LOST TREASURE OF THE INCAS (1964)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

I was strongly tempted to alter the title's use of "Incas" to "Aztecs," because all through the film the mysterious Indians with the barely seen treasure are called "Aztecs." I'm sure that there have been any number of lost-world stories about Incas. But the fact remains that there's no sense in doing a lost-world in the American Southwest of the 1880s and thinking that Incas are going to pop up in that domain. If the recrudescent Indian tribe is in the American Southwest, or in Mexico, then THEY'RE BLOODY AZTECS!!

TREASURE was one of three peplum films director Piero Pierotti made with bodybuilder-star Alan Steel, the others being HERCULES AND THE MASKED RIDER and HERCULES AGAINST ROME. However, because the bloom was off the rose for the strongman-movies, the producers cancelled plans for the flick to take place in the dim and dusty past, and had their hero-- still known as "Samson" in the Italian title-- become a righteous cowboy. This was supposedly a response to the success of the pioneering spaghettti western A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, though TREASURE's hero, broad-shouldered Arizona Smith, is closer to Roy Rogers than Clint Eastwood.

Arizona and his buddy Alan ride around doing odd jobs, in between which Arizona rides into such-and-such a town to flirt with pretty schoolmarm Jenny (Brigitte Heiberg). But there's a fancy-dressing Eastern dude, Darmon, who's jockeying for power in the same town, so you know he and Arizona are bound to butt heads. I was never sure what Darmon's main criminal aim was, but he has a man killed and frames Alan for it. Alan heads for the hills despite Arizona's attempt to bring him in for a fair trial.

In the wilderness Alan happens across a young Indian woman, though he mistakes her for a boy because her attire is so unfeminine. The woman is Princess Mysia (Anna Maria Polani), and she's escaped from the mountain stronghold of a lost tribe of Aztecs. Her royal status is not much of a benefit, for her people happen to have chosen a dormant volcano as their home (don't you hate it when that happens), and Mysia's purpose is to be "married," i.e, sacrificed, to the volcano god to keep the deity from drowning the whole tribe in hot lava. During her travels with Alan Mysia falls in love with the secondary hero, and when the Aztecs overtake the two of them, Mysia agrees to go back and be sacrificed in order to save the young cowboy's life. All of these developments will eventually lead to Darmon and his gang storming the Aztec citadel to steal their gold, while Arizona and his allies seek to thwart the dirty owlhoots.

Before we get to the big standoff between Cowboys and Aztecs, TREASURE is a very slow slog, despite a couple of barroom brawls. The script even throws in a secondary love interest for Arizona, a saloon girl named Ilona, but she has so few scenes, she could have been cut with no consequences to the story. (Maybe in the archaic version of the story she had a bigger "bad girl" role?) There's a tiny bit of comic byplay with the town barber, who's also the mortician, but that's underdone as well.

The film does perk up somewhat with the big finish, as the two sets of cowboys blast away at each other while the Aztecs pick off their enemies with arrows. (The schoolmarm manages to go along with Arizona's bunch and even manages to shoot one of the bad guys.) The Aztecs' method of sacrifice is visually interesting: a big metal idol-head built into a temple-wall, made so that lava from the volcano's depths emerges from the idol's mouth to immolate anyone placed under the flow. The Indians are already somewhat aware that a big eruption is on the way, but they think a mass sacrifice of their captives, mostly surviving good guys, will fix their problems-- until "Samson" busts loose.

But no, there's no pulling down any pillars here. Arizona is an ordinary guy, and his only feat is lifting one Indian attacker and tossing him to the side. The pillars do come down, but it's because of the volcano's fury, and all the good guys escape, along with good girl Mysia, while the Aztec colony returns to the dust.

Aside the mildly diverting design of the volcano-idol, TREASURE's only value is the performance of Heiberg as Schoolmarm Jenny. While Alan Steel just does his impression of a walking rock, Heiberg really communicates the sense of her being in love with the galoot, sometimes coquettish, sometimes playfully stern. She's certainly better than anyone else in the movie, though as it happened, the actress only made three other films in her short career.