Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 7:7	Budget Medium

Why is it that when a film is set in the Amazon, the filmmakers feel the need to kill animals on screen?

The movie opens with a paddleboat steaming up the Amazon river. As a priest starts in on an impromptu sermon, one of the natives sneak up to the top deck and attempts to reach into the bag at the feet of a sleeping Stuart Whitman. Seemingly from a dead sleep, Whitman draws a knife and throws it, neatly severing one of the thief's fingers. A fight ensues, and the native goes over the rail and into the river which immediately garners the attention of the local population of alligators. However, before the gator's can get him, he is eaten by piranhas. We are next introduced to a charming couple of rouges with the only hydroplane in the region. Upon seeing a pair of eagles, the pilot throws the plane into a dive and slams into them. Surprisingly, this does not break the propeller and the duo continue on their merry way discussing the woman who accompanied them on their trek. At the same time, said woman Barbara (Ann Sydney) is getting the news that the company is withdrawing its support of the expedition and the team will have to go back home. Back on the boat, Stuart has decided to throw in with a couple of treasure hunters because he thinks that Claus (Donald Pleasance) and Marimba (Sonia Infante) know the location of his secret, the Treasure of the Amazon. We spend the next hour or so watching topless native girls, natives with blowguns, white guys shooting guns both randomly and at things, headhunters, killer crabs, more topless native girls and a whole series of double crosses before the movie ends.

Ron Cardona, Jr. would spawn this and several other movies as well as Ron Cardona the third who would in turn churn out his share of movies. One of the more common features of their movies would be on-screen animal slaughter. They are not the only filmmakers to go to the Amazon and film animal death, there are quite a number of Cannibal movies that feature this type of scene as well. My guess is that because this is the way the natives live, the filmmakers shoot it as a form of local color. If your film is set in Chicago, you'd better show a blues band in a bar. New Orleans? Some reference to Mardi Gras. London? The tower and its guards. The Rainforest? Natives preparing dinner. Those of us who are lucky enough not to have to kill our own food are often caught off guard by this casual slaughter. We tend to view film as fantasy and when reality rears its ugly head we can get surprised and upset. Still, Cardona seems to include more than his share of such scenes, including in this movie a couple of almost throw away scenes of alligators being shot.

Amusingly enough, Cardona seems to have rented an incredible menagerie of animals to serve as living wipes. As we move from one scene to another we are almost always treated to a glimpse of birds flying, monkeys playing in the trees, a tapir, small deer or leopards drinking from the river. I don't know as I would call it effective because I found it rather obvious, then annoying and then amusing in its persistence. Seriously, Whitman would glare at someone, we cut to some random shot of animals, then to Pleasance playing the world's most understated Nazi, back to a random jungle shot then to Ann Sydney doing something. Perhaps Cardona was trying to prove that he could put an animal in a film without killing it.

Stuart Whitman plays a character called Gringo who went into the jungle years ago with some friends on an ill fated treasure hunt. Whitman was the only survivor of the trip and as a memento he carries the shrunken heads of his friends in a bag. During a flashback we see Whitman witness the murder and decapitations of his companions and then watch him run out the jungle with a handful of tiny withered heads. Hmm, just how long did he hang around waiting for the heads to shrink. Having never actually shrunk a head, I am unclear on the process but I got to think it is going to take a while. You need to take out the skull and brains, then stuff the head with something to keep its shape, age the skin to make it leather and sew up various orifices. Surely this must take a while. I just wonder what he did while his order was being processed (so to speak).

We have three groups of people going to the same place at the same time and we are pretty sure that if Whitman and Pleasance got the chance to, they would kill each other. Whitman's group quickly finds Ann's group in time to save her but alas, too late to save her boyfriend. Despite knowing where the nazi is going and actually seeing him on the way there, Whitman and Pleasance never get any face time. How does our director avoid this conflict? They simply don't run into each other. Seriously, even though the storyline seems to call for a showdown between the two and gives the impression that they are geographically close enough to notice each other, they don't. Both groups spend a fair amount of time killing the local headhunters, an activity that features sustained bursts of gunfire and yet even that is not enough to make the two camps aware of each other. As to why they don't run into each other, I would guess it is because he ran out of cannon fodder. We know Pleasance is going to kill Miramba and we know that the local king is going to kill Pleasance. It is obvious that one of Whitman's partners will double cross and kill the other and that the surviving partner is going to end up dead at Whitman's hands (sort of). The girl is just a whiny little twerp that Whitman will have to protect which leaves no one. Which means that if Whitman and Pleasance did cross paths, it would be pretty anticlimactic.

I have to admire Whitman. Thirteen years after starring in "Night of the Lepus" he is still playing leads in B movies with bad props, terrible writing and worse actors. Whitman had put on a few pounds since Lepus but he looks good and solid and he has that big deep voice. At least he physically looks the part and you can believe that he could survive in the jungle eating snakes for snacks. And yes, his character's penchant for chowing down on the reptiles is a running joke.

A note about the nudity in the film and Sonia Infante in particular. This woman has some 72 movie credits listed at IMDB. She was 41 years old at the time Treasure was filmed which is impressive as she was pretty much naked for the entire movie. She wears some strip of cloth that is supposed to be an outfit, but only succeeds in covering up her nether regions. The local king has a small harem which includes two of Miramba's sisters. These woman show up every now and then to try to distract us from the bad acting by the guy who plays the local king and it sort of works. They swarm around him like a little school of fish. When Miramba hugs her two sisters, the big guy makes a point of telling her that no one is allowed to touch the women any more but him. I guess he is a bit of a control freak.

There is not a lot to recommend this film, but for its type it is not too bad. The slaughter of local animals is kept to a minimum and Whitman provides a solid base to the movie as the plot jumps all over the place. We never find out why Whitman simply didn't go back into the jungle and retrieve his diamond years ago. He first meets his new partners as they are following gold mining equipment because where there is gold mining equipment, there must be gold. But that trail leads to the nazi who is simply fishing diamonds out of a river bed. Nevertheless, he seems to haul this stuff into the jungle and then back out. But then again, I am not sure how much mining equipment you can pack in the two or three boxes the guys are following. A couple shovels? A pick? Block and tackle? Ah, well, it is never a good idea to look at plot points too closely in B movies, it tends to add to your confusion rather than clear it up.

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