Curse of Snakes Valley (Klątwa Doliny Węży) is a 1988 Polish-Russian movie, which is remembered in Poland as one of the worst movies ever made. Back in The '80s everyone wanted to make an Indiana Jones rip-off. Fortunately, there was a short story titled Hobby doktora Travena (Doctor Traven's Hobby), which had exactly the required type of plot. Needless to say, a adaptation got made. It was directed by Marek Piestrak who made several bad Science Fiction and Horror movies.
In 1954 evil American mercenary fighting in Vietnam stole a vase from a Buddhist monastery.
Thirty-four years later, in Paris, the mercenary approaches Jan Tarnas, a professor of Sorbonne, with a map that he found in the vase. As it turns out, the map is leading to an unknown temple. Then Christine Jauvert from France Soir is persuaded by a member of a Mega-Corp or The Conspiracy, controlled by a man called Breecher, to go with them. The whole crew heads out for Vietnam. After they reach Vietnam they meet a group of Russian scientists, then they meet the monks who help them to go into the temple, and then they encounter eye-beam shooting statues and snake-like creatures called the Second and Third Cuman.
This work contains examples of the following tropes:
- Artistic License – Biology: Constrictor snakes are stated to be venomous
- Brainwashed and Crazy: When Breecher mutates he is exterminated for that reason. We don't know if it was the case.
- Every Helicopter Is a Huey: Amazingly, prologue set in the French Indochina features one. That is, despite the fact, that there was no Hueys in 1954.
- Retcon: Tarnas is shown on the cover of a newspaper, and is a professor of Sorbonne. Then he tells that he is not treated seriously by anyone.
- The Voiceless: Traven's servant. Traven cut his tongue.