Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Wuchak Released to TV in 2008, "Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon" chronicles events in the early 20th century when a team of Smithsonian researchers discover a lost Aztec city in the Grand Canyon guarded by a flying creature; they then go missing. The daughter of the professor who led the expedition (Shannen Doherty) assembles a search & rescue team, which leads them to the lost city and the Aztec "god" Quetzalcoatl. Duncan Fraser plays the father while Michael Shanks, JR Bourne, Heather Doerksen and Toby Berner play members of the rescue team, amongst others.With the SyFy channel you never know what you're gonna get. Their movies can be surprisingly good or even great (like "Sasquatch Mountain" and "The Lost Future"), mediocre (like "Carny" and "Frankenfish") or bottom-of-the-barrel bad (like "Curse of the Snow Demon" and "Bigfoot"). Some people place "Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon" in the last category because of the cheap-looking filmmaking, but if you can overlook this it has several attributes. For one, it was shot in desert regions east of the Cascades in British Columbia (substituting for the Grand Canyon, of course). Say what you want, but quality locations cost money. Secondly, the movie contains high adventure a la survival-in-the-desert, Indiana Jones-like shenanigans and a flying monster. Speaking of which, the CGI creature looks pretty malevolent despite its cartooniness. Then you have a decent cast, a few horrifically gory scenes, potent subtexts and an almost-moving & impressive ending (notice I said "almost"). These positives may not make the movie good, but they redeem it from the "bad" category IMHO, even though the filmmaking is palpably dubious at times.The movie runs 88 minutes and was shot in Cache Creek & Kamloops, British Columbia.GRADE: C

casugi Is it just me, or shouldn't a film with the Grand Canyon in the title be filmed somewhere near the actual Grand Canyon? Nothing in this looks remotely like Northern AZ, much less the Grand Canyon! Guess they couldn't afford to actually drive one state over? It'd help if the AZ legislature would wake up and make film-making more appealing to the studios, but they just keep sitting on their hands, or passing questionable laws like allowing anyone to carry a gun where-ever they want. Yikes! Maybe that's the real reason they resorted to filming elsewhere. Add to that the silly storyline, bad acting, terrible script, and you have one disaster. I had to look up how old Doherty is, cause she looks so bad in this. Seems to be hiding her weight behind baggy clothes, too. I was surprised to see her in this, but she's not done much else lately.

Ray Humphries The story line is pretty basic. Nineteenth century archeologists seeking lost treasure find bad things instead. There are few stupidities perpetrated by the script/cast save perhaps those of Dunbar and friend (comic relief?), and Dr. Langford (well played by JR Borne) who is somewhere between evil and uncaring, and the self-serving bitch Hildy, nicely performed by Ms. Doerksen. Hildy's fate is cleverly left indeterminate. One hopes she wound up as the willing sex slave of an Aztec warrior, rather than as a meal. There are ample heroics by the good guys, Jacob Thain (Michael Shanks) and Dr. Jordan (the venerable Duncan Fraser). There is also a surfeit of evil (well, badness maybe) from the natives and from the monster (Quetzalcoatl – who never looked like this), poor CGI though it is. The still toothsome Shannen Doherty, though not the stone fox of her "Charmed" youth, does well with what little she is given by the script writers. Her role coulda/shoulda been much stronger. Speaking of writers, 20th century idioms, such as "hang in there" and "take him out", seem quite out of place in 19th century dialogue. And the human sacrifice scenes are thoroughly disheartening.

Frumious_Bandersnatch_46 Michael Shanks and JR Bourne do make this one of Sci-Fi Channel's better offerings. Unfortunately, that bar isn't very high.Once again, the writers for the Sci-Fi Channel ORIGINAL Movies got so very ORIGINAL that they made a complete mish-mosh of the Aztecs, their culture and their mythology.• Half the "artifacts" looked more Mayan then Aztec; especially that stone "Key".• If they can't hire native extras of the right racial group, at least they could have sprung for some body paint for the ones they did hire. I'd not seen such pale natives in decades! Especially desert-dwellers. — And flip-flops? Are they serious?• I'd always thought that one of the purposes of CGI was to give movie-makers a range of monsters above the man-in-the-rubber-suit level. Their version of Quetzalcoatl was a joke! It was supposed to be a feathered serpent, not a lizard-man with bat-wings!• Human sacrifice? That, too, was MAYAN, not AZTEC!• And the dagger that Thain's (Shanks' character) father attributed to Pizarro? Pizarro conquered the Incas in what is now Peru. Cortés conquered the Aztecs in what is now Mexico.• Note to wardrobe dept: When doing period pieces, please try to keep in mind the period in question. That flimsy top Ms Doherty was wearing would have been thoroughly unacceptable for a lady of her character's station in that era.Do I need to mention the visible tire-tracks?Again, I have to admire the film-makers' ability to get paid for this.