El tesoro de Morgan

Not that Zacarías Gómez Urquiza was a great director, but he was a good artisan when the sun was in a favorable position in his birth chart or so it seems... but it is hard to believe that this is the same person who directed "El derecho de nacer", or who was the assistant director in Mexican classics as Emilio Fernández's "Bugambilia" and "Enamorada", and Alejandro Galindo's "Una familia de tantas". This is one of several movies he made in coproduction with Colombia in the last years of his career, and not a good one. Shot in Panama in the early 1970s it combines crime with music and comedy skits that are hardly funny. The best of it all is Lorena Velázquez as the villain, but you better try to find her as the Queen of the Vampires in that bad movie with Santo, el Enmascarado de Plata, that makes you laugh when you are not supposed to. This one is not capable of even that...

It has been the first and oldest movie whose main topic is the search of a Morgan's pirate treasure, totally filmed in Panama. I can recognize the Central Avenue of Panama in that scene where Magda is persecuted by the bad boys and I loved to see my own country in a film. Well, the script was not perfect but at least there were many good jokes specially from the private detective. Even there were a couple of songs performed by the main characters. Anita Villalaz had a good performance, so I am proud of being from Panama like her. And the foes were a classic trio looking for the treasure of Morgan hidden in an island in the Pacific. Well, I wish there were movies like this in my country, perhaps with a better plot.