Bingowings said:

So many awful effects to chose from with TOD.

The the exploding plane/mountain composite.

The matte painings of Pankot Palace.

Some of the mine sequence is brilliant but some shots would look nasty compared to Willis O'Brien's work (a genius in his time but this was a mid eighties film).

Then there is compositing of the shot where the water bursts through the model mine shaft with the badly matted in actors.

Then the unforgivable rope bridge models and mattes which breaks what should be a moment of tension.

The sad thing is the Lao Che sequence which gets a lot of flack is a wonderful pastiche of the era and has believable stunts.

I get the Gunga Din and Kim references but Kipling is a Victwardian you can make allowances seeing as for the day he was actually rather progressive in his attitudes.

But as I said it was a mid-eighties movie and had some of the cast of Gandhi (1982).

The banquet scene is astonishingly backwards especially from a country that gave the world McDougal's.

When I'm talking Spielberg Nazis I'm talking Raiders and TLC not Schindler's List.

Only Steven could make a holocaust movie with an upbeat ending.

ILM had a pretty full plate that year, so maybe they were stretched too thin? I think most video transfers make some shots stick out more than they did in theaters. I will give those shots more scrutiny if it plays the revival house here again.

Nazis in the Indy films are pretty much in the vintage Hollywood mold though. Especially the old movie serials that inspired the film. I'm still amazed Kenner got away with making action figures of Toht.

Everything served in the banquet scene is actually a real delicacy, so you can't accuse the screenwriters of making that stuff up. ;)