Golden Temple Amazons

Starring:Jesus Franco, William Berger
Studio: Shriek Show
Product Type: DVD

Description

Diamonds Of Kilimandjaro An expedition consisting of members of a British family and an expert hunter penetrate deep into the jungles of darkest Africa. The team searches for treasure, and for Diana, an English girl who was lost in the jungles as a child. Diana is now a beautiful young woman who lives with a tribe of savage headhunters, the Mabutos. Sexy Katja Bienert stars as the naked goddess worshipped by the savage cannibals. Director Jess Franco takes the Tarzan concept and twists it into an amazing world of sex and cannibals. Golden Temple Amazons A tribe of Amazons is zealously guarding a mysterious fortress built on top of a gold mine. Uruck and his cruel, sadistic mistress Rena rule the tribe. Some 15 years ago an explorer discovered their golden temple, and the Amazons who were intent on protecting their secret slaughtered both him and his wife. However, their daughter, Liana, was spared and grew up in the jungle, raised by tribesmen. Now a beautiful girl, Liana (roaming the jungle half-naked) finds out the fate of her parents and sets out to avenge them. An entertaining film containing large amounts of nudity and sadism. Directed by Jess Franco. Amazonia Ten years after her ordeal in the jungles of the Amazon, Catherine narrates her grueling experience to a news reporter: At age 18, Catherine leaves her London prep school to be with her parents at their factory stationed in the Amazon Jungle. As the family enjoys a boat trip into the jungle, a tribe of headhunters ambushes them and her parents are killed. Catherine is then taken hostage by the tribe. Over the next few years, Catherine is forced to live by the tribe's barbaric rituals and savagery while always remembering who she is, where she comes from, and remaining "civilized". Until, that is, she finds out the truth concerning the murder of her parents.

Customer Reviews:

Jiggle Girls, really, but the price is finally right for this junk..........2007-03-02

With Shriek Show, connoisoeurs of eurotrash know its best to wait, because quite frankly, few of the titles in their catalogue are worth the single-disc asking price! BUT, as with their Post Apocalyptic Action Triple Feature Pack, their Psycho Killers Triple Feature Pack, their Jungle Horror Triple Feature Pack, their Martial Arts Triple Feature Pack and their Evil Animals Triple Feature Pack, their Zombie Triple Feature Pack, their Wicked Women Triple Feature Pack, and their Demons Triple Feature Pack, this newest edition, the JUNGLE GIRLS TRIPLE FEATURE PACK provides a cheap fix for those who absolutely must see some of the worst euro-junk from the 80's. And at about $6 a disc, these pieces of crap are finally WORTH the money, though you'll pay far less in certain retail chain stores. I found it for $12.99, which further justified a peek.

Up first is GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS, a deathly dull Jess Franco piece filled to the brim with topless women who remain topless throughout to distract you from the utter bankruptcy of ingenuity and awfulness of the story, about a young topless jungle girl, raised by a black tribe, who grows up to take revenge on the nearby tribe of topless evil amazons who killed her parents when she was young. Coming as is did at a time when Franco movies had long since stopped being even remotely interesting (and trust me, most of this man's work isn't even remotely interesting, save for perhaps WANDA THE WICKED WARDEN), the whole thing feels like one lazy grab for what few dollars remained in the exploitation market at the time before being dumped internationally on video under any number of the usual retitlings. In fact, much of the film was directed by a Eurocine journeyman and it was largely edited by company men as well. Eva Leon proves she's still got it, at least from the neck down, as the leader of the Golden Temple Amazons, her wardobe consisting of an eyepatch, a vest and a teensy tiny g-string as she whips her minions and our heroine with gusto. The golden temple "set," such as it is (and probably the centrepiece of most of the scenes actually shot by Franco), is really just a cave with foreground miniatures of "golden" pillars and friggin' BIRDCAGE bars feebly tyring to telegraph some kind of scale. Oh, screw it, let's move on to...

AMAZONIA: THE CATHERINE MILLS STORY (aka Schiave Bianche: Violenza in Amazzonia). Probably the best of the bad bunch in this set, if only for the participation of famed mondo pioneer Franco Prosperi (Mondo Cane, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Africa Addios) who seems to have had an influence on director Mario Garrizzo, who directs this largely in the pseudo-documentary style of Prosperi and Jacopetti's earlier works. Hell, most of the cutaways in this (the shots of beautiful scenery and animals killing each other) look suspiciously like they were shot by the Mondo giants, for they frequently don't match the footage of the main story, . The rather haunting score feels familiar, too. That story, such as it is, is told in flashback by virginal schoolgirl Catherine Miles (Elvire Audray), on trial for the murder of two people. Turns out her parents were killed by a ruthless tribe (she says) during a picnic boat trip down the Amazon. Rescued by the benevolent lead hunter of the tribe, which is the typically nonsensical mix of Spaniards and Asians that seems to crop up in all of these damned things, she gradually learns their ways, and watches their graphic rituals, and spends virtually the entire film topless, and falls in love with her new guardian, all the while nurturing her plan for revenge against him and his people. The revelation of the killers' identities would have been a surprise had they not diappeared from the narrative DURING the crucial murder sequence because the filmmakers couldn't figure out a smart way to temporarily divert the audience's attention away from them, so they just vanish until the end of the film. Dialogue in this is minimal, and comes largely from the courtroom framing sequence, while the presence of a Mondo-style narrator at the beginning and end of the film (where we're supposedly shown footage of the "actual" Catherine Miles in jail, is another nod to Prosperi's roots.

