older thriller film set in desert temple

I saw this film after 2000 to maybe 2006 would have been the latest I would have watched it.  I had thought I had seen it on tv like maybe the usa channel or TCM, maybe it was a vhs I had rented.

It was an older film in color, set in the desert, maybe from the 80’s or earlier could have been 70’s.

A man and a lady & at least one other person but maybe more, are in the desert going to a temple and end up seeking some wisdom or special thing that is in the temple (more on that in a sec.)  The man has short blond hair is somewhat tanned, and the woman has long “dirty blond” hair

I remember one scene where one of the guys in the party is driving a car in the desert and he drives up on the rest of the group, only they find that it is a skeleton and that person (there party member) is dead.

 

In the temple there are two antagonists a guy and another lady.  That somewhat resemble in appearance characters from the munsters tv show.  The guy minorly resembles a vampire character.  Both the guy and girl have black hair.

The end of the film is the most memorable.  The vampire esk character finds a key in a miniature snake statue he pushes on it and it comes out of the mouth.  He gets to the gate which the path way through and beyond the gate would make you walk though water.  The main character finds the man and the other black haired lady.  He is told that there is still a chance to save the blond haired lady.  She is passed out in a room with a spiked ceiling that is slowly falling in on her.  He runs to the room and or to where that is being controlled and eventually is able to stop it to save her life.  He runs back to the gate and found that the two people have already walked though and closed it behind them.  He yells to them “take me with you” and is distraught and then before our eyes he turns into an old man.  Then the movie ends.

 

It makes me think beyond that gate was eternal wisdom, or youth or something to where missing out on it meant that there was no more point to living.

 

Thanks.

 

4 thoughts on “older thriller film set in desert temple

  1. Ha! Very good! Although, my memory of it was not British. The main good guy had blond hair and was tan, very american, (like an actor that would travel to Bahamas and go sailing or something). But thats definitely the movie. I checked for american remakes and didn’t see any, so my memory took some american actor from that era and stitched him in there. Funny how that works, b/c all the other scenes match up. It looked like tim burton was going to make a remake of this film with johnny dep around 2013 but I guess it fell through. Some random trivia.

    The last scene of this film has stuck with me at random points over the years as some iconic fear of being left behind.

    Thanks for connecting the dots.

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