Virgin Sacrifice

Virgin Sacrifice (1959)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

As a child an adventurer saw a virgin sacrificed and he swore he'd never see such things again. Years later he's back in the jungle and a female friend of his is kidnapped by an evil tribe so he must track them down before they kill her. Even at 63-minutes this film here seems extremely long and the final half hour especially as we just see the same places over and over again as we really do have to sit through a track chase. It's funny but the company who made this, Releasing Corporation of Independent Producers, is the funniest thing in the film. The tagline and trailer promised that a real deadly Indian tribe was used for the movie but there were several scenes where you could tell it was a white man with mud (or something) on him. The performances are all rather bland but we do get some nice footage of some wildlife. Director Wagner was apparently a very popular stage director in Mexico and he certainly keeps the film moving as well as he could but there wasn't too much even Kubrick could have done with this thing. Wagner would appear in several films as an actor including the classic THE WILD BUNCH. By the time this movie ends I was really bored out of my mind and that's not good especially considering the short running time. This was the last film on Something Weird's triple feature and playing third is exactly where it belongs.

Dubbed dialog, artless lighting, and science-film acting weaken what is otherwise a terrible adventure movie. The muddled and repetitive story concerns a white hunter who goes to South America, where he meets pretty Morena, a colleague's daughter. A native comes to town and picks Morena to be the tribe's virgin sacrifice. He and his pals kill papa and drag her off, spurring the white hunter to rescue her.

Early on, we get a little bondage nudity (a surprise for 1959) and jaguar wrasslin'. An excessive cantina dance sequence gets in the way, altho I'm not sure of what... the worst dream-sequence effects ever? Most of the film is a pursuit thru the jungle... with lame booby traps (as usual, pythons stand in for venomous stakes) and a climactic death match of the sort that the original Star Trek was so fond of.

Filmed in color, the location shots look surprisingly good (as does the captive Morena), but are edited with badly-matched studio shots. The producers would have been better off just shooting stock footage to sell to more serious film-makers. The trailer for Tarzana: The Wild Girl had more thrills.

VIRGIN SACRIFICE is a cheapie jungle adventure flick with stock footage from Guatemala and a romantic plotline that makes little sense in terms of depth or characterisation. The protagonist is a great white hunter who falls in love with a native girl, only to discover that she's destined to be sacrificed by a vituous jungle tribe, so he goes off to rescue her. This tawdry effort is padded out with endless jungle footage and random kookaburra sounds (?!). The opening scene of female nudity is an openly desperate gambit to grab the viewer's attention, and it's all downhill from there. For meatier jungle fare, try CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST...

My husband Gary had a father who made a movie or two. He made this. I really enjoy the talent that was put into making this film. Overall, 10/10. (Ignore this part) gfdgfdgdffdgfdgfdgvbzdhfdbvhfdbnnvfdjnvjdfvnhdfbvfhdbvmdfbgjfdbjhfdbvjhfdbvjhfdbvjhdfbvjhdfbvjhfdvbjhfdbvhfdbvhfdbvhfdvbjdfbvjbvfbvjhdfbvjhfbvdfhbvhjbvjhdfbvjhfdbvjhfdbvhjdbvdfjbvfhbvhjdfbvbvfd.