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For the set-up to this film, read/watch Der
Schatz der Azteken.
Karl Sternau (Lex Barker) has been saved from certain death by Aztec
Princess Karja (Theresa Lorca) and temporarily brought to the cave where
the secret great Aztec treasure is hidden. Later, when he's back at Don
Pedro's (Hans Nielsen) hacienda, he can't stop thinking about the Aztec
gold ... and so can all the baddies involved:
- Don Alfonso (Gérard Barray) thinks he can get to the treasure by
marrying Karja and then killing her - and really he manages to sweettalk
her into giving away the location of the cave, then pushes her off some
cliffs, but somehow she survives,
- Capitan Verdoja (Rik Battaglia) thinks the way to the treasure is
either known by Sternau or by Don Pedro's daughter Rosita (Alessandra
Panaro), both of whom he captures eventually ... but Sternau naturally
escapes,
- French Marshall Bazaine (Jean-Michel Caussimon) doesn't really have a
clear strategy, he's just evil,
- then there's Cortejo (Antun Nalis), who bets his money on Don Alfonso
and follows him to wherever, only to be eventually killed by him,
- there's of course evi Indian Chieftain Black Deer (Milivoje
Popovic-Mavic), who is in league with Verdoja and really thinks Verdoja
will share fair and square,
- and then there's Josefa (Michèle Girardon), who has conspired with
each and every of them against all the others in order to get her hands on
the gold no matter what ... but instead she's ultimately killed by
Verdoja, once he has decided he prefers Rosita to her ...
The finale has massive chases through the titular Pyramid of the Sun
God, which serves as Verdoja's HQ and is full of secret passageways and
torture instruments, until in the end, Don Alfonso arrives at the Aztec's
secret cave, where he has to confront the thought-dead Karja once more,
and he shoots her in cold blood ... only to then be shot by Verdoja and
Black Deer, who have managed to pick up his trail. However, when
Flathouani (Jovan Nikolic), guardian of the treasure, sees the men trying
to steal the Aztec gold, he simply releases the lava from the next-door
volcano onto them and kills them all, at the same time destroying the
Aztec gold.
When Sternau and company arrive at the cave in hot pursuit of Verdoja,
everything is already over.
Once again, Ralf Wolter plays Sternau's comic sidekick ...
If you have already seen Der
Schatz der Azteken, you can't help but feeling seeing just more of
the same (rather unsurprisingly because the films were shot back-to-back).
Die Pyramide des Sonnengottes is gradually better though because it
doesn't waste too much time with setting up the story (this has already
been done in Der Schatz der
Azteken), and it features an impressive set of an Aztec Pyramid
and explores many of the options the set offers. On the other hand though,
the film loses many of the subplots set up in the first film (e.g. the
Mexican revolution is hardly mentioned at all) and offers hardly any
character development.
Summing it all up, the fim, like its predecessor, looks like a decently
budgeted and competently directed Western/adventure serial, it's fun to
look at (if serials and serial-like films are your sort of thing), but
it's far from being great and is not the film veteran director Robert
Siodmak deserves to be judged by ...
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