Secret of the Incas (1954)

As another review noted, it's kitsch and camp. There's also appeal in seeing Heston in an early role and having as a villain the absent minded uncle from It's a Wonderful Life. TV's Marcus Welby also shows up, equally stiff playing a lonely archaeologist. There's also a white Australian in really bad tanning makeup playing an Indian named Pachacutik.The biggest appeal for me and many others is its glimpse of Peruvian Indians. IOW, whenever Heston and the other white actors step aside and let us see a bit of the real Peru. Large parts of the film show Quechua Indians, esp three great musical numbers from the legendary Yma Sumac.Other parts are pretty revealing of the colonial mentality of the times, incredibly ignorant parts that make anyone who knows anything about Peru laugh out loud: Pachacutik as an Indian name? That's like an Italian calling himself Tiberius. Machu Pichu as a "lost" city in 1954? When it already had thousands of visitors a day. A hokey prophecy that "Incan" Indians have been waiting on? That's just as fake as the 2012 hoax. Calling them "Incan" Indians is like calling Italians "Caesars." That's the title of emperors. And also, Heston's Spanish is incredibly bad. His pronunciation is so impossible to understand it becomes a dialect unknown in Heaven or Earth.So whenever someone white speaks in the film, don't rely on it as truth about Peru or its Natives. The other scenes, yes, definitely worth seeing.

Secret of the Incas is directed by Jerry Hopper and written by Sydney Boehm and Ranald MacDougall. It stars Charlton Heston, Nicole Maurey, Thomas Mitchell, Robert Young and Glenda Farrell. Music is by David Buttolph and cinematography by Lionel Lindon.Harry Steele (Heston) is an adventurer searching for a hidden piece of Incan treasure in the Peruvian lands. But others are interested in the item as well, for differing reasons...I have to wonder if I have just watched a different version to some other on line reviewers? I have seen quotes attributed to Secret of the Incas that range from rip-roaring action to ebullient adventure, odd, then, that it really is neither of those things. Oh it's fun enough, bolstered by a rugged Heston and a shifty Mitchell, but it's hardly action orientated. In fact it doesn't gather pace until the last twenty minutes. The dialogue is often twee, the characterisations atypical of the genre, while a shift in attitudes for our hero is sadly unsurprising. There's no bad performances, mind, just that what they are given to work with is bordering on the mundane.Where the pic scores highly is with its stunning Peruvian vistas, awash with Technicolour, it's high end photography from Lindon (Oscar winner for Around the World in Eighty Days). Also of note is Hopper's good use of extras, hundreds of them, he knows how to craft a good scene and keeps the pic interesting when the flaccid screenplay threatens to sink the interest value without trace. Correctly cited as one of the biggest influences on Indiana Jones (specifically Raiders of the Lost Ark), anyone who has seen both films will know "Incas" influence is great. They will also know why "Raiders" is so beloved by the action/adventure film fan, it's because it "IS" an action/adventure film of some substance. Sadly "Incas", as watchable as it is, is pretty run-of-the- mill stuff that finds decent enough characters struggling to find any action or indeed, any adventure. 6/10

A good cast and story line could have been an Indiana Jones adventure, but it just doesn't click for me.. Heston plays the bad guy that is looking out for himself going after the Inca treasure. But he fails to make you believe it, and instead comes off as just being sleazy. The real low for me is when Yma Sumac, the Inca Priestess, for lack of a better description of her part, sings. Wow. I have no idea what the director had in mind, but whale calls would have been better. If that is authentic Peruvian folk singing, then I'm a monkey's uncle. It just blows the entire movie for me. The scenery is magnificent and some of the camera shots outstanding. There is some entertainment value here, but the director could have got more mileage out of both the story line and his cast.

This is the most disappointing Heston film I've seen, redeemed only by the scenery and Yma Sumac's singing. The sound on my recording wasn't great and I wasn't clear why Elena Antonescu was so important a refugee. She may have arrived in Peru with very little money but she was very well dressed, even after she had changed into clothing more suitable for her flight; thus she joined the long list of women able to retain their glamour despite arduous conditions. At least we were spared the cliché of her being frightened by wild life though Heston did get to spy on her as she bathed (not in a jungle pool, but indoors). Heston's character is far from likable and there was no-one much else to empathise with; Robert Young's archaeologist was very likable until he proposed marriage to Elena. (Sad old man.) Another commentator has noted how the gold starburst seems very lightweight, and early on in the film I noted a reference to it weighing 30 pounds, which makes the elderly Mitchell's flight even more athletic. That was just about the only action in the film.