User Reviews

HUNT FOR THE GOLDEN SCORPION is one of the very last Indiana Jones-style jungle adventure films made by the Italians, and like most Italian B-movies made at the turn of the 1990s, it's completely dreadful. The almost entire lack of money doesn't help; the budget extended to some authentic locations but that's about it. Poor old Umberto Lenzi directs with none of the style he displayed thirty, twenty, even ten years previously. An unknown cast work through a lacklustre script in which David Brandon (of STAGE FRIGHT fame) is jailed by bad guys, leading the bland hero to attempt a rescue. A few RAMBO-style village assaults and fire fights punctuate the tedium, but the main plot is never convincing and the whole thing is dragged out to the nth degree.

Hunt For The Golden Scorpion is one of those cheap Italian action films in which a small group of plucky adventurers attack a heavily guarded army base, somehow emerging unscathed, having shot and blown up countless highly trained soldiers (destroying most of the camp in the process). Did I mention that two of the heroes have no military experience whatsoever, but take to the carnage like ducks to water? It's extremely dumb, but also happens to be the highlight of an otherwise rather dull jungle adventure directed by Umberto Lenzi, of Cannibal Ferox fame.

Lenzi's penultimate movie opens with explorer Tom Maitland (David Brandon) being attacked in the Amazon by army troops, whose colonel seeks the whereabouts of a golden scorpion worth ten million dollars. Captured, Tom is locked up in a cell, charged with drug trafficking, and tortured, but claims to have lost the map pinpointing the location of the treasure. Meanwhile, Tom's pretty sister Mary (Christine Leigh) travels to South America to try and find her missing brother, enlisting the help of traveller Jim Foster (Andy J. Forest).

Despite plenty of fighting, shooting and explosions, this really is the epitome of mundane, with pedestrian direction from Lenzi, and awful acting, guiltiest party being Dennis Bourke as Scottish villain McDonald, who mostly speaks with a plummy English accent, but occasionally attempts a Scottish lilt with terrible results. An alarmed monkey gives the most convincing performance, probably because it was worried that it would be fed to a leopard (if you've seen Ferox, you know what I'm talking about).

After much wandering through the jungle, the treasure - a cheap looking prop - is located by the good guys in a cave, but snatched from their grasp, first by an untrustworthy ally (who pays for his treachery with his life) and then by McDonald, who gives them three plane tickets home in return (what a rotter!). In a really daft twist, it is revealed that McDonald was given a fake copy of the scorpion by Foster, who successfully smuggles the real treasure past the dumbest customs officer in the world when the group returns to Miami (wannabe drug traffickers take note: stuffed toy parrots will not be searched).