La momia azteca

Momia Azteca, La (1957)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Mexican horror film about a scientist (Raymond Gay) who uses hypnosis to look into people's past lives. He experiments on his girlfriend and learns she was a sacrificed princess who was buried with a golden breastplate. The scientist decides to go looking for it and eventually runs into the title character as well as a master thief known as The Bat. Here's a good idea to all future filmmakers if you're going to make a movie called The Aztec Mummy. Make sure the mummy is in the picture for more than three minutes. Technically speaking this is a fairly well made film but one can't help but be letdown since the title character hardly gets any screen time.

In THE AZTEC MUMMY, we're introduced to Dr. Eduardo Almada (Ramon Gay) and his beautiful fiance, Flor (Rosita Arenas), who turns out to be the reincarnated girlfriend of the titular terror, Popoca (Angelo De Stefani).

Oh no!

The eeevil Dr. Krupp, aka: "The Bat" (Luis Aceves Castaneda) is up to no good. Along with his henchmen, Krupp attempts to abscond with Popoca's ancient golden breastplate, bracelet combo. This upsets Popoca to no end!

Hilarity ensues.

If you want to get into Mexican horror cinema, there's no better place to start than with this fine film. Though it suffers from a distinct dearth of action, it's still a lot of fun to watch...

When I first saw this I was 6 years old and it scared the hell out of me! Even though the trilogy ended a few months later (in 1958) I remember I was disappointed with the "human robot" ending of the Aztec mummy trilogy. I still think that this mummy could have been better exploited in films, but I guess that even for the producers it was such a discovery that when they realized what they had in hand, they had already blown it apart, with the lowest budgets and the retelling with minimum variations of the same story in parts 2 and 3 ("The Curse of the Aztec Mummy", and the awful "The Aztec Mummy Against the Humanoid Robot"). Maybe the reason is that its main writer, Alfredo Salazar (brother of producer-actor Abel Salazar, the man behind Fernando Méndez' 1957 classic "The Vampire") was marginally interested in horror films. Even if he also has to his credited the original script for Benito Alazraki's "Devil Doll Men" (1961), most of the movies Alfredo wrote were about wrestling stars, fighting the occasional monster. As frequent in Mexican horror films, there is also a mystery here: nobody seems to know the name of the little girl who played Dr. Almada's daughter.

While giving a speech at a conference "Dr. Eduardo Almada" (Ramon Gay) is greeted with skepticism concerning his work with using hypnosis to facilitate the possibility of reincarnation. To help prove his point his fiancé, "Flor Sepulveda" (Rosa Arenas) agrees to undergo an experiment which results in her remembering a past life in which she was a virgin by the name of Xochi being prepared for sacrifice to the Aztec god Tezkatlipoka. She further recalled that an Aztec warrior by the name of "Popoca" (Angel Di Stefani) was madly in love with her and wanted her to run away with him. Unfortunately, both Xochi and Popoca were caught in a forbidden embrace and apprehended. He was then cursed by the high priest to remain in the burial chamber for eternity while Xochi was subsequently sacrificed. It is at this time that Flor is awakened and although she is badly shaken up Dr. Almada refuses to listen to her plea not to venture into the Aztec pyramid to retrieve the breastplate that Xochi was wearing when she died. Not only is he ambivalent to a curse placed upon anybody who retrieves it but he is also unaware that a mysterious burglar by the name of "the Bat" has been listening in to this entire conversation and plans on stealing it once Dr. Almada obtains it. But "the Bat" isn't the only thing that Dr. Almada needs to worry about. Now, rather than disclose any more of this film and possibly ruin it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this was a decent clone to similar movies on this topic made in the past. Additionally, while the movie I saw was recorded in Spanish with English subtitles I still found it to be a fairly entertaining grade-B movie. I rate it as about average.

The horror and terror of the Aztec Mummy is shown in this classic Mexi-horror film! This is the first and most profound movie in the "Aztec Mummy" trilogy of the late 50s as we see the Mummy in all his bandaged and bulky horror.

The Mummy is the cursed spirit of a warrior named Popoca who was buried alive for loving a maiden and cursed to always protect her remains and the valuable bracelet and breastplate left with her that reveals the location of a vast cache of Aztec gold. Soon, the wounded warrior is awakened and sets off to find the stolen items and Flora, the reincarnation of his deceased love. But Flora's boyfriend, Dr. Almada who was responsible for bringing the Mummy to life is out to stop him and save his fiance. Almada also has the trouble of the nefarious Bat, a masked wreslter who also is a major player in the criminal underworld who seeks the Aztec treasure. Will Flora be saved? Can Almada overcome his foes? Will the Bat steal the treasure? Will poor Popoca find eternal rest?

Definately worth checking out and better than the two Aztec Mummy movies that followed!

I give it 7/10!