VIDEOCASSETTES

“Aguirre--Wrath of God.” Continental. $39.95. Videocassettes don’t always preserve the visual excitements of the original film. But the somber and spectacular images Thomas Mauch shot for Werner Herzog’s drama of Pizarro’s doomed quest for the city of gold, El Dorado, in 16th-Century Peru retain all their brooding intensity. Klaus Kinski is wild-eyed and mesmerizing as a demented lieutenant on an expedition beset by mutinies, disease, starvation and Indians with lethal darts. Herzog’s parable on colonial conquest, greed and the lust for power remains engrossing and timeless.

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