the husband and wife
missionaries who dwell there. The slain couple's five year old
daughter, Liana, is spared but left behind by the Amazons. Zip
forward 16 years; little orphan Liana (Franco regular Analía
Ivars, billed here as "Joan Virly") has grown up in
the wild a la Tarzan, a half-naked 'savage' who's a friend
to all the cute and cuddly jungle animals. (Barefoot, dressed
in fur leggings and a loincloth, our heroine spends the entire
movie bare-breasted. But where'd she get the perm? The Mutia
Escarpment Hair & Nails Salon?) A priest who knew her parents
shows up at the outpost one day and, instead of offering Liana
a shirt, reads to her from her father's journal. In a flashback
sequence we see Pops, out hunting, stumble upon the Amazons'
hidden fortress —
a "bunker" (as he calls it) seemingly made of gold.
Sneaking around the place, he discovers that it sits atop a
fabulous gold mine worked by slaves. Grabbing a few nuggets
that happen to be lying around, Dad escapes from the pursuing
Amazons and and makes his way back home, telling his wife that
they'll soon be incredibly rich. But emissaries from the Amazon
temple soon appear, demanding the return of the stolen gold
and that he and his family leave the jungle forever. Stinking
drunk (some missionary, huh?), Dad merely laughs and tells 'em
to piss off. In a replay of what we've already been shown in
the film's opening (although it appears to be a different take
of the same scene), Liana's parents are perforated, leaving
the girl orphaned.
Liana vows to avenge their deaths. She sets off to find the
Amazon temple, picking up a goofy witchdoctor named Kou-Kou
(pronounced "Koo Koo") as a sidekick along the way.
(Constantly babbling gibberish, this guy gets irritating very
quickly.) Near the Amazons' territory the duo encounters a safari
of white people — an archeologist, his shapely, nubile wife
and a scruffy guide who looks like one of the Oak Ridge Boys
— searching the area for "lost civilizations". Immodest
Mrs. Archeologist strips buck naked to go for a refreshing swim,
but passes out when exploring a gas-filled cave and is captured
by the Amazons. While looking for her everyone else is likewise
taken prisoner and thrown in the temple dungeon by Rena (Françoise
Blanchard), sadistic, one-eyed captain of the Amazonian guards.
She wants to torture and kill the captives for sport but the
high priest of the temple, Uruck (Euro-Cult veteran William
Berger, looking either stoned or really hung over), takes a
fancy to the buxom Jungle Girl. (Excuse me for just a sec...
Why is the leader of the Amazons a man???) Rena can do
what she wants with the others but Liana is to be tested to
see if she's Amazon material. Their race, Uruck says, needs
"new blood"...
Extraordinarily stupid, Golden
Temple Amazons could've
easily been aimed at the elementary school crowd if not for
all the nudity. There's no gore, only some relatively mild torture,
and the film's padded with pointless footage of cute elephants,
lion cubs and chimps. (Shot at an exotic animal park in Spain,
you can see a car drive by in the background during one of the
jungle scenes.) It's an extremely cheap-looking production,
even by Eurociné standards; the fabulous wealth of the
temple mine is depicted with sheets of gold-painted tinfoil
glued to the walls of a cave. Analía Ivars, though cute and
possessing a nice rack, isn't exactly the athletic, statuesque
beauty needed for something this ridiculous to even halfway
work. She's certainly no Evelyne Kraft (Mighty
Peking Man) or Tanya Roberts (Sheena),
that's for sure. And the plot of this Tarzan ripoff/jungle adventure
— normally not the most intellectually challenging of subgenres
to begin with, mind you — is amazingly dumb... What are
these barbaric white women doing in the middle of Africa?
Why are these Amazons (all eight of 'em) so possessive of their
gold? They don't seem to profit from it in any way, living rather
crudely except for the glaringly modern sofa adorning Uruck's
private chamber.
The acting is every bit as awful as the dialog,
which the pathetic dubbing fortunately renders quite humorous
at times. ("Help, please, monkey! Now!") A chintzy, über-repetitious
synthesizer/drum machine score may well drive you to distraction.
Yet as wretched as the film is, Golden
Temple Amazons is unquestionably more entertaining than
Hammer's horrendous Prehistoric
Women (1966).
'Cause
it's got titties in it. (Sorry about that... I just wanted a
chance to say "titties" one more time.)
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*
One of Franco's scores of film aliases.
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Shriek
Show (an imprint of Media Blasters) has done far better by this
title than it truly deserves. Aside from some dirt during the
opening/closing minutes and a fleeting instance or two of minor
damage, the print used for the anamorphic 1.66:1 transfer looks
nearly pristine. Audio quality is strong, clear and distortion-free.
Frankly, I was surprised by the amount of extras
included. You
get an 8-minute reel of alternate scenes (more animal footage,
topless elephant riding, and slow-mo topless horseback riding);
a lengthy still gallery; a promotional trailer running almost
9 minutes; four Shriek Show trailers (Nightmares
Come at Night, Faceless, Massacre
in Dinosaur Valley, The Man from Deep
River); and the aforementioned interview with Eurociné's
Daniel Lasoeur (14 minutes). Note: The cast and credits listed
on the packaging are from a different film altogether. (Lina Romay
is nowhere to be seen in the actual movie.) 2/26/05 |
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