I admit I was drawn to this movie by the art on the cover, with a Conquistador skeleton wielding a shotgun. As long as the movie had that in it, I promised myself I'd be satisfied. As it turns out, it had a bit more.
A brief breakdown of the story, such as it is: The prologue tells of Coronado sending his army to look for the Lost City of Gold in America. They find it, and unfortunately, an army of skeletons who slaughter them all. If I've got the story right from the professor in the story (this film's Basil Exposition), the Mayans killed the Anasazi who in turn came back as bony avengers and killed the Conquistadors when they tried for the gold. Since then, anybody who even looks sideways at the gold is killed to protect it. And whoever gets killed has their flesh slimed away and turns into one of the undead.
Cut to present day where the professor joins some young couples as they take part in a desert race in souped-up Volkswagens. Also along is a Jerry Reed look-alike as their guide and his honey. There is campfire talk, with the professor telling his ghost story and adding to it a personal addendum about a student who fell prey to the undead after finding and keeping a gold coin. Of course, this leads the prof himself to lust after the gold, hence the ruse of the race. He's out there to find the Lost City and he's hired some mercenaries to help them. In short order, the mercenaries are killed by the skeleton army's um, shadows. Just kidding. They use the shadows for effect at the beginning and it's fairly effective.
Our hero of the story, whom I'll refer to as Hero, is a former student of the professor and, along with Jerry Reed clone, rescues the professor. They unwisely take him back to camp, not knowing he has a piece of the gold and that the skeleton crew will soon descend upon them.
And when they do, that's, ahem, the meat of the movie. As has been noted in other reviews, the skeletons are CGI, but they're not that bad. If I had seen them as a kid in the 60s, I would have thought they were the best thing ever. As it is, they are the best thing in the movie besides our Hero's honey of a wife. After the initial attack on the campers, the survivors take off on foot and reach an abandoned radio station where the the final siege takes place.
The acting ranges from okay to bad, the CGI skeletons are fairly cool, the blood is totally fake (it looks animated, as in cartoon animation) and the ending has one of those "how?" factors as in how exactly was the skelecrew defeated. And I did get my hoped-for scene with the shotgun ghoulie, so I was satisfied. There are plenty of story holes, like how did Hero and his wife get out in a beyond-damaged vehicle, but by the end, you won't really care. It's all about the bone boys and they deliver enough goods to make it worth a rental.
Favorite line is when the Jerry-Reed look-alike sees blood smeared all over the front of a windshield and says: "Is that blood?" Really. Have fun with it.
