Michael Ledo This film could be a "so bad it is good" film. It takes a log time to develop. The part I liked best was Gilbert Roland talking to the audience with a drink in his hand. I was ready to hear him say, "Stay thirsty my friends." A group of people look in Mexico for the Tayopa treasure left behind by padre miners killed in 1646 in Arizona according to the narration. Kathryn (Rena Winters) leads a small group of men who are ready to strap 17 tons of treasure to their backs and walk out. A crazy man named Sally (Phil Trapani) has his eye on Kathryn. There is also a snake curse.It takes 50 minutes to get to Tayopa. There is a lot of dialogue and narration. The action was minimal. Kathryn gets naked and we get to see underwater blurred nudity. They do use metal detectors to look for the treasure. Is there a metal detector that works with the detector held at waist level? No reason. Just asking.Guide: No swearing, sex. Near nudity. Some unintended camp value.

talisencrw 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.

Red-Barracuda Treasure of Tayopa is about four people who go on an expedition in Mexico in search of lost gold. The group consists of a no nonsense female leader, an exposition-spouting older man, a long haired hothead called Sally and a Mexican side-kick. It's a real obscurity and a bit of an oddball movie overall. Much of its strangeness is on account of how shabbily it has been brought to the screen. Its poorness in most areas has resulted in a film with a somewhat strange ambiance.It could best be described as a semi-western adventure film. But it's quite difficult becoming very involved with the mission itself as it's never exactly very well presented. In fact, it's more than a little boring for much of the time unfortunately. Events are enlivened, however, with some scenes of excessive violence committed by the character Sally, who turns out to be a bit of a psychopath, albeit a somewhat annoying one. His crimes include doubling back to massacre a group of Mexicans for a decidedly minor infraction and administering a bloody whipping to the leading lady. As I say, it's all rather strange but it does feature some decent folk rock on the soundtrack, of a type that I am quite partial to. On the whole, this is one only for the most intrepid cinema fan.

chamilton-10 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.