"Indiana Jones" style late 80s adaptation of Alistair MacLeans' book is a watchable adventure that should have been more fun, as it has some irresistible ingredients. (Like veteran actor Robert Vaughn playing a demented Nazi scientist.) But the execution just doesn't have enough "oomph" going for it. Its action scenes are fine, and the story is a fairly enjoyable one, despite its characters not being terribly interesting, for the most part.American ninja Michael Dudikoff stars as John Hamilton, a jungle guide in the late 1960s who takes a doctor (Victor Melleney) and his sexy daughter (Sarah Maur Thorp) through the Amazonian wilderness to a fabled "lost city". When he alone escapes the clutches of hostile native tribes, he feels just guilty enough to want to go back. And there are a variety of parties who want to make the return trek with him, like German "businessman" Heinrich Spaatz (Donald Pleasence) and his associate Maria (Cynthia Erland), each with their own agenda in mind.While it's commendable to see Dudikoff step outside his personal comfort zone and try something different, he just isn't enough of an actor to make his character all that compelling. (One can hardly fail to notice that his narrator voice is somehow more gravelly than his speaking voice in the rest of the movie.) Fortunately, heavy hitters like Vaughn, Pleasence (who absurdly sports a wig part of the time), Herbert Lom (as a grumpy and officious police officer), and L.Q. Jones (coming off well in the most colorful role of the picture) do their part in keeping the story alive. Lovely Erland is passable in the most tragic role.Striking scenery (this was actually filmed in South Africa) and photography do help to a degree, as well as a fine music score by Sasha Matson. Undemanding viewers may be amused.Six out of 10.

This movie is the pits. The worst kind of B film making. The acting isn't bad, but that's not saying much. Robert Vaughn and Donald Pleasance are included in the cast, and sleep walk their way through their respective scenes. Dudikoff doesn't do much apart from wandering about and mouthing his dialogue. There is some gun play and pyrotechnics later on in the movie, but the pace is so deadly slow you probably won't notice. The jungle locale' isn't used to good effect, and the photography is listless. This movie is a pointless exercise in monotony. There is nothing to get your teeth into, the scenario is so uninteresting, it all amounts to very little. Even Dudikoff fans won't be able to find anything redeeming about this outing. Consider the bullet dodged.

This is the worst film ever and as waste of time, money and life as I watched painfully throughout the whole of film what I thought was a jungle action adventure but trailed off into the unknown and found itself in the genre of crapness. DO NOT WATCH UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!!

One of Alistair MacLean's poorest books becomes one of the poorest films based on one of his books in this jungle dud. Michael Dudikoff leads the expedition into the heart of the Amazon, culminating in some silly revelatory scenes in which most of the characters turn out to be someone other than who we thought they were. It transpires that they all have various motives for searching for a Nazi scientist in a lost city, but none of the revelations are very convincing. The actors have done better work, some of them have been in great movies (Donald Pleasance, Robert Vaughn) but none of them would be proud of this. It's purely a case of them taking the money and running. Even the jungle backdrop is under-used. You'd think that a film set in the jungle would at least have pretty scenery and some spectacular photography....but oh no, not this one!