In this shot-on-video homage to Mondo movies, an archeology student joins forces with a roguish trader to follow an ancient Mayan treasure map in search of gold, only to encounter harsh jungle conditions and danger beyond their wildest dreams.
Storyline
When watching a low-budget movie, there has to be some allowances made on the part of the viewer regarding the film at hand. The people making these movies don’t have access to the bottomless pockets of Hollywood, so there are some things that simply won’t compare to the multi-million dollar movies churned out by Spielberg and Lucas. The video may not look as good, the sound may not be as crisp, the effects and locations may be subpar, and the cast probably won’t be rounded out by seasoned veterans, but I’ve learned to overlook all of that. There’s some good stuff to be found in many of these movies if you don’t require a lot of glitz and glamor, but unfortunately, Sacrifice of the White Goddess doesn’t fall into that “good stuff” category.
The story tells the tale of Holly (Francine Chevalier), a down-on-her-luck college student who will do just about anything for a couple of bucks. She finds a book on Mayan legends that describes a city full of gold, so she breaks up with her boyfriend and heads down to Mexico to try her luck at finding this fabled city. Now, considering that this was a school textbook that she found in the library, I personally might have thought twice before purchasing that plane ticket, but… oh, never mind. She eventually meets up with Lisa (Lisa Beavers) and Dobbsie (Steve McKinney), and after Lisa purchases an old map from the town drunk, the trio heads off into the wild jungles of Mexico in search of treasure. What they find instead is a tribe of Mayan Indians – Indians, as in, the native American variety.
Now, as I mentioned in the opening of this review, some allowances do have to be made when watching a low-budget offering. However, this film simply asks for too much out of the viewer, and to make matters even worse, there simply isn’t any sort of payoff to make it all seem worth it. The video and audio quality are both atrocious, the cast is made up of people who were a small step away from reading off of cue cards in terms of their “performances”, the storyline is weak, and there’s more padding here than in Nicole Ritchie’s bra.
Let me break down the entire storyline here to show just how padded this affair really is. Holly reads a book and finds out about these cities. She catches plane to Mexico where she meets Lisa and Dobbsie. They have a few beers before heading out into the “jungle” (which looked more like a forest to me, but who am I to judge). They hike through the jungle. They hike through the jungle some more. They hike through the jungle just a little more. Lisa falls in the calm and shallow river from a height of about three feet and dies. A band of the most stereotypical Mexicans you’ll ever see appears and kills Dobbsie. The Indians show up and abduct Holly. Holly gets axed. The credits roll. The movie only runs for a little over an hour, but I swear that it felt like an eternity to me.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the entire movie is narrated by Holly as she reads a script that had to have been written by a full-fledged, bra-burning man-hater. If you think that the Lifetime channel was geared towards women, just wait until you catch a few of the lines that are read off here in a failed attempt at adding some substance to this schlock. I honestly have no clue as to where this stuff came from as the film was directed by a man and features a fair amount of T&A action, but it’s certainly there for the “wimmin” in the audience who like that sort of thing.
The only good thing that I can say about this offering is that it’s pretty much a free movie if you pick up Camp Motion Pictures’ White Slave Collection which includes this, White Slave, and Naked Amazon. Pick up the set for the latter two movies, but just pretend that it’s a double-feature instead of a triple. 1/10.”
