6/10
"How are you, my ugly little duckling?"
11 December 2022
Don Taylor (whose credits as an actor include the original "Father of the Bride" and "Stalag 17", and whose credits as a director include "Escape from the Planet of the Apes" and "The Final Countdown") plays our amiable lead here, an archaeologist named Peter Masters. He arrives in Brazil where he is aggressively pursued by a character named Crespi (the unsung character actor Eduardo Ciannelli), who wants financing for a trip deep into the heart of the jungle. Crespi had previously encountered the legendary female warriors of the title, and wants to prove that his story is not made-up.

Written, produced, and directed by Curt Siodmak, who'd given us such genre gems as "The Wolf Man" and "Donovans' Brain", this is much more forgettable than his best work. It's goofy, dopey B movie nonsense, with Siodmak going to great lengths to play a fair amount of this story tongue-in-cheek. A case in point: the deliberately silly "bathing" sequence.

The ladies themselves are pretty amusing, whether they're painting themselves green, spending a protracted amount of time dancing for Masters (whose reactions are priceless), going absolutely gaga over the hunky Masters, or trying to act all tough.

And to add to that, Masters, Crespi, and their traveling companions had previously gotten attacked by pirates, leading to a hilariously silly action / fight sequence where the baddies keep getting thrown off a ship, landing in mud, and coming right back for more.

This may have the distinction of actually being shot in Brazil, but it's kind of a waste of good atmosphere; some viewers may bemoan the amount of comedy in the second half when this possibly could have amounted to a pretty good adventure. In any event, it was *too* amusing in general for this viewer to completely write it off.

An uncredited Paul Frees provides the voices for a couple of the characters.

Six out of 10.
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