Secret of the Incas shot in Peru before. Wendell Corey was originally announced as star. In July 1953 Paramount took over Hal Wallis' contract with Charlton Heston and announced he would make the film after he finished "The Naked Jungle". "Secret of the Incas" was filmed on location in Peru at Cuzco and Machu Picchu, the first time that a major Hollywood studio filmed at this archeological site. A sixteen person unit including Heston, producer Mel Epstein and director Jerry Hopper spent a month filming footage in Peru in 1953. Five hundred indigenous people were used as extras in the film. The film also
Charlton Heston of killer ants. He played the lead in "Secret of the Incas", which was shot on location at the archeological site Machu Picchu and had numerous similarities to "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Filmed a quarter-century before the latter film, ""Incas"" included a tomb scene with the revelatory shaft of light pointing out a clue on a map and featured Heston's roguish antiquities thief's costume and light beard; "Raiders" costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis noted that it was "almost a shot for shot similar" to the film on which she worked. Heston played William Clark, the explorer, in "The Far