The insurance adjuster Al Colby (Glenn Ford) is interrogated by the Mexican authorities about the trail of dead bodies behind him. When the personnel from the American Consulate arrive to talk to Colby, he tells that his journey had begun in Havana, Cuba, where he was short of money. Colby is contacted by Thomas Berrien (Francis L. Sullivan), a crooked collector of antiquities that offers one thousand dollars to him to travel by ship to Oaxaca, Mexico, smuggling a small package. During the voyage, Thomas dies in his cabin, and Colby opens the package and finds three parchments and one medal of stone. When he is contacted by the rival of Thomas, the archaeologist Jefferson (Sean McClory), he discovers that the parchments contain information about a hidden treasure in the Zapotecan ruins of Mitla."Plunder of the Sun" is a flawed but enjoyable action movie of treasure hunting and double-crossing. Glenn Ford performs an ambiguous and amoral adventurer that is motivated by money only. There are several silly moments, like for example the tiger men removed by chisel by archaeologists that do not see the loose stone; or the heavy statue falling over Jefferson; or the conclusion with Dr. Ulbaldo Navarro (Julio Villareal) clearing his situation. The funniest scene is when he tells Julie Barnes, performed by Diana Lynn, that she would not be threatened by the sacrifice of virgins by the Zapotecans. Nevertheless the movie is entertaining and was filmed in the Zapotecan ruins of Mitla and Monte Alban. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Pergaminho Fatídico" ("Fatidic Parchment")

Glenn Ford has one of his strongest roles in John Farrow's "Plunder of the Sun", playing a debt collector in over his head in the stolen antiquities market in Cuba and Mexico. The film is unique in its time and genre in that the entire film was made on location in Mexico, and the ancient ruins provide an interesting backdrop to the story and characters. It's a fun movie but ultimately all the build-up doesn't really lead to anything as interesting as it seemed it might.There are many elements here that will remind the viewer of Huston's "Maltese Falcon" – the general theme centered around a stolen cultural artifact, the fat man with mysterious motives (in this case, Francis L. Sullivan), the weird violent guy chasing after the treasure (a bleached blond Sean McClory), etc. And then of course we also have some of the elements that are typical of many suspense films of the 40s/50s (the "noir" kind): the spoiled rich party girl Julie (Diana Lynn), devoted but devious glamour lady Anna (Patricia Medina), and a decidedly ambiguous leading man in Ford's Al Colby.So essentially we have a not-so-original story set in a very different and more convincing (because it's real) exotic setting, for what it's worth. I really enjoyed the scenes with Colby exploring the ruins when he first arrives in Mexico. Later we find that his character has apparently had a true spiritual epiphany on this occasion although his narrative comments only hint at this and he remains his typical ambiguous self through the rest of the film – even going so far as to rob the ruins with the imminently unpleasant archaeologist Jefferson (McClory). This is typical of the problems I see in this film – the resolution for the characters seemed in almost every case to be at odds with how they had been established earlier in the film, and there was little in the way of effective development to explain these changes. The film spends so much time building up the Julie character as a hussy from the Gloria Grahame school, but then it blows off all that steam with a lame hospital bedroom confessional scene. I really am not sure what they were trying to do with the Anna character. At times Farrow's direction and the costuming seemed to imply a kind of religious iconography, especially in the scene where Anna enters the room where Colby is arguing with Mexican archaeologist Navarro, with a procession behind her, wearing a kind of veil, and holding a gun in front of her like the rosary – you could call her the may queen of death. But the film didn't really establish her very well as either a "fatale" character or a mature partner for the hero – like most the characters in this film her actions seem arbitrary and to depend only on the circumstances that the plot demands. Speaking of Navarro, he's so underdeveloped that it's very jarring to find him later having an important impact on the plot's resolution. We don't even get his credit on IMDb, much less on the film itself, so I don't even know who played the role.Ford's strong characterization provides enough impetus to carry the film along; the writers apparently saw "Gilda" and decided that Glenn Ford would be even more popular if he was a complete misogynist. There are some really fun lines of dialog that he throws out there in his cynical way. I enjoyed the scenes where he devised the code to try to fool Navarro. McClory was also very impressive in a menacing character role. There are numerous small character parts that are all handled with great consistency by director Farrow.A final note – one interesting aspect of this movie is that the various "hiding places" used in the film are all so terribly obvious that it's almost impossible to believe it was accidental. And I believe there was even a line of dialog in the film about the best hiding place being the most obvious one. Thus Ford hides the parchment in his shoes (duh!), with the hotel lobby clerk, etc. And then when they find the treasure it's "hidden" in a spot where tourists stroll by every day. After absconding with the treasure McClory and his accomplice "hide" in the warehouse of the city museum! I'm not really sure if there was a deeper reason why this theme was being addressed, but it does also apply to the film's romantic resolutions. Colby ends up with Anna, the first woman he speaks to in the film and one who he expected to sleep with that very night, and Julie ends up with Navarro's son, who she has seemed to take for granted through the entire film. Possibly this is an element that was interesting in the novel but underplayed in the film, I'm really not sure having never read the book.

Long unseen due to legal complications, Plunder of the Sun is now available on DVD and recently popped up on TCM. It was worth the wait. Glenn Ford is excellent as usual as Al Colby, an American who succumbs to temptation and gets involved in the artifact smuggling trade in Latin America. For the princely sum of $1,000, he's hired by Berrien (Sydney Greenstreet stand in Francis Sullivan) to transport the Maguffin from Cuba to Mexico. Things get complicated when Berrien turns up dead, and Colby finds others on the trail of his valuable package. The film features outstanding cinematography by Jack Draper--whose atmospheric, carefully lit work is best known to baby boomers thanks to his work on horror films such as Curse of the Crying Woman and World of the Vampires--and magnificent location footage of the Oaxaca ruins. Also noteworthy is the supporting cast, which includes bleach blonde Irish thespian Sean McClory and the brilliant veteran character actor Charles Rooner, an unheralded talent whose performance as a dissipated doctor in 1947's La Perla remains a landmark of cinematic malevolence.

David Dodge's novel is brought to the screen with Ford excellent as protagonist Al Colby. The script however, plays fast and loose with the novel, changing the locale from Peru to Mexico and now the search is on for Aztec artifacts instead of Incan. All things considered, this is a tightly directed and well acted tale. It has not been available for viewing as it seems to be tied up in litigation along with "Island in the Sky"(1953) and "The High and the Mighty"(1954)as the Wayne Family battles Warner Brothers and we are the losers.