Les Amazones du temple d'or

A curious and almost unknown adventure movie.

Directed jointly by the French director Alain Payet and the Spanish Jesús Franco, this French production can be defined as a simple B-series adventure film with the greatest incentive of seeing the aforementioned semi-nude Amazonas in the middle of a script whose simplicity and lack of depth does not prevent him from being entertained.

The story, basically, an adaptation of Tarzan in female, that of a young girl whose parents were killed by a savage tribe of Amazons, led by a mysterious leader whom they follow and worship as a god. The girl grows in the middle of a wild environment, raised by the family steward and with a monkey as best friend and that after running into a missionary, who will confess the truth about their parents will decide to go in search of revenge.

However, along the way you will run into a shaman from an African tribe with magic tricks and a couple of archaeologists who will accompany you in your journey through the jungle to the Golden Temple of the Amazons.

The film, mostly of scenes, is accompanied by a series of melodies set perhaps to disguise the lack of dialogue, giving the film a clearly dreamlike tone.

The lack of budget is more than evident, but they all supplement with wonderful natural settings, and a temple that is not badly made, the story simple, but clear, the girl the Spanish actress Analía Ivars is beautiful, and together, her Good photography and good rhythm make it an entertaining and pleasant product to see without a doubt.

I am now the proud owner of 26 Jess Franco movies, and after buying this one (as part of the Shriek Show "Jungle Girls" set), I think it may be time to admit I have a problem and seek out the proper 12-step group.

A young girls is orphaned after her missionary parents are murdered by the titular (or should that be tit-ular?) Amazons. She decides to seek revenge (but not of course until she has matured into a sexy teenage Analia Ivers with large, succulent,and perpetually exposed breasts). With her pet monkey, a cartoonish African witch doctor, and some greedy explorers she sets off to find the Golden Temple of the Amazons. Although this is supposedly set in Africa and everyone else is black, the Amazons are all Nordic blonde girls for some reason. And in what is not exactly a blow for feminism, the legendary tribe of females has a male leader--a fat, middle-aged white guy who does little more than stage half-naked catfights and then rape the winner.

Franco fans are, of course, used to this kind of inanity--but even they are not used to this level of incompetent film-making. Frankly, this looks someone's home movies shot at the zoo after Dad has had a few too many beers (albeit with Mom and Big Sis taking their tops off a lot). It's also surprisingly tame--producer Daniel Lesseur even claims that it was supposed to be a family film! While I would never expose MY children to this kind of rampant nudity, bad taste, and incompetent film-making, he's right in that this certainly doesn't make it as an adult movie in any sense of the word. There is a hilarious scene where the older female explorer (let's call her "Mom")goes skinny-dipping and discovers a cave which she proceeds to explores without, you know, actually putting her clothes back on. Mostly though it's more smutty than erotic, such as the scene where the male explorer, played by a gray-bearded Anthony Mayans, is straddling the barely dressed, barely legal heroine as they ride an elephant and lasciviously tells her that he really isn't interested in being her father. Yep, fun for the whole family alright.

Remember the first step is to admit that we are powerless over Franco and that his films have become unwatchable.

Wow, I swear this has never happened to me before…. I only watched "Golden Temple Amazons" yesterday and already I haven't got the slightest recollection of anything that happened in this film. That's how brilliant this movie is, I guess! By now I only remember being lured into watching it because of the incredibly attractive DVD cover art, showing a torrid drawing of a voluptuous Amazon preparing her bow to fire at an unspecified target. I often get fooled by appealing DVD covers – especially Jess Franco ones – and I still haven't learned to resist even after literally hundreds of awful experiences. Oh well… After reading the other user-comments, some parts of my memory returned although I still suspect to confuse this film with another Jess Franco masterpiece I watched the day before, namely "Diamonds of the Kilimanjaro" (and, yes, that one had an awesome DVD cover as well).

