Likable old-fashioned fantasy-romance
My review was written in July 1990 after watching the movie on Quest Entertainment video cassette.
"The Spring" is an oddball romance about Ponce De Leon's fabled fountain of youth. Florida-made feature went direct to video for the voyeur trade.
Filmmaker Hugh Parks (who produced and scripted) seems obsessed with the old Cecil B. DeMille formula of pulchritude, flashbacks and spirituality. Like his previous film "Before God" (released as "After School"), "Spring" mixes contemporary footage with topless flashbacks of Indian girls at the magical spring when the Spanish explorer arrived 400 years ago.
Main tale deals with museum researcher Dack Rambo and his assistant Gedde Watanabe heading for Florida with evidence as to the whereabouts of the Fountain of Youth. They arrive coincidentally with a cosmetics confab where venal industrialist Steven Keats is out to exploit the find.
Rambo falls in love with blonde beauty Shari Shattuck, who turns out to be an 87-year-old woman preserved by the magic waters guarded by an ancient Indian chief (Robert V. Barron). Aided by a voodoo priestess (Virginia Watson), the heroes make it through a phony happy ending.
Main draw here is Shattuck. Tech credits are fine, especially Jordan Klein Junior's underwater photography.
"The Spring" is an oddball romance about Ponce De Leon's fabled fountain of youth. Florida-made feature went direct to video for the voyeur trade.
Filmmaker Hugh Parks (who produced and scripted) seems obsessed with the old Cecil B. DeMille formula of pulchritude, flashbacks and spirituality. Like his previous film "Before God" (released as "After School"), "Spring" mixes contemporary footage with topless flashbacks of Indian girls at the magical spring when the Spanish explorer arrived 400 years ago.
Main tale deals with museum researcher Dack Rambo and his assistant Gedde Watanabe heading for Florida with evidence as to the whereabouts of the Fountain of Youth. They arrive coincidentally with a cosmetics confab where venal industrialist Steven Keats is out to exploit the find.
Rambo falls in love with blonde beauty Shari Shattuck, who turns out to be an 87-year-old woman preserved by the magic waters guarded by an ancient Indian chief (Robert V. Barron). Aided by a voodoo priestess (Virginia Watson), the heroes make it through a phony happy ending.
Main draw here is Shattuck. Tech credits are fine, especially Jordan Klein Junior's underwater photography.
- lor_
- May 25, 2023