Popular reviews

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  Review by Hexagore ★★★ 2

  Watched the UHD 4K Blu-ray from 88 films.

  Rick Spear and the Ark of the Sun God.

  The suave spy/ burglar Rick Spear (David Warbeck) travels to Turkey on an asignment to steal an artifact from English nobleman Lord Dean (John Steiner). It appears it was a test to check if he's capable of a challenging assignment: To find and open the cursed tomb of the god Gilgamesh to retrieve the lost scepter which is said to hold magical powers.
  The demon cult of Gilgamesh and a powerful Sheik, who're replacing Indy's nazis, are after the artifact as well.

  Quite surprising this got an UHD 4K Blu-ray while more heavy-hitters, like Lucio Fulci's "The Beyond (1981)" , are still waiting…

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  Review by Ian Kemper ★★½

  Well as far as Raiders of the Lost Ark rip-offs go, I gotta say, I was hoping for a bit more. That's not to say this wasn't a mostly fun watch but it was unfortunately plagued by a few too many spots of tedium. Look, when your budget is meager there's only so much "action" and "adventure" you can pull off, so when you need an exciting car chase in a train depot you do it all in miniature (I'm not fucking around here, a whole car chase, with a train, in a depot/factory is all done with miniatures.....and it's fucking amazing!), when you need to do some espionage you treat it like a secondary scene from 60's era Bond…

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  Review by Mark Costello ★★½ 2

  Ripe Italian Raiders knock off that charms far more than it really should.

  From Antonio Margheriti comes The Beyond's David Warbeck as a middle class, middle aged James Bond-alike master thief, engaged by his wheelchair bound best buddy and his butler to break into the tomb of Gilgamesh to procure an ancient relic before it falls into the wrong hands and cause some sort of untold damage to humanity. None of this is sketched out any further because none of it really matters. What matters is a rip-roaring trip round modern day Istanbul (on a budget of course) with car chases performed by radio control model cars and Warbeck dropping poorly scripted zingers in his wake, while constantly losing his…

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★½ 2

  Italian industry in the 1980s has probably as many Raiders of the Lost Ark ripoffs as they have Mad Max ones, but while the latter often have at least traces of the Italian's ingenuity to them, the former mostly highlight the sorry state of things. This one was directed by Antonio Margheriti, a perfect competent guy for B grade action, but the only thing that stand out is how a few scenes suggest an ambition that the resources can't come close to fulfill. It is a dull parade that wants very hard to be a thrill ride.

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  Review by Lou (rhymes with wow!) ★★★

  If you haven't already guessed, The Ark of the Sun God is an Italian Raiders of the Lost Ark knockoff. David Warbeck plays Rick Spear who is more James Bond than he is Indiana Jones (interestingly enough, Warbeck was considered to replace Roger Moore as 007 but the producers thought he was to "wooden.")

  The story itself isn't that great and I felt everyone was mostly going through the motions.

  Like most Italian knockoff movies, this is cheaply made. There are car chases filmed with remote controlled toy cars (those were actually really nicely done) and landscapes were filmed using miniature sets (flying over mountain ranges.)

  The movie is not a complete waste of time, but I would definitely choose The Hunters of the Golden Cobra (Margheriti's other Raiders knockoff, also starring Warbeck) over this one!

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  Review by MushiMinion ★★★ 2

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  The Ark of the Sun God is a harmless Italian knock-off of, you guessed it, Raiders of the Lost Ark. It fails to be bad enough to be laughable, but manages to be good enough to make for a pleasant diversion for anyone wanting something like Indiana Jones. After all, how could anyone not appreciate a film that attempts James Bond-esque vehicle chases and stunts with little toy cars on a model set? Soooo cute!

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  Review by Paul D ★★★

  1980s Action Month (2018 Edition)

  Safecracker Rick Spear, there's a manly and heroic name if ever I've heard one, is tasked with finding the whereabouts of a legendary sceptre which once belonged to Gilgamesh, a Sumerian king once worshiped as a god, which is hidden somewhere in the Turkish desert. And for some reason he's brought his girlfriend with him, whose presence in the story seems to be nothing more than kidnap fodder.

  So basically it's Raiders of the Lost Ark, only less so, although it probably owes as much to Roger Moore era James Bond (Rog even gets a name check), what with it's contemporary setting, Rick being a few years too old for all this nonsense, our hero's…

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  Review by maskull ★★½

  The hero of our movie is pretty damn incompetent. He gets in a fight and someone else has to shoot the guy he's fighting, to save him. Another fight and he falls down a hole filled with snakes. He goes into a cave to open a door and his foot gets stuck and needs to be rescued. Hell, he's not even the one to retrieve the ancient relic that everyone wants so badly. On the plus side, he's great at the one-liners and he does a pretty good James Bond impression.

  Pretty forgettable but still enjoyable Indiana Jones rip-off with some cool car chases and some supporting characters that are actually more interesting than our leading man.

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  Review by BootlegBronson ★★★

  A decent Raiders riff that has its moments.

  I dig this kind of cliffhanger-style pulp nonsense even when it isn't great.

  This is a definite step down from Antonio Margheriti's first stab at Raiders Italian-style, Hunters of the Golden Cobra (a brain-meltingly goofy romp that feels like it was made by a bunch of kids making shit up in a sandbox – which is exactly what I want from this kind of stuff).

  Sun God lacks that movie's momentum and inventiveness and over-the-top set-pieces. Too much of its runtime is dedicated to cut-rate action in Istanbul before it lets its heroes get on with tomb raiding. But it's a Margheriti movie, so it does feature absolutely adorable miniatures, with a couple of car chases shot using remote control models. I honestly love that.

  Liked.

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  Review by TheThirdPill ★★★

  David Warbeck (over)doing his best Roger Moore impersonations. At its best moments, the film had something that reminded me of the Mastorakis films, which will probably make me now look into Antonio Margheriti's filmography seriously. Without realizing it, this was already my 7th Antonio Margheriti.
  Not really good, but it had its moments (especially to the end).

  Ah, and Ricardo Palacios was great as a imitation of Sallah (John Rhys-Davies in Raiders of the Lost Ark). I would say: He is stealing the show.

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  Review by Stefan Mitander ★★★

  Antonio Margheriti is said to have been super happy when he first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark because he knew it potentially meant a few years of Indy-rip offs for him. He got his wish.
  Ark of the Sun God is fun enough and Margheriti gets to do some of his beloved miniatures-work that is always charming to watch. The pacing is ok, and David Warbeck is pretty good even if he is no Harrison Ford (or Sean Connery which seem to be more what he was going for).
  It's an easy, breezy watch, but not very memorable. As low buck Indy-rip offs go, you could do a lot worse.

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  Review by gregs1999 ★★

  I can’t seem to recall ever seeing a car chase happening entirely with miniatures. Definitely awesome and well executed. But the rest of the film was super boring and a blatant rip off of Raiders of the Lost Ark and James Bond.