Angkor: A Dusty Time Capsule With Some Odd Secrets

Is this for you?

If you have a thing for dusty, old travel footage, you might actually get a kick out of Angkor. But if you’re looking for a coherent story or anything resembling modern pacing, you are going to be bored out of your mind within ten minutes.

People who love the history of exploitation cinema might find it interesting, but everyone else? Probably skip it. It’s a bit of a slog.

The Weird Mix

The movie starts with these authentic, scratchy shots of the ruins in Cambodia. It’s cool to see what those places looked like back then, before the massive tourist crowds arrived.

Then, suddenly, the scene shifts. We are clearly on a soundstage in Hollywood now. The lighting changes, the shadows look wrong, and the actors are clearly sweating in a room with painted backdrops.

It’s jarring. Like watching a documentary that turns into a middle-school play halfway through.

Odd Notes

• The transition between the real world and the set is so bad it’s almost funny.
• The narration feels like it was read by someone who just woke up from a long nap.
• Why is there a plot here? The footage of the actual temple is much more interesting than the guys running around with fake machetes.
• I kept thinking about Speedy for some reason, maybe because I wanted the pace to pick up that much.

There’s a weird sense of deception happening here. They are selling you a grand adventure, but it’s mostly just two different movies stitched together with a needle and thread. It makes me appreciate how much smoother movies like In Old Kentucky handled their location work, even back then.

It’s not good. But it is strange. And sometimes, strange is enough for a rainy Tuesday night when you’ve run out of things to watch on the usual platforms.

Just don't go in expecting a travel documentary. You’ll be let down by the melodrama. Treat it like a curiosity, a weird artifact from a time when studios thought they could trick us into thinking a set in Burbank was halfway across the globe. 🌴