Woodyanders Review of Les amazones du temple d'or

Les amazones du temple d'or (1986)

An enjoyably goofy trekking through the jungle action/adventure romp

[8/10 · 28 November 2006]

Orphaned as a little girl after a tribe of evil topless Amazons kill her parents, feisty Liana (comely, shapely brunette hottie supreme Analia Ivars) grows up to be a sort of perky distaff Tarzan. Liana joins an expedition to find a fortress that's built on top of a gold mine. Naturally, the expedition members run afoul of the evil Amazon tribe that's led by nefarious high priest Uruck (an amusingly stolid William Berger) and his cruel, wicked mistress Rena (ripely essayed with fiendish relish by Eva Leon, who sports a black eyepatch and little else). Competently directed with a reasonable amount of flair by Alain Payat and an uncredited Jess Franco, this flick has all the right junky ingredients to pass muster as an entertainingly trashy affair: copious gratuitous nudity (the sumptuously slinky Alicia Principe is especially notable in this department; her skinny-dipping scene is a definite highlight of the movie), an endearingly hackneyed script by George Freeland, mild violence, a fat, bald, bumbling comic relief witch doctor named Koukou (the hilarious Stanley Koupal), crisp photography by Henry Frogers, torture, breathtakingly beautiful jungle scenery, rape, a bouncy, throbbing rock score by Norbert Verrone, lousy acting, choice campy dialogue ("Evil ghost close gate of hell!"), a snappy pace, poor dubbing, an ineptly staged bat attack, and an excellent knock-down, drag-out no-holds-barred cat fight between Liana and Rena. Alas, the topless Amazon women on horseback are a decidedly mixed bag: Some are hot; most are not. That minor quibble aside, this picture overall provides a good deal of goofy fun.