Summary
Aunt Theodosia’s gilded bribe—fifty thousand Depression-era dollars—clatters at the feet of her pugilist-nephew Monty Miles like a gauntlet hurled by a smirking fate. Monty, knuckles still raw from the gym, laughs the offer into scrap-metal, then somersaults over a stair-rail and crashes, half-prone, before Victoria Harrison, whose glare could frost Mayan jade. Her father, the obsessed archaeologist Richard Harrison, soon spirits Theodosia’s purse and entourage toward the Yucatán, chasing rumors of a sun-swallowing hoard entombed beneath Uxmal’s moon-scarred stones. Monty, stung by exclusion and intoxicated by Victoria’s disdain, shadows the expedition through steamy portico shadows, past ceiba roots that braid themselves into serpent spines. In the whispering dark he uncovers Slick Edwards—oil-slick hair, pistol glints for eyes—plotting to entomb the party alive and abscond with jade masks that once reflected the eyes of long-dead priests. When Edwards slams the stone gate, Monty—sweat-slick, lantern in fist—slips through a concealed fissure, finds the treasure first, and bars the bandit’s exit with a sarcophagus. Their clash—fists, torches, crumbling lintels—becomes a danse macabre amid glyphs that spell resurrection. Bloodied but triumphant, Monty drags the gold to the sealed door and bargains: Victoria’s hand, Theodosia’s fortune restored, or the tomb keeps its new silent residents.
Synopsis
Worried that her nephew Monty Miles is only interested in fighting, Aunt Theodosia offers the young ruffian $50,000 to get married and settle down, but he turns her down scornfully. Boxing with his trainer Lefty Ned, Monty is knocked over the banister and lands at the feet of Victoria Harrison, who regards him with disgust. Victoria's father, archaeologist Richard Harrison, wants Aunt Theodosia to join his party on a Yucatan treasure hunt, and although Monty begs to go along so that he might be near the radiant Victoria, he is excluded because of his boorish manners. Undaunted, Monty follows the expedition to the ruins of Uxmal, where he learns that Slick Edwards and his gang plan to lock the party in a tomb and then escape with the treasure. While Edwards locks the group up, Monty discovers the secret door that leads to the treasure, and after securing the gold, he defeats Edwards in a tremendous fight among the dimly lit ruins. Approaching the door of the tomb, Monty offers to free Victoria if she will marry him, and his Aunt Theodosia if she will renew her original offer.
Review Excerpt
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Treasure maps drawn on cigarette papers, fists that drum thunder out of thin jungle air, and a heroine whose contempt is sharper than obsidian—In Bad arrives like a moonlit machete slash across the polite face of 1923 cinema.
Picture the era: flappers toggling between saxophone-soaked speakeasies and tent-revival temperance rants; newsreels flickering with Egypt’s opened tombs while real-estate bubbles pop like cheap champagne. Into that restless canvas drops a film that refuses to pick a sin..."
