Just perfect...

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

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

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

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.

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.

"Treasure of Tayopa" is a real obscurity; though I am well versed in B cinema, I hadn't even heard of this movie until I bought a Mill Creek 50 movie DVD set and found the movie among the 49 others. It doesn't take long to figure out why this movie has been forgotten. It's a real old fashioned movie, coming across like it was made in the 1950s instead of the 1970s. But that's not a fatal problem. The big problem is that the movie is incredibly slow and boring. It takes forever for the movie to present the first real obstacle to its lead characters, and further obstacles are slow and infrequent in coming. As for the whole treasure- hunting portion of the movie, there's hardly any of that as well; most of the movie is just people struggling their way through the desert. I won't mention what eventually happens in the end, but it's a real head scratcher moment. In fact, the whole movie will have you puzzled as to what audience it was aimed for. I can't see that anyone on earth would be entertained by this.

Joking aside, this is a competently made, if rather low budget, thriller about a bunch of gringos (and Fillipe) who trek off into the Sierra Madres in search of . . . the treasure of Tayopa. Duh. Despite the cowboy hats and six-shooters it's less of a western and more of a '70s survivalist movie, with Trapani stealing the show as crazy ass Sally . . . though all of the actors are good, especially Rena Winters, who I could swear I've seen elsewhere, though the IMDb lists this as her sole credit. Numerous spoilers follow.After being introduced to our main characters the film jumps into a bit of back story, with "host/star" Gilbert Roland's narration accompanied by murals of the (fictional?) 17th century Tayopa mission, where Jesuit priests mined gold until they were massacred by Indians. Quickly enough we segue back into our tale, where, as already mentioned, Sally proves himself to be one messed upped mutha, coming on to Rena with increasing frequency and intensity, harassing Fillipe the guide, and locking horns with the ineffectual Stoppard. Along their merry way to Tayopa Sally murders some bandito types ("They pushed my horse - nobody does that" is a cheesy line, but Trapani made me believe it), resulting in the party being stalked by the ruffians' former employer, a sinister looking fellow dressed all in black. And he has a scar. But he's nice to his horse. Upon reaching their destination Sally snaps completely, attempts to rape Rena, kills Stoddard and Fillipe, and finally dies laughing maniacally, after his head is bashed in with a rock. The sinister fella only shows up to witness the aftermath. He is NOT the villain of the piece after all, despite what Mill Creek's product write up states. Really, most of the action centers on Rena and Sally, as individuals and as antagonists to each other. Rena shows herself as particularly resilient, at one point eating raw rattlesnake to stave off death, only after crawling out of a creek half-drowned and covered in welts. In her dying moments, she hallucinates (as I interpreted it) a priest, who offers her water. She dies. The end.After all that unpleasantness, Roland again addresses the audience, restating his assertion that "Tayopa's past will continue to drive people to search today, and plan to search for tomorrow." ---Spoilers end---Despite its low budget, Treasure of Tayopa makes good use of editing techniques and cinematography. I really can't see why it's as obscure as it is, or why nobody connected to it went on to bigger and better things.