Search for the Gods (1975)

Young Willie Longfellow (Stephen McHattie) - scion of a the Boston Longfellows, I have you know – is travelling the world on a very 70s rich boy kind of search for himself. After a stint in Central America, he has followed the trail of good old liar Carlos Castaneda (repeatedly name-dropped and an obvious inspiration for the film’s brand of the “druggy wisdom of the native people” shtick) to Taos, New Mexico. There, he stumbles into a proper adventure concerning a golden medallion a dying shaman entrusts to him, made from a mysterious unearthly medal a shadowy figure and his main henchman Raymond Stryker (Raymond St. Jacques) want to acquire by all means necessary.

Also involved are ancient aliens, Genara Juantez, the granddaughter of the shaman (Victoria Racimo), the somewhat shady Shan Mullins (a baby-faced Kurt Russell), and an inspiring elderly exposition machine (Ralph Bellamy). There will be a peyote-based test of Willie’s spirit, betrayal, extremely dubious science, and as much adventure as a mid-70s TV film meant as a pilot for a show about Willie’s further adventures finding more medallion pieces that never happened can afford.

The enjoyment one derives from Jud Taylor’s Search for the Gods will most certainly depend on a viewer’s tolerance or love for the kind of pseudo-science and pseudo-religion the decade it was produced in loved so particularly well; this is basically a more honestly fictional episode of In Search Of… with a bit of harmless villainy and violence thrown in.

So if you’re allergic against magical natives, white boys finding themselves through them, absurd ancient alien theories and dynamite-based archaeology, you’ll not find much to like here. Me, I like this sort of things quite a bit, particularly in a case like Search for the Gods where a movie may be a bit silly and a bit cheap, but is actually trying its best with its tropes. So while I rather doubt its depiction of the Taos people is terribly close to their actual cultural beliefs, the film is respectful towards them, certainly not avoiding all magical native business (that would be rather difficult in a film like this, really) but also not landing too far in that particular kind of fantasy. Plus, I just can’t complain about a good peyote-based test of the spirit, authenticity be damned.

It certainly helps that Willie comes over as a genuinely thoughtful and nice guy, not so much a white saviour as a white dude who accidentally asks the right questions at the right time; there’s also nobody to save, really. The film’s treatment of Genara is surprisingly sensible, too, giving her room enough to breathe and be a person, and while not completely avoiding clichés (this is not the sort of film that does that or wants to), providing her with a much more interesting character arc than you’d expect from a native American woman in a mid-70s TV movie. Even the romance between her and Willie is at least half thought through, both characters having mirrored experiences as people who are not at home where their home is supposed to be. The later-born cynic will of course add that Willie’s not being at home as a rich Bostonian is probably a rather easy cross to bear, but you can’t really expect a deep analysis of class structures from a mid-70s TV movie about a possibly alien medallion, nor does this detract much from the film’s general pleasantness. Plus, McHattie turns out to be just as good at playing the soulful nice guy as he is in the rather less nice roles he’s now specialized in, so all this never actually damages the character much.

Racimo as Genara is fine too, keeping a straight face in the sillier moments and nicely avoiding a too melodramatic turn otherwise. The cast’s main weakness is actually Kurt Russell, who surprisingly enough just doesn’t have the charisma yet to play the sort of half-trustworthy rogue he is supposed to be in a convincing manner. Really, he mostly comes over as whiny.

The film’s pacing tends a bit to the meandering side, but Taylor makes much out of the locations (at least in part this was actually shot in Taos), clearly realizing that the desert landscape is one of his greatest assets here. The “people with torches wandering through the desert” set-up for the peyote ceremony is particularly atmospheric, as all scenes of that kind tend to be, but the ceremony itself is pretty fun too, using very simple means and some excellent eye-bugging from McHattie to be trippy and mildly threatening without a budget for special effects.


Apart from the absence of actual aliens on screen, there’s little more you could ask of Search for the Gods, giving its circumstances, so if this sort of thing is like catnip to you, as it is for me, or if you at least think this sounds interesting beyond the cast, you will probably find a nice little TV movie here.