#33 The Final Sacrifice (Wes)

The Final Sacrifice

Going by my usual method of guessing what an unknown movie will be like judging it by its title, I decided that I would probably enjoy our next move, The Final Sacrifice. Clearly this movie would be a historical epic about the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire by Hernán Cortés and his men. Obviously it would have been added to our list in error, with it’s epic battle scenes, beautifully shot vistas and horrifying, but compelling depictions of the human sacrifices the Aztec priests conducted on top of their temples and we’d have a reprieve from the awful movies we’ve had to endure recently. If one thing was for certain, it wouldn’t be a low budget Canadian movie about a young man following a badly drawn treasure map to stop a cult from getting an ancient idol so they can take over the world…

Seven years after his father was shot by cultists, Troy McGreggor (Christian Malcolm) finds a badly drawn treasure map in his attic… Shit.

I’ll start again. When Troy McGreggor finds a treasure map in his attic that looks like it was drawn by a particularly untalented toddler, he automatically assumes that it was made by his father who was murdered by cultists seven years previously (and not that it drawn by himself in kindergarten and was hidden there by his father, who was sentimental, but ultimately ashamed of his sons lack of talent). He assumes this because his father Rover McGreggor, was an archaeologist, and he has clearly never seen the lecture at the start of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Somehow the cult led by Satoris (Shane Marceau) discover that Troy has the map and attempt to take it from him by disguising themselves as door to door chainsaw salesmen. When that cunning plan fails, and Troy escapes on his bike, the cultists chase him in their car, but it seems that nobody in the cult has worked out that a car can easily outpace a bicycle and Troy once again escapes, this time by hiding in the back of a pick up truck owned by the brilliantly named Zap Rowsdower (Bruce J. Mitchell).  Troy helps Rowsdower fix his truck and Rowsdower decides to help Troy follow the map. When they eventually find the house of Troy’s father’s partner, Mike Pipper (Ron Anderson), who has been hiding from the cult for years, they learn the truth about the cult and their connections to the Ziox (a long dead civilization) and the idol itself. Will Troy find the idol before the cult gets their hands on it? What secrets is Rowsdower hiding? Did the makers of this movie find a really good deal on bulk buying balaclavas?

Like Homer Simpson changing his name to Max Power, sometimes somebody just can’t live up to the promise his name gives. Zap Rowsdower is a name that just screams that its owner is the coolest, most heroic person to ever walk on the face of this planet. What we get is a Gareth Hale look-a-like, hockey hair-sporting, horse-riding, gun-toting, dunk denim demon. He’s such an anti-hero cliché, that if this film had a higher budget he’d probably get drunk and punch a moose to show how tough he is, and how little he cares.

Strangely though Rowsdower is the most normal of all the characters in this film. Troy looks like Wil Wheaton was cast as Quark in Deep Space Nine instead of Wesley in Star Trek The Next Generation. Mike Pipper looks like Tom Baker has been stranded on a desert island and found that the only way for him to keep his sanity was by playing Yosemite Sam in a palm tree constructed theatre to an audience of parrots and horseshoe crabs and now he finds that he can't stop doing the voice. As for Satoris, he looks like a Poundstore goth Joaquin Phoenix, but he sounds like an auto-tuned Isaac Hayes.

The Final Sacrifice is a cheap looking movie in every way. There is a reason for this, and that’s because it had a budget of only $1500, which I think actually changes your opinion of the movie a little when you learn this. Even getting the movie made for such a low budget (wedding videographers can charge more than this!) is an impressive feat. However the lack of budget is no excuse for the poor quality of the script, cinematography or acting. Plenty of outstanding movies have been made on a micro budget. El Mariachi ($7000), Primer ($7,000) and Eraserhead ($10,000) still manage to impress greatly and launched the careers of David Lynch, Robert Rodriguez and the still upcoming Shane Carruth.

Director and writer Tjardus Greidanus actually went on to start a successful career as a documentary maker, which is good as his talents really don’t lie in the creative side of movie making (according to IMDB he is currently working on a new feature film though. Just think how many balaclavas a budget of $5,000,000 can buy!).  Less can be said for production designer Bryan Pfhal though (an appropriate name if ever I’ve heard one), who only went on to work for two more productions. As the sole person in the art department he must have been responsible for the map, and I can only imagine that his career in designing maps for children’s placemats in restaurants must have got in the way of his Hollywood ambitions.

Was this the worst thing that Canada has ever produced? In a world that contains Nickleback that would be an extremely hard feat to accomplish and The Final Sacrifice doesn’t even come close. Undoubtedly it’s a terrible movie, but I came away from watching it without a feeling of despair and at this point in our list I class that as a win. A movie that’s this bad, but still remains watchable, deserves a large cult following, just maybe not one that wants to take over the world…