By
Fred Blosser
In
“Secret of the Incas,” a 1954 release from Paramount Pictures, Harry Steele
(Charlton Heston) and Ed Morgan (Thomas Mitchell) are rival opportunists in
Cuzco, Peru. Both are searching for the
Sunburst, a fabled Incan artefact said to be hidden in the “lost city” of Machu
Picchu. “Not too many people go to Machu
Picchu,” Harry says. Today, when
tourists descend on the ancient Incan capital in droves, you would have to
wonder if he’d ever heard of Expedia. But the observation was true enough in the early 1950s when the ruins were
far off the beaten path. In those days,
most small-town Americans would have regarded a visit to New York or Miami as
an exotic excursion, never mind finding the time, money, or inspiration to fly
to the Andes.
Harry
has the edge in the quest for the Incan treasure, having appropriated a broken
chunk from an idol. The fragment
contains part of a pictograph which, when fitted to the rest of the carving on
the remainder of the statue, reveals the method for finding the hiding place of
the Sunburst. Putting the two together
isn’t a problem, requiring Harry only to follow a tourist group into the museum
where the fractured statue sits on display. But getting over the Andes to Machu Picchu to claim the Sunburst, “a
hunk of gold with 119 pure diamonds and 243 other precious stones,” is another
matter. This challenge is solved when
Elena (Nicole Maurey) arrives in Cuzco, a refugee from communist Romania. Elena is as grasping as Harry, whom she views
as her meal ticket to the U.S., while Harry uses her as bait to steal a small
private plane from the Romanian counsel, who flies into Cuzco to arrest
her. In Machu Picchu, Stanley Moorehead
(Robert Young), an archeologist directing a dig for the tomb of the last Incan
king, falls in love with Elena. Harry is
more amused than put out. His real
concern is Ed, who has followed by pack train and carries a gun.
The
Indians in the surrounding villages regard the Sunburst with spiritual awe,
believing that when it is found, the discovery will mark the rebirth of the
Inca nation. But Harry and his rival
only care about the fortune they can realize when they pry the jewels off the
relic and melt the gold into ingots. “We’ll
sit around and pluck it over like a roasted chicken, piece by piece,” Ed
gloats. The two agree on a fifty-fifty
split for the Sunburst, but given their mercenary natures, it’s about as
tenuous a deal as a division of spoils between competing bounty hunters in a
Spaghetti Western. Cast against type if
you remember them strictly for their signature roles, Heston and Mitchell are
excellent. Peruvian singer Yma Sumac, as
one of Machu Picchu’s Indian caretakers, has a sly screen presence and three
vocal numbers, which may be three too many for those who only want to get on
with the story. But Sumac was a
marketing draw comparable to having a performance by Lady Gaga or Adele in a
2023 movie. Largely forgotten today, she
was a star in the early 1950s “exotic music” genre pioneered by Les Baxter and
Martin Denny, with performances at Carnegie Hall and best-selling LPs on the
Billboard charts. Heston appears in some
exterior scenes of Cuzco and Machu Picchu, having participated in a month-long,
pre-production location shoot, but he, Mitchell, Young, Mourey, Sumac, and the
supporting Hollywood cast are missing (or represented by stand-ins at a
distance) from scenes where crowds of actual Peruvian Indians congregate at
Machu Picchu. Eagle-eyed viewers are
likely to notice the seams, but for most of us, it’s part of the fun to watch
old-school escapist pictures like this and tease out the real locations from
the studio sets.
“Secret
of the Incas” was absent from official U.S. home video release for
decades—neglectfully so, according to critics who have cited it as an influence
on “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and a precursor to the James Bond franchise in the
double entendres that Harry trades with an appreciative housewife of means from
Michigan, Mrs. Winston, played by the great Glenda Farrell. When Mrs. Winston greets the strapping Harry
by commenting, “My, you’re a big one,” and looks forward to his “services” as a
tour guide, you know she has more in mind than a dinner reminder to her tourist
group. “I’ll be right outside your
door,” he assures her.
A
new Blu-ray edition from Kino Lorber Studio Classics makes up for the film’s
long absence with a remastered print licensed from Paramount, from a 4K scan of
original negative elements. The rich
colours of the Indians’ shawls and serapes are eye-popping in restored
Technicolor. Maybe the movie’s omission
from prior video formats, especially the inferior VHS process, and more
especially the even worse VHS/EP/SLP budget format in which Paramount briefly
released a handful of its archival titles in 1992, wasn’t such a loss after
all.
The special features
on the Blu-ray include an informative audio commentary by Toby Roan, previews
of related KL titles, and sharp SDH captioning.
Click here to order from Amazon
Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon)