This has a dreadful critical reputation - even James Whale cultists seem to have little good to say about it. Doug Fairbanks bagged it. So did Vincent Price.
I think its a perfectly fine silly jungle adventure tale. A group of adventurers go into the jungle to dig up an inca temple. A woman (Joan Bennett) rocks up to visit her husband (Vincent Price) who has been killed... and she's panted over by Fairbanks and George Sanders.
Its written by Francis Marion - maybe she is why the men are so sensitive and talk about their feelings more. (Look at the scene between George Sanders and Fairbanks where they talk about their mutual love for Bennett - they take it very seriously.) Is that a bad thing?
I feel Marion would also be why the woman character is more central than normal in this kind of film. She has a lot of power and agency, even though she doesn't have a job.
There's some truly spectacular sets - it looks amazing - and spooky poking-around-the-temple scenes. The natives are you standard "other" - savage, primitive, dangerous, occasionally loyal. This is entirely typical of pictures from the time. There's a good storm and final attack.
Some of it seems abrupt - John Howard's character for instance. I think it would have been better with more action - more of a ticking clock. There's a lot of sitting around in the jungle in the middle section and it's all over Bennett - there were a few more subplots in say Five Came Back which I feel influenced this.
It's not a classic - and maybe we are right to expect more from Whale - but I enjoyed this. Price, Fairbanks, Sanders and Bennett are good - so too is John Howard. George Bancroft's raucous American is annoying but its not a big part. Alan Hale is miscast as a scientist but that's fun in its own way.
Unfairly maligned.
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