Treasure of the Golden Condor (1953)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The acting in this movie is really good.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Jean-Paul (Cornel Wilde) is left penniless and abandoned when his father dies and his sinister uncle (George Mcready) wrongfully takes the family fortune . Jean is the rightful heir to his uncle's title and lands and he then rebels against him , the Marquis De St. Malo . Later on , he escapes to sea and goes South America along with MacDougal (Finlay Currie) . The explorers arrive in Port Rio Dulce and Jean heads to the jungles of 18th century Guatemala in search of ancient treasure , all the while plotting his vengeance . Later on , Jean encounters the Blue Lagoon . But he still finds time to fall for two beautiful women Clara MacDougal (Constance Smith) and Marie , Comtesse De St. Malo (Anne Bancroft). Nice 18th-century costumer done in grand style that provides solid escapist yarn . Contains enjoyable footage of Mayan ruins shot on location in Guatemala , rugged scenery excellently photographed in Technicolor by Edward Cronjager , larger-than-life characters played by a great main cast , but all the performance class comes from prestigious secondary actors . The central section , when the prospectors mistaken for Gods , sags a bit , but starring Constance Smith delivers the glamorous native charmer for compensation . Cornel Wilde gives a decent acting as a dashing Frenchman who journeys to the far-off Mayan hills of Guatemala hunting a hidden treasure to win his fortune , come back and claim his heritage . Being based on the popular novel ¨Benjamin Blake¨ by Edison Marshall that was adapted in 1942 as ¨Son of fury¨ by John Cromwell with Tyrone Power , George Sanders , Roddy McDowall , Frances Farmer , Gene Tierney and set in Polynesian islands . This gave Cornel Wilde one of the best of his dashing early roles . He played several adventure movies , such as : ¨Sword of Lancelot¨, ¨Omar Khayyam , ¨At sword's point¨ , ¨A thousand and one nights¨ , ¨Norseman¨, ¨The fifth musketeer and directed/acted the classic ¨The naked prey¨ ¨.The motion picture was well and compellingly directed by Delmer Davis . He was a good professional who directed all kinds of genres , such as: Romantic dramas : ¨Rome adventure¨, ¨Parrish¨, ¨A summer Place¨ ; WWII : ¨Task force¨, ¨Hollywood canteen¨, ¨Destination Tokyo¨ , Noir film : ¨Dark passage¨ , ¨The red house¨ , Historical : ¨Demetrius and the gladiators¨ and especially Western : ¨The hang tree¨, ¨The Badlanders¨, ¨Cowboy¨, ¨3.10 to Yuma¨, ¨Jubal¨, ¨Drum Beat¨, and ¨ Broken arrow¨.

The location of the injustice is changed from 18th century Great Britain to 18th century France and the treasure is emeralds and not pearls found now in Guatemala instead of the South Seas. But the plot of Treasure Of The Golden Condor is easily recognizable as that of Tyrone Power's Son Of Fury. Cornel Wilde who was another of those standbys for Power in both their times at 20th Century Fox in the Forties when Zanuck's favorite star was otherwise occupied stands in well for Power when Zanuck decided to remake the film.The story is that of a man deemed illegitimate because no proof of a marriage can be found and disinherited from title and lands by a cruel and avaricious uncle George MacReady. George Sanders played the uncle in the original and both Sanders and MacReady were first rate cads.The women in Wilde's life are Constance Smith the daughter of Finlay Currie his partner in fortune hunting and Anne Bancroft whose got a yen buzzing for her cousin Wilde. Bancroft in her third feature film is MacReady's daughter, she's quite the vixen.Wilde was always one of the best action adventure stars of his days, but he never got to the top tier level. Instead of going to television as so many of his contemporaries did he went into production of his own films that usually played as B pictures. In terms of quality they varied greatly. This film is an opportunity to see him at his swashbuckling best as he was one of the best at the fencing game. He was a member of the 1936 US Olympic team.In the supporting cast note Leo G. Carroll as the lawyer who aides Wilde in proving his lineage, a sincere but cynical performance. Also Fay Wray as MacReady's wife, a most unhappy woman. Just married to George MacReady is reason enough.Cornel Wilde's fans should be pleased. Technicolor as well.

I had high hopes sitting down to watch Treasure of the Golden Condor, thinking that it might have been an inspiration for the Indiana Jones films. George Macready got the film off to a rousing start with his subtle yet vicious machinations, which he applied with aplomb throughout. Had the editing, directing and other actors been up to his level, the film could have been great, but I found it to be a shameless ripoff of the 1942 film, Son of Fury, starring Tyrone Power and George Saunders. In fact, it is a virtual line by line aping of the first film, with the tired recipe of switching out one exotic locale for another, and adding color. (If any of you readers ever saw that old Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedy film in which their movie studio is always shooting the same scene over and over, even the dialogue is identical, and only the uniforms of the bad guys changes, then you know what I mean! If not, the fact that such an old memory pops up over Goldon Condor...) Perhaps I am biased because I was taken aback 10 minutes into the film, with a deja vu broadside on my cranium, but I decided that as long as they top the first film, well, OK. Macready gets honorable mention, but come on, who could top Saunders as a villain? The color and cinematography were a plus, but in every other aspect, this film is an atrocious disappointment. Anne Bancroft's take on the calculating Comtesse de Malo was fine, but too brief; I think the cutting room floor has taken most of the nuance from her relationship with Cornell Wilde. The whole movie ended up no better than a go-through-the-motions remake.

I absolutely loved this film as a child. When I watched it again after 60 years it was even better than I remembered. Instead of the phony Polynesians of the earlier adaptation of the original novel Benjamin Blake (Son of Fury with Tyrone Power) the acting is excellent, and the story, reset in France prior to theRevolution makes great social comments on the excesses of the aristocracy and their vile treatment of lower classes, it includes a serious interest in science and anthropology. This is definitely worth seeing. The photography is great, and the scenes of actual inhabitants of Central America in their rituals and dancing made it ring.Cornel Wilde was perfectly fine in the role. And the old Scotsman added interest and wisdom.