My review was written in May 1987 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.
They hardly come as chintzy as "Treasure of the Moon Goddess", a talkative "adventure" film that recalls those listless 1940s thrillers made on poverty row in Hollywood. This pic was started in Manila in 1984 and finished up in Mexico in 1986, but for all its absent production values it might as well have been shot on the back lot.
Pic is yet another opus in the vein of "Romancing the Stone". Don Calfa dictates his autobiographical novel to a shapely oriental secretary while the viewer is treated to illustrated footage of his purported adventures. As sleazy manager to a small-time songstress played by Linnea Quigley, Calfa buckles under to a gangster's wishes and arranges to have boat captain Asher Brauner deliver Quigley to a South American town called Quintana. En route, local natives and the gangsters vie to capture her, to exploit her resemblance to the local idol of the moon goddess.
Amidst stock footage of flora and fauna, lifelessly static action scenes and Calfa's hyper attempts at comic relief, pic plods along with the heroes repeatedly getting captured, escaping and captured once again. It turns out that Quigley really is the hoped-for goddess, but the natives illogically let her and everyone go at the end to set up several contradictory happy endings.
The two sets of basic footage do not match up well and lots of transition material is missing. Lack of a big action setpieced undoubtedly will disappoint adventure fans.
Calfa is the best part of the pic, looking in his white suit like a latterday Peter Lorre and twice as untrustworthy. Oddly enough, the other characters are also ringers: Quigley is styled to look and act like Goldie Hawn (whom she normally resembles not one whit); lead Asher Brauner seems an older relative of Michael Dudikoff and his romantic partner, Jo-Ann Ayres, is a dead ringer for Theresa Russell. It's not an assignment that advances any of their careers.
They hardly come as chintzy as "Treasure of the Moon Goddess", a talkative "adventure" film that recalls those listless 1940s thrillers made on poverty row in Hollywood. This pic was started in Manila in 1984 and finished up in Mexico in 1986, but for all its absent production values it might as well have been shot on the back lot.
Pic is yet another opus in the vein of "Romancing the Stone". Don Calfa dictates his autobiographical novel to a shapely oriental secretary while the viewer is treated to illustrated footage of his purported adventures. As sleazy manager to a small-time songstress played by Linnea Quigley, Calfa buckles under to a gangster's wishes and arranges to have boat captain Asher Brauner deliver Quigley to a South American town called Quintana. En route, local natives and the gangsters vie to capture her, to exploit her resemblance to the local idol of the moon goddess.
Amidst stock footage of flora and fauna, lifelessly static action scenes and Calfa's hyper attempts at comic relief, pic plods along with the heroes repeatedly getting captured, escaping and captured once again. It turns out that Quigley really is the hoped-for goddess, but the natives illogically let her and everyone go at the end to set up several contradictory happy endings.
The two sets of basic footage do not match up well and lots of transition material is missing. Lack of a big action setpieced undoubtedly will disappoint adventure fans.
Calfa is the best part of the pic, looking in his white suit like a latterday Peter Lorre and twice as untrustworthy. Oddly enough, the other characters are also ringers: Quigley is styled to look and act like Goldie Hawn (whom she normally resembles not one whit); lead Asher Brauner seems an older relative of Michael Dudikoff and his romantic partner, Jo-Ann Ayres, is a dead ringer for Theresa Russell. It's not an assignment that advances any of their careers.