Finally, we have DIAMONDS OF KILIMANDJARO, another slog through the jungle from Jess Franco starring Katia Bienert (EUGENIE) as the white jungle goddess sought out by a crew of hunters and relatives working for her mother, Franco regular Lina Romay, who doesn't just PLAY a bloated bedridden mess in this, but was actually starting to LOOK like one in real life, and she was only 29! But even in her brief scenes, she fares better than Bienert, who looks positively STONED--or stupid--throughout, swinging topless from vines she barely has the strength to hold on to. One would never believe that this stick of wood had been "acting" for three or four years by the time this came out! Her enemy in this is topless Black Jungle Goddess Aline Mess, a feral stunner who has planted Katia's WHITE, SCOTTISH uncle (complete with tam o'shanter hat and bagpipe theme music) on the tribal throne as part of her cunning plan to take revenge on the evil white men who have threatened her people. Relatively bloodless, but generous in the boobies department, but since it's a mid-80's Franco, everything is shot so matter-of-factly, and without one hint of sensuality, that you just stop carring after the second pair are paraded across the screen.

Extras on these discs are the photo galleries (on all three discs), original trailers for each film, plus several others (again, all three discs) and interviews with Eurocine honcho Daniel Lasouer (on GOLDEN TEMPLE and DIAMONDS, each about 12 minutes), both of which prove to be more enlightening--and more interesting--than either of the films they accompany.

Average customer rating:

Not a Franco film!
Way past unintended laughs or "so bad it's good"

Golden Temple Amazons
Starring: William Berger
Director: Jesus Franco
Manufacturer: Shriek Show
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Action & Adventure | Genres | DVD | Video

Jungle Action | Action & Adventure | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Horror | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Genres | DVD | Video

DVDs Under $9.99 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

( G ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Diamonds of Kilimandjaro
Tanya's Island
Conquest
War Gods of Babylon & War Goddess
Women in Fury

ASIN: B00068NWJM
Release Date: 2005-01-25

Description

A tribe of Amazons is zealously guarding a mysterious fortress built on top of a gold mine. Uruck and his cruel, sadistic mistress Rena rule the tribe. Some 15 years ago an explorer discovered their golden temple, and the Amazons who were intent on protecting their secret slaughtered both him and his wife. However, their daughter, Liana, was spared and grew up in the jungle, raised by tribesmen. Now a beautiful girl, Liana (roaming the jungle half-naked) finds out the fate of her parents and sets out to avenge them. An entertaining film containing large amounts of nudity and sadism. Directed by Jess Franco.

Customer Reviews:

Not a Franco film!.......2005-04-07

I highly recommend this film to Franco detractors. Like OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES, REVENGE IN THE HOUSE OF USHER, DIAMONDS OF KILIMANJARO and other Eurociné productions, this is a composite of Franco scenes and scenes shot by some Eurociné regular (in this case Alain Payet). The whole thing was edited by Eurociné's men, who are also responsible for an incredibly stupid music score, giving the "coup of grâce" to an already disastrous movie.
Shriek Show presents this adventure film in a good DVD edition. The trasfer is decent and the film is framed 1.66:1 (not the correct ratio, by the way, like the framing of Lina Romay's cameo shows). The extras include an interview to producer Daniel Lesoeur by Lucas Balbo, the main author of the book "Obsession - The Films of Jess Franco". In this interview, Lesoeur mainly talks about Eurociné and two of the actors casted in GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS: Stanley Kapoul and Eurociné's regular Françoise Blanchard, who appears in the film just a few seconds.
Balbo and Leseour carefully avoid talking Jess Franco, which would have meant to ask and answer the basic questions: «Who did actually film and edit GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS? Why Franco did not complete this film?».
No doubt that all the precredit sequences wasn't shot by Franco, as well as all the scenes with Olivier Mathot and Françoise Blanchard. I agree with Balbo ("Obsession") that he probably shot the interiors inside the golden temple, and surely he shot also the exteriors with his regular Spanish actors: Antonio Mayans, Emilio Linder and the beautiful Alicia Principe (the protagonist of one of Franco's more beautiful and stylish films, HISTORIA SEXUAL DE "O"). The best actors of a not that bad cast are William Berger and the chimpanzee, even if their characters (well... at least Berger's) are silly. Eva León has good moments, as the evil Amazons queen, and the young Analia Ivars is, as always, delighfully spontaneous. Both these actress, on the other hand, appear really wasted, if one thinks to the fantastic performance they did, the same year, in BAHIA BLANCA. Franco's direction has few good moments - in particular a beautifully shot scene between Berger and León - but in its whole is absent-minded and hasty, which thing cannot surprise if one considers how stupid the plot is. The most laughable elements of the film are the ridicolous amazons and the fight scenes.
If you aren't a Franco detractor ..... AVOID THIS!

Way past unintended laughs or "so bad it's good".......2005-04-07

I have seen a lot of bad movies. I can appreciate camp and laugh at "so bad it's good" schlock as much as the next fan of trashy cinema, but this movie is just horrible. Sets are made of papier mache. The soundtrack is no more than a few measures played over and over on a cassio keyboard. The wildlife scenes were filmed at the zoo with fences showing. The script is so inept that the heroes come on the scene with plenty of time to save the day, but instead just stand around and do nothing until the last minute and then they panic. The dubbing is about the worst I have ever seen.

I realize no one is going to buy a movie like this looking for high art, but this junk isn't even good for cheesy entertainment or unintentional laughs.

DVD:

DVD

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