La leggenda del rubino malese

My review was written in July 1986 after watching the film on MGM/UA video cassette.

Italian filmmaker Antonio Margheriti went to his favorite Indiana Jones clone well once too often and came up with "Jungle Raiders", a lowercase adventure pic filmed in the far east in fall 1984, with "Captain Yankee" as an alternate title. Cannon ultimately decided to send this pickup directly to the video cassette maret, as part of its deal with MGM/UA Home Video.

Film begins promisingly with a lengthy sequence directly aping the opening of "Raiders of the Lost Ark", as soldier of fortune Duke Howard (Christopher Connelly), a/k/a Captain Yankee, leads a dude through a rain forest to hunt in a boobytarpped cave for a golden idol, pursued all the while by natives shooting arrows. The dude even escape in a seaplane Indy might use, all before it's released that Duke and the natives have staged the whole incident to fleece another gullible tourist seeking high adventure.

Set per opening credit card in "Malaysia, 1938" (too bad the filmmakers didn't realized that the British colony called Malaya for decades to come), tongue-in-cheek story deals with Duke guiding a museum curator Yanez (Marina Costa) from Colombia on her quest for the fabled Ruby of Gloom. Repetitive incidents in caves containing lakes on fire and jousting with the local firebrand Borneo pirates pad out the dull running time until an obligatory cynical ending.

Although there is a requisite amount of chasing around, pyrotechnics and stunt work, "Jungle Raiders" is singularly unexciting and pointless. Even the expected supernatural content is absent, with the ruby turning out to be just a big stone suitable for chopping up in Amsterdam.

Cast is merely okay, with Connelly a colorless hero, Lee Van Cleef a minor guest star who dresses alternately in all-white or all-black outfits, Alan Collins the chummy sidekick for the nth time in a Margheriti film and Marina Costa simply along for the ride. Tech credits are acceptable., though the often jaunty musical score occasionally lapses into the same library music already used in Margheriti's earlier pic, "The Ark of the Sun God".

Golan-Globus were shameless ripoff artists of the 80s who could take a formula from a successful film then turn it into atrocious cinema. How anyone outside of the third world could have been suckered into seeing Jungles Raiders, instead of Raiders of the Lost Atk, from which most the whole concept comes, is beyond me.

Bela Lugosi was to Ed Wood, what Lee Van Cleef is to this film – the only recognizable actor, past his prime but clearly content to collect a paycheck for the grandkids. For the most part the rest of the actors were Italian hacks whose dubbing is almost (but not quite) laughably bad. My favorite feature of the looping is what would appear to be a rule: all actors that are onscreen at any given moment must be talking or at least making utterances. Never mind that their mouths may now be closed, or that there is no reason for them to be talking – they are gonna make some noise and there's nothing you can do about it.

It's like bad porn, where the girl is moaning with her mouth shut (or occupied). Furthermore, these Italians must go to the School of Gusto Laughs where all male actors are taught to end all dialog lines with a hearty pirate's laugh. Just watch – it could make a good drinking game.

In a nutshell, however, this movie is bad – with a capital A. Not bad enough to be good, as I had hoped, but just plain bad. No story (and the story elements there are are taken directly from Raiders of the Lost Ark), no acting – lots of action with no motivation or reward in the last 20 minutes of the film.

Although some companies take great pains to maintain the quality of their film stock archives, noone should shed a tear if the entire Golan-Globus stock were to go up in flames tomorrow. The shelfspace is worth more.

I've got to say that the first 20 minutes of this film are admittedly excellent and show director Margheriti on top form. In a nut shell, Christopher Connelly plays the strangely named Captain Yankie who is running an amusing scam in the tropics for those with more money than sense. The good captain is leading mock expeditions into the jungle to recover 'lost artifacts' from 'savage natives' (in reality the friendly indigenous population who happen to be good friends with the captain) Accompanying our hero is also a worldly wise, jovial (and very drunken) Scottish guide (Margheriti regular Luciano Pigozzi) who is even 'killed' by the 'savages' early on in the shown scam for maximum effect!

News of these scams (or 'dreams' as our hero likes to call them) however gets out to an inspector (Lee Van Cleef) who, using them against our heroes, coerces i.e. blackmails them into undertaking a very real mission to retrieve a priceless artifact known as the Ruby Of Doom (a most unsettling name...) Needless to say, such a task proves to be anything but easy with our heroes having to fend off vicious Burmese pirates, avoiding various lethal traps and being betrayed from within their own ranks. Mix in some of Margheriti's always cool miniature work and a trademark explosive finale and you have on paper what should have been a great flick.

Unfortunately, after such a great introduction though, things go downhill with most of the action sequences being handled in a somewhat confused manner. Even the aforementioned finale whilst certainly pleasant to look at is handled with very little flair for Margheriti.

The good news is that the leads are tremendously fun to watch and the comedy present throughout is very welcome. One of the best bits is a scene in which the natives hear that Captain Yankie has arrived unexpectedly and thus perform a mad rush to hide all their westernised attire and accoutrement's to play the part of 'savages' as they have done previously for the captain so many times. They even put out some fake human skulls for good measure!!!

Overall: Not a bad film by any means but for fans of the genre I would recommend Margheriti's The Ark Of The Sun God as a much better watch.

Antonio Margheriti will forever remain - at least as far as I am concerned - the undisputed king of Italian rip-off classics! During the late 70s and first half of the 80s, this wonderful man blatantly imitated the biggest contemporary blockbusters and made them crazier, sleazier, more violent, and more exploitative. His masterworks include "Killer Fish" (= "Piranha"), "The Last Hunter" (= The Deer Hunter), "Yor" (= "Conan the Barbarian"), "Tornado Joe" (= "Rambo"), "Hunters of the Golden Cobra", and "Ark of the Sun God" (= both "Raiders of the Lost Ark").

"Jungle Raiders" is also a knock-off of Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark", but by the time of its release, in 1985, Margheriti's energy and inspiration had clearly watered down a lot. This is undoubtedly Antonio's least entertaining rip-off effort, and a sorely disappointing jungle adventure/actioner altogether.

Still, Margheriti - or Anthony M. Dawson, like he always prefers to name himself internationally - effectively tricked me (and probably everyone) with the first 10 minutes of "Jungle Raiders". Three men are on a dangerous rainforest expedition to recover a tribal statue, but it surprisingly turns out to be a complete scam! Two of them, Duke "Captain Yankee" Howard and Gin Fizz, run a profitable business where they make rich wannabe-adventurers believe they are on actual jungle missions, but everything is fake; - including the primitive tribes' attacks and death traps! Well-played, Antonio!

Sadly, it's all downhill from here. Yankee and Gin Fizz are recruited for a real mission, and it rapidly becomes a familiar stew of cartoonish villains, erupting volcanos, exploding barrels, and jumping down waterfalls to escape. In fact, the only original gimmick is the local kid with his super-intelligent (and obedient) Cobra. Lee Van Cleef receives top billing, but he must have had a clause in his contract that stated he didn't want to get his clothes dirty, because he only appears in a few dull and talkative sequences.

What more could you want than a talking cobra, Lee Van Cleef, untold numbers of explosions, and a movie that makes no sense? Well how about an actress that can act? Obviously Marina Costa was not up to it. How about action scenes in a cavern that are not so dark and filmed in such close range, that they are actually nauseating? My favorite quote "Don't just sit there, blow something up." Lee Van Cleef is totally wasted, and only briefly appears in the beginning and end of the film. One positive note is the first 15 minutes, which are actually pretty enjoyable, with Captain Yankee bilking wealthy would be adventurers. The rest is bad, and not good bad either, just bad. - MERK