Golden Goddess of Rio Beni (1964)

Not a great film, but fun enough, 15 September 2014

Jim (Pierre Brice), an oil company pilot working in Brazil, puts together a rag-tag bunch to help him in his search for a fellow pilot and friend who has presumably crashed somewhere in the Amazon. The group he's put together includes an alcoholic who happens to be an expert on native languages, a couple of crooks/thugs, and a less than honest boat captain. He uses a tale of native gold (the titular Golden Goddess) as bait for the journey. Along the way, the un-merry band encounters snakes, traps, friendly natives, unfriendly natives, and each other. Will Jim find his friend? Will anyone find the Golden Goddess? Will anyone be left alive at the end?

Golden Goddess of Rio Beni is not a great film, but it is fun enough if you're a fan of Euro-genre films from the 60s/70s. Not knowing much about the movie before I started watching, I had hoped for an Italian film. I could tell almost instantly I was watching a German movie instead. No offense intended and I realize this is a terribly broad generalization, but I usually find German films cheaper, darker, and less "fun" (for lack of a better word) than their Italian counterparts. And that's the case here. It's not as good as it might have been. Pierre Brice is good, but I could name a dozen Italian actors working in the 60s who would have been better. Still, Brice does an admirable job of holding the group and the film together. His fight scene with the boat captain (his name escapes me) was especially well done.

The film really picks up when the group encounters the headhunters in the final act. They are very well portrayed and convincing. I was immediately reminded of any number of 70s era cannibal films I've seen. While nowhere near as shocking as anything you'll see in a movie like Cannibal Holocaust, there is a similar vibe to the headhunter scenes in Golden Goddess of Rio Beni. Really good stuff.

5/10