i must have seen a different film!!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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

The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon: 1 out of 10: Well I was two minutes into the film and my girlfriend jinxed us. “Hey you know this movie isn’t that bad”. I turned pale… real pale. You don’t tempt the Gods like that. Not with a made for Sci-fi Channel movie. Not when one where the lead is Shannen Doherty. The words barely left her mouth and a CGI puppet began sliming a Frat Boy in a diaper. The Horror…. The Horror. If I am going to start somewhere I have to start with the Frat Boys in diapers. The movie claims these are Aztecs still hidden in the Grand Canyon at the end of the 19th century. (I know I know) Apparently they have been hiding from the white man for many years. Not to mention the Havasupai and the Painte and the Pai and the tourists at the Upper Canyon Ranch and perhaps the boys in blue down at Ft. Mohave. Anyway this lost tribe of Aztecs, like some Japanese WW2 sniper still hiding in a palm tree in 1971, is hidden in the Grand Canyon. What seems stranger is that they consist almost entirely of a hereto thou undiscovered group of Aztecs whom look like white college football players wearing diapers (well more of a mawashi) and war paint. I am all in favor of multicultural casting but I can’t believe that it isn’t a little insensitive to portray Native Americans as well extras in a Fire Island movie. Hold on a second Fire Island Movie????… The men are all buff and practically naked. The two woman are wearing pants and done up in to look twice their age. The monster spews slime on the buff boys for no good reason. Oh God no it’s Jeepers Creepers 2 all over again. The homoerotic horror film strikes again. Now I’m not sure that the over the top homoeroticism is directors Farhad Mann’s doing (or even intentional), but Mann is responsible for both Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace as well as Return to Two Moon Junction so with a track record like I am prepared to blame him for a Swine Flu outbreak let alone this film. So what else went wrong? Well the Quetzalcoatl design is all wrong (he looks like a puppet) and his CGI is bad by even the very low Sci-fi Channel standards. The sets look like Kirk and Spock are going to beam down at any moment. Half the explorers are grossly overweight; an unlikely condition in the far west wilderness that far from a Wal-Mart. As noted above Shannen Doherty who isn’t even forty looks forty-five and Heather Doerksen who isn’t even thirty looks fifty. And they have a five minute flashback at the end that repeats the entire film. But let’s face it buff white frat boys in diapers getting slimed from off camera and pretending to be Indians. Yeah that is just all sorts of wrong.

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.

I'm sure that most of my enjoyment of The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon was based on the fact that I had sat through the horrible The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor the night before I saw this. That is not to say that The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon is a great picture, or even a very good one, but it is a much more competently made monster movie than most made these days (such as The Mummy 3). The director of 'Grand Canyon' is Farhad Mann, a man whose previous film work I am unfamiliar with. Based on the evidence presented here, I would say if given a proper budget and a better script, he just might be able to deliver a great sci-fi flick. As it is, Mann does what he can with what he is given. The sets and special effects are not top notch, but the editing is well done as opposed to distracting like with the majority of the genre pictures produced these days. Mann keeps the gore to a minimum and keeps the mysterious monster(s) on screen for just the right amount of time. Again, the special effects aren't great, but because of proper direction and editing, it looks pretty good for its budget.I have yet to mention the story. To be honest, there isn't much of one. It's the typical team-of-specialists-explore-where-they-shouldn't't routine. There are no surprises. However, the characters are given a little more depth than the average Sci-Fi Chanel original movie, which is nice. As a result, the acting is better than average as well. Shannen Doherty does a fine job as the female lead though I wish she was given more to do and better dialog to deliver. Her character is sweeter than the characters she has played in the past so for fans like myself looking for her in a different kind of role, this may be worth checking out. The acting from the rest of the cast was decent as well. Personally, I think the two women (Doherty and Heather Doerksen as her assistant) were much stronger than the men here, in terms of performances and character.Despite the disappointing story and low budget feel, I would ultimately recommend The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon to fans of monster movies and/or Shannen Doherty only. Everyone else is advised to stay away. 6/10