Invaders of the Lost Gold (1982)

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

The acting in this movie is really good.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

In 1945, Japanese soldiers hid 2 heavy cases of gold in a cave before they had to leave the Philippines. 36 years later, Jefferson (David De Martyn) finances an expedition to find the gold. Tobachi (Harold Sakata, 'Goldfinger') is the only survivor from 1945 and is needed to show the hiding-place. Forrest (Stuart Whitman) and Larson (Edmund Purdom) shall lead the expedition together although they are deadly enemies – they simply can't resist the wages. Cal (Woody Strode), Forrest's girlfriend Maria (Laura Gemser) and Jefferson's daughter Janice (Glynis Barber) join the crew. The expedition seems to run as scheduled, but when they get deeper into the jungle, members of the expedition begin to disappear one by one when mysterious accidents happen...'Invaders of the Lost Gold' aka 'Horror Safari', in my country 'Söldner Des Todes' ('Mercenaries of Death'), is a low budget adventure flick that has no outstanding qualities despite the good cast. Mostly filmed in a 'jungle' where the natives apparently use a lawnmower and plant palm trees neatly in rows to make it look like a park, poor action scenes, long dialogues in tents and clumsy editing do not result in a thrilling picture. The DVD distributor obviously didn't even bother to watch it before they created a tag line saying something about 'the green hell of Malaysia (!)'. Can we really blame them?

A disappointingly routine jungle romp, packaged as an exploitation movie but with little exploitation values to actually recommend it to the pulp crowd. Instead this is a cheap, cheap rush job, with little in the way of action, and some really boring, pedestrian direction by Alan Birkinshaw (who delivered the delightful KILLER'S MOON a few years previously to this). Even though the Italians financed this, don't expect a Lenzi movie. It's nothing like that and could probably be rated PG today. The story is lightweight and it seems most of the budget was spent on the admittedly enjoyable opening scene. It involves Japanese soldiers battling Filipino headhunters, involving lots of shooting, grenade explosions, and heads on sticks. There's even a guy who falls into a spike trap, great stuff. After this the film goes downhill as it reaches the present day.The smarmy, always unlikable Edmund Purdom visits the ex-soldiers and asks them to come with him to find the gold. One is shot dead, another commits hari-kiri, and the third one agrees, mainly because he is Harold Sakata, aka Oddjob from GOLDFINGER, and he's one of this film's major draws. Then a huge group of old actors and cheap Filipino extras join in and off they all go in a boat. But not before has-been Stuart Whitman has decided to join in on the expedition, and that takes him about half an hour. From here on in, we get a series of uninteresting deaths by snake, falling off a rope bridge, crocodile etc. but there's no gore and each death is staged in a ridiculous slow-motion style that stops you seeing what happened; Birkinshaw is no Castellari, that's for sure.Along with routine scripting and obvious double-crosses, this film really is a tease: offering you tons of gore and nudity throughout, and never providing them. There's a strip show in a filthy nightclub but the girls on view won't provoke much interest. So the only possible reason to watch this film? It's gotta be the great casting. Purdom chews the scenery with relish, and Whitman convinces us all too well with his portrayal of a washed-up drunk. Glynis Barber (BLAKE'S 7) is on hand as the appealing young blonde love interest but her acting isn't up to much. Then there's the aforementioned Harold Sakata. I like him here. He laughs a lot. I've got a feeling he was a charismatic guy, from the little we get to see of his screen presence. Laura Gemser also shows up to strip off, and her death scene is still the film's biggest puzzle (just what happened exactly?). And finally there's good old Woody Strode, as hard as ever, beating up a bunch of guys in a bar and looking muscular, but his death scene is a real disappointment and a real downer. So, there we have it, a diverse group of actors trapped in a boring film, not what I expected, but still pretty funny to watch.

There's a reason why "Horror Safari" isn't as known or infamous as most of its contemporary Italian jungle adventure-movies like, say, "Cut and Run" or "Massacre at Dinosaur Valley". Despite the cheerful title and a promising sounding plot description on the back of the DVD-cover, it's a tremendously dire and stupid movie. We have a bunch of very unlikable characters searching for a shipment of gold that was left behind in the Phillipines jungle (among a cannibalistic tribe) near the end of WWII. The expedition is put together by a rich bastard and assembles the most incompetent adventurers you've ever seen. The "leader" is an American drunk who's heroic years are long over, one of the original Japanese army commanders that lost the gold in the first place, a black strongman who's far too friendly to be believable, two women that are completely useless and one mean, double-crossing sleazebag. "Horror Safari" feature the absolute weakest death scenes I've ever seen; hands down. Instead of getting torn apart by the cannibals – that have just vanished suddenly, by the way – the characters just fall off of cliffs or walk straight into the open mouths of plastic crocodiles. One poor girl, the dreadfully miscast Laura Gemser, even spontaneously drops dead during a skinny dip! Honestly, if there's anyone who can give a reasonable explanation for Gemser's character dying, please email it to me! This must be one of the worst films ever made, complete with lousy editing, uninspired use of beautiful locations and bad acting with an even worse dubbing. Even the most hardcore fan of Italian cult cinema shouldn't waste one penny on this piece of crap.

