Treasure of Tayopa (1974)

Simply A Masterpiece

i must have seen a different film!!

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

This is one of the most unusual films I have ever seen. Director Bob Cawley tried many intriguing things in telling basically a very predictable story of greed and sexual tension destroying a group of four's journey to cross the border, find and take 17 tons of gold from a Mexican village. It has a host--which instantly reminded me of that suave spokesman for those foreign beer commercials--and had at least two of the main actors act as narrators, so that you could tell what they were thinking. It was zero-budget, but had some bizarre aspects of filmmaking which I found quite admirable, a few ideas that really worked and made the otherwise forgettable story worth watching. There were a few things I could certainly glean and learn from, and put someday in a film I made, should at some point in the future, I was blessed to make cinematic artwork for the world to see. In my opinion, to get your ideas from your mind, and to do everything necessary to make a lasting 60-120 minute visualization of them, is the pinnacle of the living experience and the highest honour one can achieve, at least in this world.

Another Mill Creek Drive-in 50-pack film. This one should be retitled to "Garbage of Tayopa" -- it's completely garbage. 100% trash not one thing salvageable about this snooze-fest.Z-grade acting. Almost anyone can do this film because acting talent is not what they were looking for - everything sounds staged and phony. The one scene with the sun glaring in the camera seemed to drag on and on... time filler I would guess.This is the most boring treasure hunt you can watch. You are much better off gathering up your family and friends to treasure hunt in your back yard - you'd have more fun than watching this dreary film.1/10

Four folks, including a lady who's name I've forgotten already, a guy called Tom, a guide and translator Phillipe (for whom the actor who plays him receives a credit for doing everyone's hair) and a crazy guy called Sally, head off into Mexico to find the fabled Treasure of Tayopa, said to be hidden in a mine somewhere in the mountains. They run into some dodgy banditos but none turn out to be as dodgy as Sally, who doubles back to massacre the bandits for pushing his horse! With the one remaining bandito in pursuit, the quartet head into the hills, but, as the lead actress says rather stiltedly "An air of tragedy has befallen us". Strangely introduced by a Mexican guy drinking hooch and stumbling over his own lines, Treasure of Tayopa is a very obscure wilderness movie full of weirdness (we hear the thoughts of our protagonists as they trudge through the land), brief gore and nastiness, really bad acting, a bit of skinny dipping and endless shots of people riding horses. Although very low budget and hard going at times, there are glimpses of that good old seventies grimness, as Sally uses his crossbow and machete to make short work of the bandits (who were, after all, planning to kill the explorers), and turns his craziness on his friends, including giving out a nasty beating to our lead lady. I can't see anyone but obscure movie fans seeking this one out, but be warned, this is strictly amateur hour, but it does have its charms (the 'host' is hilarious in his ineptitude and faux philosophy), and I might be going easy on the film as I'm kind of a sucker for 'people stuck in the wilderness with treacherous companions' movies (like 'Four Rode Out' and 'Apache Blood'). The bad acting goes a long way in this film too, and for those seeking it out, I hope you like lots of salaried shots!

This is a very strange movie from start to finish. We follow a bunch of characters that we know little about. We have no reason to root for them or hope they get the treasure/make it out alive/whatever. Then the leader (Rena Winters) goes out of her way to be distant, cold and boring. The other male leader of the group is just basically there for exposition, so the only character interaction is between the ridiculously bad overacting of a guy named "Sally". There is a fourth member of the team Phillipe, but rarely says or does much (or even appears in shots) unless they need a Spanish translator or a fourth vote.Sally is supposed to be crazy, but he just seems to be an annoying idiot, but a harmless one at first. Eventually we learn a little about Sally and Phillipe, but not much, and not enough to care about either of their fate, or to justify or explain Sally's later actions.There seemed to be at least one scene missing from my DVD (Mill Creek "Drive-In Classics" 50 movie pack) because Rena Winters' narration stops mid-sentence at one point and the scene changes. Maybe that was the scene where everything is explained so we care if she makes it out OK. The possibility of more missing scenes would explain why when our group of four meet a group of Mexicans, none of them acknowledge or seem to notice that they'd already met one of them in their travels, even though he'd been the source of much suspicion and discussion afterward.The local Mexicans they encounter encompass every bad stereotype imaginable. I admit I've never been to Mexico, but I'm pretty sure that even by the 70's the stereotype of "banditos" with sombreros, covered in bullets and swigging tequila was already long outdated and offensive.Pretty boring up to this point (I was about to give up) the movie suddenly jumps to unprovoked bloody violence. Back to total boredom for a while, then even more killing, beating, whipping until pretty much everybody is dead. None of the deaths really seem to have meaning or are presented with any sense of emotion at all.Between all this oddity there's some pretty bizarre camera work with the "passage of time" montages using sometimes triple, sometimes quadruple exposures to have sunsets, mountains, closeups, and our four "heroes" walking all in the same frame. Pretty arty stuff for such a dumb movie.The appearance of on-camera storyteller/narrator at the beginning and end was also very strange.