"Golden Temple Amazons" opens with a posse of hot white African Amazons – I am aware of the contradiction but don't blame me – slaughtering the parents of a fragile young girl because they were trespassing the turf with the intention of stealing the golden treasures from the temple. Several years and hormonal changes later, the girl returns to the jungle to get her revenge. She's accompanied by a bunch of sleazy adventurers who are less interested in the act of vengeance but wouldn't mind taking some gold back home. The rudimentary premise is obviously secondary to all the showcasing of ravishing female nudity and gratuitous sleaze. Analía Ivars, Eva Léon and the other nameless Amazons are all regular Franco choices and willingly walk around with their breasts proudly exposed. You better enjoy gazing at all these perfect female curves, as the rest of "Golden Temple Amazons" is a boring and incompetent mess. There's hardly any violence or action and no less than half of the film is pure filler, bits and pieces of National Geographic documentaries edited into the story and that sort of stuff. The awesome DVD cover would definitely be a great addition to your collection, but opening the box is utter pointless.

Beyond bad; and cheaper than cheap. Insulting. Ugly. Sick. The nubile beauty who seems to be the heroine is beautiful enough. But this movie is like putting a kitten into a blender. Sad. Watched the girl in the petting zoo; then gave up. What made it so bad? A bunch of women in the nude. And sadly, they shouldn't be. Stereotypical characters, predictable, tedious.

It says so, so much about this film that it was originally a production helmed by infamous Spanish schlock maestro Jesús Franco. How much of the finished work reflects Franco's original vision, such as it may have been, and how much reflects adaptation by Georges Friedland and completion by Alain Payet, is an interesting question, and one to which I don't have the answer. It also doesn't matter, however, because I'm sure the end result would not have meaningfully differed. From the very first minutes we're treated to very tiresome and very gratuitous nudity, awful acting, terrible direction, excruciating dialogue, sometimes questionable cinematography, bland and repetitive music, recycled shots, racist tropes, hideous editing, scene and narrative writing that would be laughable if they weren't so wretchedly bad, and costume design, hair, and makeup that are just plain dubious. From the very first minutes this is weak, thin, flimsy, unconvincing, exhausting, aggravating, and in all other ways rotten, and I've barely scraped the surface of all the necessary criticism. Please, please take a word of advice from someone who will watch anything, who approached this out of a sense of curiosity, and who deeply regrets her decision: 'Les amazones du temple d'or,' or 'Golden Temple Amazons,' is completely without value, and no one should watch it.

Franco wasn't exactly known as a master filmmaker, but at least some of his pictures ranged from good to earnestly enjoyable. Was this a misfire from the time he first conceived of it? Were his other works a lucky mistake? Was Payet an astoundingly poor filmmaker himself, or was he just following Franco's lead to the letter? I think these are all very reasonable things to ponder, but in this instance we readily have at least part of an answer. One quick glance at other titles credited to Payet show that he mostly made his living off of pornography of one level or another. This isn't to say that filmmakers in the adult entertainment sector can't possess real skill, but it's safe to say that quality varies wildly, and there's also a world of difference between XXX videos and the production of full-length features. Or at least, there usually is; one way or another, given all the nudity that the camera lingers upon here - not to mention consistent dashes of misogyny, and the otherwise meager, floundering nature of the project - it's fairly evident that Payet approached this 1986 dumpster fire as little more than another one of his skin flicks. If one was feeling generous perhaps one could posit that the man just wasn't taking this seriously in any measure.

Is there anything of worth here? Anything at all? Certainly not the characters, bearing no intelligence as they are written and being unlikable from one to the next. Certainly not the notes of patriarchy, redefining the Amazonian mythology. I guess the filming locations are nice, and some aspects of the sets are half okay. Excessive as it is, the footage of animals is a welcome, brief, irregular diversion. And if nothing else about 'Les amazones du temple d'or' is true, we viewers will revel in the fact of the short runtime of less than ninety minutes. I'll even grant that in fairness, there are faint shades throughout of what might have been good ideas, thoughts that might have been shaped into a more appreciable B-movie in someone else's hands. Yet the unwavering truth is that this film, as we see it, is absolute, unremitting rubbish from top to bottom. Incredibly, I have actually seen titles that were even worse, but let's be perfectly honest, at this level the distinction is totally meaningless. Once more, I beg of you: however it is you came across this picture, whatever it is you think you'll get out of it, it's garbage that deserves to be forgotten. Anything else is far more worth your time, and will offer whatever it is you thought you'd find here and won't. You've been warned.