User Reviews

This is a very strange movie from start to finish. We follow a bunch of characters that we know little about. We have no reason to root for them or hope they get the treasure/make it out alive/whatever. Then the leader (Rena Winters) goes out of her way to be distant, cold and boring. The other male leader of the group is just basically there for exposition, so the only character interaction is between the ridiculously bad overacting of a guy named "Sally". There is a fourth member of the team Phillipe, but rarely says or does much (or even appears in shots) unless they need a Spanish translator or a fourth vote.

Sally is supposed to be crazy, but he just seems to be an annoying idiot, but a harmless one at first. Eventually we learn a little about Sally and Phillipe, but not much, and not enough to care about either of their fate, or to justify or explain Sally's later actions.

There seemed to be at least one scene missing from my DVD (Mill Creek "Drive-In Classics" 50 movie pack) because Rena Winters' narration stops mid-sentence at one point and the scene changes. Maybe that was the scene where everything is explained so we care if she makes it out OK. The possibility of more missing scenes would explain why when our group of four meet a group of Mexicans, none of them acknowledge or seem to notice that they'd already met one of them in their travels, even though he'd been the source of much suspicion and discussion afterward.

The local Mexicans they encounter encompass every bad stereotype imaginable. I admit I've never been to Mexico, but I'm pretty sure that even by the 70's the stereotype of "banditos" with sombreros, covered in bullets and swigging tequila was already long outdated and offensive.

Pretty boring up to this point (I was about to give up) the movie suddenly jumps to unprovoked bloody violence. Back to total boredom for a while, then even more killing, beating, whipping until pretty much everybody is dead. None of the deaths really seem to have meaning or are presented with any sense of emotion at all.

Between all this oddity there's some pretty bizarre camera work with the "passage of time" montages using sometimes triple, sometimes quadruple exposures to have sunsets, mountains, closeups, and our four "heroes" walking all in the same frame. Pretty arty stuff for such a dumb movie.

The appearance of on-camera storyteller/narrator at the beginning and end was also very strange.

This film could be a "so bad it is good" film. It takes a log time to develop. The part I liked best was Gilbert Roland talking to the audience with a drink in his hand. I was ready to hear him say, "Stay thirsty my friends." A group of people look in Mexico for the Tayopa treasure left behind by padre miners killed in 1646 in Arizona according to the narration. Kathryn (Rena Winters) leads a small group of men who are ready to strap 17 tons of treasure to their backs and walk out. A crazy man named Sally (Phil Trapani) has his eye on Kathryn. There is also a snake curse.

It takes 50 minutes to get to Tayopa. There is a lot of dialogue and narration. The action was minimal. Kathryn gets naked and we get to see underwater blurred nudity. They do use metal detectors to look for the treasure. Is there a metal detector that works with the detector held at waist level? No reason. Just asking.

Guide: No swearing, sex. Near nudity. Some unintended camp value.

If you need to watch the worst movies you've ever seen, be sure to include this one on your list! It seems to have been inspired by The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but the only thing it shares with that movie are the words "The Treasure of" in the title. The acting ranges from bad to dreadful, the plot is so simplistic it might have come out of a middle school film class, and the photography and editing would have to be improved to rise to mediocrity. The music, at least as far as I was concerned, was passable in creating a nice western ambiance, and as a lover of the Arizona terrain, I enjoyed the scenery...which I noted from the credits was around the Carefree Resort, where my wife and I have stayed a number of times. It would be fun to do a "blooper" roll on this film, except it might be longer than the film itself. One standout boo-boo: after being savagely whipped, with her back covered in "blood," Rena Winters appears in a subsequent scene with a back as clean as a whistle and no signs of any blood--or even abuse--whatsoever. She does, however, retain her fake eyelashes throughout. The strangely named "Sally"--a psycho/cowboy--is the western version of Marty Feldman, and the main male lead, whose real name and character name I already forgot, sounds more like the Vice President of a New York advertising agency than a cowpoke in charge of a band of cowboy treasure hunters. All this notwithstanding, I found this to be a watchable film you will not have to do too much thinking about. Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood need not worry about competition.

Yeah, nearly a decade after this movie was released in theaters, it came back out as Raiders of the Treasure of Tayopa because sometimes people get confused at the video store.

Writers Robert Mason and Phillip Michel, as well as director Bob Cawley and most of the actors in this movie, all were one and done with this film as their lone attempt at making it.

Well, they didn't.

Except for Gilvert Roland, the one-time Cisco Kid, is the narrator. Yet two of the charcacters also narrate the film, which is different. So is having a female lead in a Western. But as three people and one psychopath head to Mexico to take seventeen tons of gold back to America.

You may see the beginning - a cockfight - and think, "This is going to be some watchable sleaze." But it isn't. It isn't even sleaze. It's Treasure of the Sierra Madre without talent, storytelling, visual appeal or Bogart, but it does have a bad guy who is a man named Sally. One assumes that his father named him that because he knew that he wouldn't be there to help him along, so he gave him that name and said goodbye, and he knew Sally would have to get tough or die.

Can you imagine renting this and expecting movie serial style action? The box art just screams desperation and disappointment and now, this film lies waiting for you amongst 49 other movies.

A wise man once said, "Marion, don't look at it. Shut your eyes, Marion. Don't look at it, no matter what happens."

You should listen to him.

Joking aside, this is a competently made, if rather low budget, thriller about a bunch of gringos (and Fillipe) who trek off into the Sierra Madres in search of . . . the treasure of Tayopa. Duh. Despite the cowboy hats and six-shooters it's less of a western and more of a '70s survivalist movie, with Trapani stealing the show as crazy ass Sally . . . though all of the actors are good, especially Rena Winters, who I could swear I've seen elsewhere, though the IMDb lists this as her sole credit.

Numerous spoilers follow.

After being introduced to our main characters the film jumps into a bit of back story, with "host/star" Gilbert Roland's narration accompanied by murals of the (fictional?) 17th century Tayopa mission, where Jesuit priests mined gold until they were massacred by Indians. Quickly enough we segue back into our tale, where, as already mentioned, Sally proves himself to be one messed upped mutha, coming on to Rena with increasing frequency and intensity, harassing Fillipe the guide, and locking horns with the ineffectual Stoppard. Along their merry way to Tayopa Sally murders some bandito types ("They pushed my horse - nobody does that" is a cheesy line, but Trapani made me believe it), resulting in the party being stalked by the ruffians' former employer, a sinister looking fellow dressed all in black. And he has a scar. But he's nice to his horse. Upon reaching their destination Sally snaps completely, attempts to rape Rena, kills Stoddard and Fillipe, and finally dies laughing maniacally, after his head is bashed in with a rock. The sinister fella only shows up to witness the aftermath. He is NOT the villain of the piece after all, despite what Mill Creek's product write up states. Really, most of the action centers on Rena and Sally, as individuals and as antagonists to each other. Rena shows herself as particularly resilient, at one point eating raw rattlesnake to stave off death, only after crawling out of a creek half-drowned and covered in welts. In her dying moments, she hallucinates (as I interpreted it) a priest, who offers her water. She dies. The end.

After all that unpleasantness, Roland again addresses the audience, restating his assertion that "Tayopa's past will continue to drive people to search today, and plan to search for tomorrow."

---Spoilers end---

Despite its low budget, Treasure of Tayopa makes good use of editing techniques and cinematography. I really can't see why it's as obscure as it is, or why nobody connected to it went on to bigger and better things.