As another review noted, it's kitsch and camp. There's also appeal in seeing Heston in an early role and having as a villain the absent minded uncle from It's a Wonderful Life. TV's Marcus Welby also shows up, equally stiff playing a lonely archaeologist. There's also a white Australian in really bad tanning makeup playing an Indian named Pachacutik.
The biggest appeal for me and many others is its glimpse of Peruvian Indians. IOW, whenever Heston and the other white actors step aside and let us see a bit of the real Peru. Large parts of the film show Quechua Indians, esp three great musical numbers from the legendary Yma Sumac.
Other parts are pretty revealing of the colonial mentality of the times, incredibly ignorant parts that make anyone who knows anything about Peru laugh out loud:
Pachacutik as an Indian name? That's like an Italian calling himself Tiberius.
Machu Pichu as a "lost" city in 1954? When it already had thousands of visitors a day.
A hokey prophecy that "Incan" Indians have been waiting on? That's just as fake as the 2012 hoax.
Calling them "Incan" Indians is like calling Italians "Caesars." That's the title of emperors.
And also, Heston's Spanish is incredibly bad. His pronunciation is so impossible to understand it becomes a dialect unknown in Heaven or Earth.
So whenever someone white speaks in the film, don't rely on it as truth about Peru or its Natives. The other scenes, yes, definitely worth seeing.
ETA: I'm glad of the strong reactions to my review, both the downvotes and the higher than I expected number of up votes. Good to know some others feel the same.
