Rating: C-
Dir: Matt Cimber
Star: Laurene Landon, Ken Roberson, Cihangir Gaffari, Luis Lorenzo
a.k.a. YellowHair and the City of Gold
[22] “You’re one of my two favourite smells…” This 1984 spaghetti western stars Laurene Landon as the titular blonde (rather than red) Indian, whose murdered mother holds the key to a great treasure coveted by American adventurers and Mexican generals, and guarded by a particularly unwelcoming tribe who specialise in impromptu body piercing and eyelid-removal. Predictably, this wants to be ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, and just as inevitably, comes second in every important department. The major problem isn’t the imagination or action, both of which are fine – the latter showcased in an accomplished stagecoach chase which has the main leads doing a surprising amount of their own stunts.
It’s just that director Matt Cimber (who also gave us the Pia Zadora trash classic, Butterfly) hasn’t a clue what to do between times, with scenes that start suddenly, tail off into nothing, take far too long, and appear to have been edited with a butter knife. While aiming to be a pastiche of silent cinema serials, that idea is discarded between the first ten minutes (in which no-one says a word) and the end credits. Such casual sloppiness is symbolic of the film as a whole, and that’s a shame, for the concept of “a female Indiana Jones”, as the sleeve puts it, is one with potential