SPOILERS INCLUDEDInvaders of the Lost Gold is an exploitation film that really does throw in everything but the kitchen sink. It was helmed by British director Alan Birkinshaw, a former TV cameraman who was well versed in sex and horror cinema having previously directed Confessions of a Sex Maniac and Killer's Moon. The former was one of the tread-barest of Britain's careerist sex comedies and features a pretentious architect feeling up various glamour girls under the guise of wanting to design a breast shaped building. While the latter is largely considered the British horror film's most distasteful and unintentionally funny hour, due to lines like 'if we ever get out of this alive maybe we'll both live to be wives and mothers', the casting of a three-legged dog and a John Lindsay-type fixation for passing off secondary starlets as schoolgirls. Unlike many of his contemporaries who either retired (Pete Walker, Stanley Long) or struggled on in the declining British film industry (Derek Ford, Norman J. Warren), Birkinshaw spent much of the 1980's in Europe working for globe trotting producers like Harry Alan Towers and Dick Randall. Here under the thumb of Dick Randall, Birkinshaw spins a tall tale whose opening documents a little known incident in WW2 in which the Japanese army faced off against a tribe of unkempt, head-hunters (or rather some blacked up extras wearing fright wigs) in the Filipino jungle. Despite their heavy firepower the Japanese come off noticeably worse and the cheerful head-hunters soon have a few severed heads to enthusiastically waive in the audiences faces. The only survivors are three Japanese soldiers who, forced to leave a large consignment of gold behind, vow to one day return. However '36 years later' ruthless businessman Rex Larson (welwyn garden city born actor Edmund Purdom) is up to no good and using less than democratic ways to separate the aged Japanese soldiers from a map of where the gold is hidden. One of the soldiers gets riddled with bullets when Larson shoots up a room full of Kung-Fu goons; another opts for an even more gruesome way out and commits hari-kari. With the map secured Larson's boss Douglas Jefferson, an upper-crust Englishman in a safari jacket then ensembles a motley crew of street fighters, mercenaries and unclassifiable toughs to journey back into the jungle for the gold. Much to Larson's annoyance his boss has also enlisted the services of Larson's nemesis, hard-living heavy drinking American Mark Forrest played by Stuart Whitman fresh from his Jim Jones gig in Guyana-Crime of the Century (1980).Forrest and Larson have old scores to settle after Larson left his former friend Forrest to rot in a jail for five years; naturally Forrest has revenge on his mind. Once in the jungle it also becomes clear that someone is out to sabotage the expedition. And with members of the team gradually being bumped off one by one, by the time they reach the gold the number of people sharing it is unlikely to be in high figures. It has to be said though, that this bunch of would be adventurers behave in such a clumsy fashion that the mystery killer has little to do other than put his feet up and wait for them to fall from rope bridges or stumble cluelessly to their deaths in the jungle. No prizes for guessing that the instigator of the group's misfortune is Larson, who in the middle of the film fakes his own death only to make a 'surprise' return for the climatic shootout sporting a three day growth of beard. Likely to disappoint anyone expecting 'part Cannibal Holocaust and part Raiders of the Lost Ark' (as the mondo crash DVD cheekily sells it as), Invaders of the Lost Gold is a standard but not unenjoyable jungle adventure. Birkinshaw throws in some unconvincing gore, a little nudity and fans of his Killer's Moon will be pleased to know that continuity is still not Birkinshaw's strong point (just try and figure out what fate is meant to befall secondary character 'Maria' during her ill-fated swim). Surprisingly though, while Birkinshaw's two British films ear-mark him as a man who could deliver a high amount of exploitation film goods on a micro budget (no doubt what brought him to Dick Randall's attention) here his direction seems pedestrian and at times the proceedings threaten to drag dangerously to a halt. The best thing about Invaders of the Lost Gold, and what keeps it watchable, is the eclectic 'all star' cast which as well as Messrs Purdom and Whitman also includes Woody Strode, Laura 'Black Emanuelle' Gemser in an atypical role despite her nude scenes, Harold Sakata making an odder job of playing a heavy than usual and looking hopelessly lost as Whitman's 20 years younger love interest Glynis 'Dempsey and Makepeace' Barber in a role she'd be forgiven for leaving off her CV these days. Invaders of the Lost Gold is best viewed as a 'I'm an exploitation film celebrity get me out of here' with the cast suffering both for their art and the audience's enjoyment in believably hellish Filipino jungle locations. The print used for the DVD is in a very scratchy condition and the only extras are trailers for some dodgy 1970's Kung-Fu titles which look far worse than the main feature.