Proving once again that old saw that anything Hollywood can do successfully, the Italians can do cheaper and with Antonio Margheriti, Ark Of The Sun God starring David Warbeck is Rome’s low-budget rip of Raiders Of The Lost Ark. However, what AOTSG lacks in originality and funding, it makes up with in Trans-Am chases. That’s only one of several personal stamps that Antonio (showing up here in the credits in his American secret identity of Anthony M. Dawson) leaves on this movie like the bootprint of a Bruno Maglia knock-off.

I was prepared to enjoyed this movie since I’m usually a sucker for these Indy rip-offs. I fondly remember renting a bunch of these things involving Richard Chamberlain as Allan Quartermain as well as even lesser known types like Jake Speed back in the eighties. Sadly, this movie takes an eternity to actually get around to treasure hunting and when they finally do, they don’t encounter much in the way of ancient and/or exotic obstacles. Antonio was obviously aware of the limitations his movie was going to have and made up for it by having copious amounts of action, even if such action were strictly 70s cop show action mixed in with a story about the search for Gilgamesh’s scepter.

To give you an idea of what were dealing with here, Antonio Margheriti is best remembered for his Cannibal Apocalypse and David Warbeck’s resume includes two Lucio Fulci films, The Beyond and The Black Cat. These two and other cast members were in a bunch of other dingy foreign movies you’ve probably at least heard of, even if you’ve never heard of anyone that actually saw them, so you’re dealing with some fairly sure hands in this type of thing.

David Warbeck plays a master safecracker whom seems a bit long in the tooth for these tomb raiding shenanigans. On the plus side, he doesn’t seem to be taking things too seriously. But on the minus side, he’s running around in tighter designer jeans than his white trash girlfriend and someone should have really thought about getting this guy a shirt that would cover all of his midriff for the big Temple of Gilgamesh scene. I don’t want to fool you though with all this talk about tomb raiding because none of this stuff gets going in earnest until about the last third of the movie.

When you don’t have a lot of money to mess around building sets of old tombs and treasure or spend a lot of time out in the weeds getting exotic shots, you do what we in the biz call “setting up the story.” This is code for lots of scenes of David running around Istanbul (I’m assuming that he and Antonio had family there they could crash with or something) talking with tubby and shady shop owner Muhammed, avoiding assassins with the Eye of Gilgamesh tattooed on their hands, and cracking a safe while his girlfriend is taking a nap back at the hotel room.

I’ll admit that I had my concerns watching all this, that it seemingly had nothing to do with the cool picture on the front of the DVD where David and his girlfriend were standing around some way cool tomb looking scared and cowed by what they saw, but I was sure that this was just preparing me for all the tomb raiding that was sure to come.

When David went off to crack a safe at some palatial estate, I was wondering what sort of cat burglar would take his girlfriend along with him, but figured that was part of his cover that allowed him to move and in and out of high society without too many questions. It turns out that there really was no explanation for her presence and she spent a good deal of the movie getting kidnapped while David sat around sipping his favorite drink – milk and Bacardi, which was invariably drugged by the crafty Muhammed.

The safe cracking thing ends up just being a test set up by David’s good buddy Dean. Dean is an English fancy lad in a wheelchair and was trying to find out if David was as good as Scotland Yard’s dossier said he was. See, that’s how we know that David is the best there is, because Scotland Yard has a dossier on him. Dean tells David (who actually plays a character named Rick Spear, but anyone who has ever seen David Warbeck in action will just figure that he’s really playing himself) that he needs his talents to crack the ultimate safe – the big golden door that leads to the Temple of Gilgamesh!

Apparently there is a scepter in this tomb that if it fell into the wrong hands, it would put the world at risk or at least delay the Super Bowl or something. Luckily, no one knows where this tomb is or how to open it up without destroying everything inside. Just as unluckily, Dean is going to find it and have David open it so that he can get the scepter.

Even though no one knows where it is, Dean knows where the one guy who knows where it is, is staying. David has to go find this guy, get the lowdown on the temple’s location and go pick the door lock. But it turns out that Dean isn’t the only guy interested in this ancient artifact. There’s a group of guys that I think from their costumes are supposed to be Arab, but look like Italian guys in rented Arab costumes, that are bound and determined to have the scepter so that their civilization can rise again and rule the world!

Their bungling attempts to kidnap David’s girlfriend, Pussycat, are foiled by David, most notably by a ridiculous encounter at the local harbor where David commandeers a water canon and points it at the boat that the kidnappers have his lady on. These guys all fly out of the boat, even when the water doesn’t hit them and perhaps most amazing of all, they seem to circle back around to the water canon just in case all of them haven’t been knocked out of the boat. I guess just turning the boat around and driving away wasn’t in the escape plan they drew up for such an encounter.

David also shows his mettle as an action hero by swinging across the water on a rope, no doubt drawing applause from the three man Turkish crew it looks like they shot this picture with. An even more stunning action sequence is a car chase that David has with these Italian-Arabs that Antonio shoots using miniature cars and sets that look like they were left over from a Godzilla movie! This thing was a hilarious bit of moviemaking magic with Antonio showing us these remote control cars careening around toy warehouses and train stations intercut with close ups of David in a car rocking back and forth and looking around like he was wondering why those three Turkish guys were rocking his car!

The movie finally gets David, Muhammed, and Beetle (this is the drunk guy that accompanied some professor to the tomb years ago and is the only one who knows where it is) to the temple with the Italian-Arabs hot on their tail. Once there, they wander around and somehow they find this tomb and there is a big gold door that needs to be cracked. They find a trap door and David goes down there and puts some key in somewhere and gets his leg trapped by a falling log or pillar and this pretty much clues you in as to why Scotland Yard never could be bothered to run this bloke in.

Dean comes to his rescue and inexplicably brings Pussycat along! I think the helicopter pilot that dropped off David and company told Dean it looked like that Arab-Italian gang were going to cause trouble, so Dean decided to go out. He also chose this moment to reveal that he really could walk after all. His deception was never explained, but I used to fake having diarrhea a lot in high school to avoid tests, so who am I to judge?

The best part of the movie has to be the big Trans-am car chase out in the desert on the road that goes right by the tomb! I don’t even think Antonio used miniatures too much of the time here! Remember in Indiana Jones when they drove all those Monte Carlos over to pick up the ark? Anyway, everyone gets inside the tomb and the bad guys decide to open up Gilgamesh’s tomb to get the scepter, but David tells them not to because it’ll destroy the tomb. Even though the Arabian-Italian gang believes in the superstition that the scepter will give them lots of power, they don’t believe in the superstition that anyone who tries to muck with the guy’s grave will be cursed and die. They open it up and the next thing you know all the good guys are standing around outside the destroyed tomb and yukking it up as the discover that that tricky Muhammed has given the scepter the old five fingered discount!

Antonio tried hard, busting out the miniatures that you rarely see in car chase scenes and pushing columns over in that dang tomb for something like the last fifteen minutes of the movie in an effort to make it seem like something really awful is happening. He even has some red lighting going on to simulate some lava! This Italian “homage” to the Indiana Jones flicks is quintessential B-movie stuff that never really sinks so low as to be as bad as you would have guessed. It’s educational for you nascent safecrackers as well with David Warbeck babbling on about counterbalances and shaving kits.

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