The Final Sacrifice, or Quest for the Lost City as my copy claims, it's a 1990 movie that is most known for being featured on MST3K, but this movie it's watchable even without the MST3K crew.The film its one of those "So-bad-it's-good" kind of films, its also quite inspiring in many aspects, it was made with very little money and resources (and it shows), but you can tell that people cared about this little cheesy movie. It makes you want to go out and shoot a low budget schlocky film.Its incredibly flawed, but it has enough heart to keep you interested.

Fleeing from the cult that murdered his father, a teen (Christian Malcolm) is aided in his quest to find the lost city of the fabled Ziox by a secretive drifter.Typically a film ends up on the Bottom 100 because people see a movie on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" and then instantly give it a 1 or 2. Some of the films they show honestly are not that bad, but are just bad edits or bad quality prints. This film is the exception, and definitely belongs on the list.The acting is bad, the story is weak, the directing is just so-so, the cinematography has a weird ankle obsession. Wardrobe is nothing special, and whoever designed the "map" used in the film did an awful job. The only thing redeeming about this picture was the guy playing Mike Pipper.Just awful, through and through.

Oh dear, oh dear…So, the story of Ziox... maybe: A long time ago, an advanced civilization known as "Ziox" prospered. The people started worshiping an evil idol, so the regular god/gods were angered and punished them through forces of nature, causing their main city (or ONLY city, as it were) to be swallowed by the earth. The survivors continued to live alongside humans and… and by this point I'm just guessing.Here's the story of the movie: Seven years ago a guy was shot by a cult of supposedly, maybe Ziox-descendants. What we know for sure, is that the cult consists of ski mask guys in tank tops, that they're led by the black-clad Satoris, and that I start laughing every time I see him.In present time, the shot guy's skinny, teenage son Troy for the first time rummages through his dad's old stuff, and manages to find a folder marked "ZIOX" in 4 inch letters. It's filled with what looks like kids' drawings, and according to dad's notes, one of them is a one-of-a-kind map leading to the sunken city.Cut scene to anonymous hobo trying to start his truck in some dusty place. It won't start, and we never get to see hobo's face, so this scene is only in the movie to establish that the truck's crap, I guess?In the meantime, and also for the first time in seven years, the cult manages to find out where the guy they shot lived, and comes looking for the "map". Luckily, Troy has a bike (no, not a motorcycle, a regular ten-speed bike), so he outruns both the cult and their car, and ends up in the back up the crappy truck. We now get to see hobo's face for the first time, AND... he's a flabby, mustasched drunk. As if this wasn't bad enough, he's named Zap Rowsdower. (Is there anything that says "hero" like a fat drunk called Zap Rowsdower?)By sheer coincidence, Zap is one of the two humans in the world, or at least Canada, who know about the cult, so they talk a bit about it. The crappy truck breaks down somewhere, and what do you know – when Troy goes to get water, he finds stones that look like they're marked on the map. This is just a few minutes walk off the main road, and after a few minutes more, he (and Zap, who successfully ran after him without getting a heart-attack) finds a tunnel. Down it, there's some remnants of the Ziox civilization (?), and what I mean to say by that, is: Holy crap, those are cheap sets! Ugly, ugly papier maché. But expert Zap concludes that the tunnel "must have been dug hundreds of years ago". Guess that's the reason why everything's so untouched by time and nature down there. Anyway, while they're into finding stuff, they find a cabin belonging to Yosemite Sam's older brother. He greets them with a shotgun, but no worries: When Zap for the first and only time calls Troy "McGreggor" instead of "Troy",by another sheer coincidence, Yosemite turns out to be the OTHER of the only two humans who know about the cult - as well as Troy's dead dad's old friend. Now that all is well, the shotgun is put away, and Yosemite mutters out the history of Ziox, and how Troy's dad revealed the place of it and whatever. Oh yeah, by now we know that Zap was one of the cult, since he's a "half-blood" – which means Ziox people weren't human, or perhaps just not Canadian. Not sure what makes up the other half. Troy takes out the map and by drawing four lines on it (of which two are unnecessary), Yosemite marks out "the exact location of the city" - on a map that's never even been near according to scale. Oh, well...Next time we meet Satoris, he's taken Troy to the place of the evil idol – which can probably be seen from the road, by the way. Rumour has it that a human sacrifice will bring an undead, invincible army, which Satoris wants to get in order to take over the world. Very original... Zap comes too, without doing any actual searching for the place, so I guess the map really WAS exact. He finds a grappling hook just lying around and tries fighting Satoris. He's crap at it, but it doesn't matter since Troy shoots Satoris in the back with a shotgun, that was also just lying around. Satoris bursts into flame and the idol falls down for some reason, and the sunken town magically shows up again - all clean! The ski mask guys go to the town and Troy and Zap ride into the sunset in the crappy truck, after a heartfelt embrace.

I'd like to give this film one star, but I couldn't do that to such a hilarious film. Anyway, on with the review. This film was a student film made for about $1500, so I'd like to say we shouldn't judge it too harshly, but the direction is so poor, it's really impossible not to say it stunk. And it did stink. One of the main problems I had with the film was it's lack of any female characters. Sure, it has Troy's grandma for one scene, and you could hear the voice of a female operator in one scene, but what I mean is, this film had absolutely no romance(unless you want to count Zap Rowsdower and Troy scampering through the woods romantic...ugh...)I think there really should have been a spunky female protagonist alongside Zap and Troy, fighting masked goons and uncovering clues to the lost city. But alas, there is none. What I will say about this film is that it has some of the most unforgettable characters in B movie history. Who could forget whiny, prepubescent Troy Mcgregor? Or Hocky Hair-ridden, alcoholic, uber Canadian Rowsdower? Or Pipper, the man who sounds like he had a bottle brush shoved down his throat? Nobody, that's who. Nobody who saw the film, that is.