Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Charlton Heston made two films in 1954, and both have a South American setting. Whereas the first, "The Naked Jungle", was filmed in the USA, with Florida standing in for the Brazilian jungle, the second, "Secret of the Incas", was actually shot on location in Peru. It is often regarded as an inspiration for "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and the Indiana Jones franchise. Heston's character Harry Steele is, admittedly, not a professional archaeologist; he is an adventurer who poses as a tourist guide but whose real reason for being in Peru is to find an ancient gold and jewelled Inca treasure. Legend has it that the Inca Empire fell when this object was stolen from the Temple of the Sun and that the Empire will be reborn once it is found and returned to its rightful place. Steele's costume, including a leather jacket and fedora hat, is similar to that worn by Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones films, and at one point he even wears a light beard, something unusual in the fifties when Hollywood's leading men were nearly always clean-shaven. (Many people were upset when Gregory Peck appeared with a historically-accurate moustache in "The Gunfighter", a fictionalised biography of the Wild West outlaw Johnny Ringo). Although Steele he is the hero of the film, he is by no means wholly admirable. This was something of a departure for Heston, who normally specialised in playing the good guys. Christopher Leiningen, his character in "The Naked Jungle", may be rather stiff and lacking in human warmth, even towards his wife, but morally he is wholly upright. Steele is not. His initial intention towards the Inca artifact is to steal it; he is only the "hero" by comparison with his ruthless rival Ed Morgan. Only at the end does Steele have a change of heart. A subplot deals with his romance with a glamorous Romanian refugee named Elena Antonescu. We never discover Elena's full back-story, but she must have been a person of some consequence because the Romanian secret police have sent an agent all the way to Peru to persuade her to return to her homeland. "Secret of the Incas" is in many ways a standard action/adventure flick, but Heston always makes a very watchable action hero, and the striking photography of the Andean scenery lifts it above the level of the average fifties B-movie. it is often credited with popularising Machu Picchu as a tourist destination. 6/10

Secret of the Incas is directed by Jerry Hopper and written by Sydney Boehm and Ranald MacDougall. It stars Charlton Heston, Nicole Maurey, Thomas Mitchell, Robert Young and Glenda Farrell. Music is by David Buttolph and cinematography by Lionel Lindon.Harry Steele (Heston) is an adventurer searching for a hidden piece of Incan treasure in the Peruvian lands. But others are interested in the item as well, for differing reasons...I have to wonder if I have just watched a different version to some other on line reviewers? I have seen quotes attributed to Secret of the Incas that range from rip-roaring action to ebullient adventure, odd, then, that it really is neither of those things. Oh it's fun enough, bolstered by a rugged Heston and a shifty Mitchell, but it's hardly action orientated. In fact it doesn't gather pace until the last twenty minutes. The dialogue is often twee, the characterisations atypical of the genre, while a shift in attitudes for our hero is sadly unsurprising. There's no bad performances, mind, just that what they are given to work with is bordering on the mundane.Where the pic scores highly is with its stunning Peruvian vistas, awash with Technicolour, it's high end photography from Lindon (Oscar winner for Around the World in Eighty Days). Also of note is Hopper's good use of extras, hundreds of them, he knows how to craft a good scene and keeps the pic interesting when the flaccid screenplay threatens to sink the interest value without trace. Correctly cited as one of the biggest influences on Indiana Jones (specifically Raiders of the Lost Ark), anyone who has seen both films will know "Incas" influence is great. They will also know why "Raiders" is so beloved by the action/adventure film fan, it's because it "IS" an action/adventure film of some substance. Sadly "Incas", as watchable as it is, is pretty run-of-the- mill stuff that finds decent enough characters struggling to find any action or indeed, any adventure. 6/10

For those who have suggested that Indiana Jones was based on Heston's character in this movie, you are wrong, but not that far off. Jones was loosely based on Hiram Bingham, the Yale explorer who rediscovered Machu Picchu in 1911. Bingham, a very interesting character, later became a U.S. Senator.I don't know what movie everyone else was watching, but this one is on my short list of worst films I have ever seen. I have been to Machu Picchu and Cuzco ---and I thought this was an insult to Incan/Peruvian culture. The plot is predictable, the acting mediocre, and as someone else pointed out, Steele turning into a good guy at the end is a cop out.

In the 50s, between historical epics, Chuck made a few pretty good exotic adventure flicks. Two of them were located in South America -- the one in which he is a plantation owner fighting both a horde of army ants and Eleanor Parker's sexual experience, and this one, in which his career consists apparently of nothing more than acting as a guide in Peru, swindling rich tourists, and seducing their bored wives. Both have some snippy dialog. The censors must have been asleep at the switch.I can't remember the plot too well. I saw it on its release as a kid, and only more recently once on TV, when some of the lines and some of the scenes sent me into ictal spasms.A lot of traveling up and down rivers, to tricky places. Thomas Mitchell as a grubby, greedy American after Incan treasures. (And they were THERE too, the ones that Pizarro didn't make off with. Cripes, the royal family wore garments made of gold, and after they were worn once the garments were thrown away!) Mitchell's most memorable line. He's wringing his hands with glee, practically drooling, as he fantasizes about how they're going to rip off some priceless treasure that night. "Ahh, nobody ever made a buck in the daytime!" Later, Mitchell makes a grab for a golden statue or something and falls off the mountain some thirty-thousand feet. Later someone asks Heston what killed Mitchell. "Gravity," he replies.But the most hilarious exchange, the one I could hardly believe on second viewing, takes place between Glenda Farrell, the middle-aged bored wife of a dull bulb of an American zillionaire. She's eyeing him as he slinks around the room polishing his rifle or something and she asks if he likes his job. It goes something like, "It's a living." She: "How do you approach your work?" He: "I take it slow and easy." She: "That's just the way I like it. Are you good at it?" He: "I've never had any complaints." It goes on, but I can't.It's a lively movie, completely unbelievable, as is the voice of Yma Sumac, a woman who bore an uncanny resemblance to the mother of the school girl I was dating at the time. The natives are laughable. Oh, they existed, just as the Inca did (though the name "Inca" was used only in reference to the incestuous royal family), but they didn't look anything like these Hollywood head shrinkers from Central Casting. I hope I'm not getting this mixed up with Heston's other South American adventure!Robert Young is stuck with the role of the nice guy -- again. It must have been an easy morph into Marcus Welby, MD.In its own quiet way this is a classic of its kind, if pure schlock can be considered a kind. Quite enjoyable.