Treasure of Tayopa (1974)

Another Mill Creek Drive-in 50-pack film. This one should be retitled to "Garbage of Tayopa" -- it's completely garbage. 100% trash not one thing salvageable about this snooze-fest.Z-grade acting. Almost anyone can do this film because acting talent is not what they were looking for - everything sounds staged and phony. The one scene with the sun glaring in the camera seemed to drag on and on... time filler I would guess.This is the most boring treasure hunt you can watch. You are much better off gathering up your family and friends to treasure hunt in your back yard - you'd have more fun than watching this dreary film.1/10

Treasure of Tayopa is about four people who go on an expedition in Mexico in search of lost gold. The group consists of a no nonsense female leader, an exposition-spouting older man, a long haired hothead called Sally and a Mexican side-kick. It's a real obscurity and a bit of an oddball movie overall. Much of its strangeness is on account of how shabbily it has been brought to the screen. Its poorness in most areas has resulted in a film with a somewhat strange ambiance.It could best be described as a semi-western adventure film. But it's quite difficult becoming very involved with the mission itself as it's never exactly very well presented. In fact, it's more than a little boring for much of the time unfortunately. Events are enlivened, however, with some scenes of excessive violence committed by the character Sally, who turns out to be a bit of a psychopath, albeit a somewhat annoying one. His crimes include doubling back to massacre a group of Mexicans for a decidedly minor infraction and administering a bloody whipping to the leading lady. As I say, it's all rather strange but it does feature some decent folk rock on the soundtrack, of a type that I am quite partial to. On the whole, this is one only for the most intrepid cinema fan.

Four folks, including a lady who's name I've forgotten already, a guy called Tom, a guide and translator Phillipe (for whom the actor who plays him receives a credit for doing everyone's hair) and a crazy guy called Sally, head off into Mexico to find the fabled Treasure of Tayopa, said to be hidden in a mine somewhere in the mountains. They run into some dodgy banditos but none turn out to be as dodgy as Sally, who doubles back to massacre the bandits for pushing his horse! With the one remaining bandito in pursuit, the quartet head into the hills, but, as the lead actress says rather stiltedly "An air of tragedy has befallen us". Strangely introduced by a Mexican guy drinking hooch and stumbling over his own lines, Treasure of Tayopa is a very obscure wilderness movie full of weirdness (we hear the thoughts of our protagonists as they trudge through the land), brief gore and nastiness, really bad acting, a bit of skinny dipping and endless shots of people riding horses. Although very low budget and hard going at times, there are glimpses of that good old seventies grimness, as Sally uses his crossbow and machete to make short work of the bandits (who were, after all, planning to kill the explorers), and turns his craziness on his friends, including giving out a nasty beating to our lead lady. I can't see anyone but obscure movie fans seeking this one out, but be warned, this is strictly amateur hour, but it does have its charms (the 'host' is hilarious in his ineptitude and faux philosophy), and I might be going easy on the film as I'm kind of a sucker for 'people stuck in the wilderness with treacherous companions' movies (like 'Four Rode Out' and 'Apache Blood'). The bad acting goes a long way in this film too, and for those seeking it out, I hope you like lots of salaried shots!

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.