Las luchadoras contra la momia

The Wrestling Women vs. The Aztec Mummy (1964) is a Mexican film 🇲🇽 that I recently watched on Tubi. The storyline follows a group of female wrestlers who take on would-be thieves and a transformational mummy threatening their village.

Directed by René Cardona (Santa Claus), the film stars Lorena Velázquez (The Rape of the Sabines), Armando Silvestre (Two Mules for Sister Sara), Ramón Bugarini (Hellish Spiders), and Nathanael León (Grave Robbers).

This is one of those films you watch for the ride, not for its quality as a "good movie." The cast is fun, though the women are far too glamorous to be wrestlers. The wrestling scenes are uneven-while the opening sequence is entertaining, the later one leans heavily into cheesiness. The horror elements are limited, but the corpses, skeletons, and the mummy itself are a highlight. Unfortunately, the mummy doesn't appear until the final 18 minutes of the film, which feels like a missed opportunity.

In conclusion, The Wrestling Women vs. The Aztec Mummy offers a fun, campy ride for horror enthusiasts seeking something unique. I'd score this a 4.5/10 and recommend it only with the appropriate expectations.

I first saw this movie as part of a double video, with Phil Tucker's Robot Monster..needless to say, this bill wasn't put together as two brilliant examples of the best films ever made.This one rules, though..there is nothing like seeing overweight wrestling women, Samson (the masked mexican wrestler) and the WORST EVER mummy costume all together in one feature. Don't bother trying to follow the plot, or searching for the myriad errors in continuity..just lay back with your sense of the absurd in hand, along with something cold and refreshing, and let your troubles melt away in a fine and glorious wash of true silliness.

I'd be exaggerating if I said I'd rather have my brain pulled out through my nostril than watch another mummy movie, but I'm sure you catch my drift: I find them so boring, doubly so if they happen to be Mexican and have been Americanised by Gordon K. Murray.

The Wrestling Women vs. The Aztec Mummy is just that: a crappy combination of crumbling monster madness and lovely luchadoras, repackaged for a US audience, that isn't anywhere near as much fun as it sounds. The main problem with the film is that the mummy, who is actually quite a lot of fun when he's on screen, doesn't appear for well over an hour. The first 69 minutes involve a villain called Black Dragon (Ramón Bugarini) who is attempting to get his hands on an ancient Aztec codex that will reveal the whereabouts of a vast treasure; trying to prevent him from doing so are an archaeologist, his daughter, her fiancé, and two female wrestlers, Loreta (Lorena Velázquez) and Golden Rubí (voluptuous beauty Elizabeth Campbell).

The action is dull and repetitive - even a wrestling match between the luchadoras and a pair of female judo experts is boring, going on for way too long - and René Cardona's direction is, for the most part, unremarkable. I had way more fun trying to work out how Black Dragon's hidden camera was able to track, pan, zoom and change position than I did with the story.

When the mummy finally appears, things do pick up a bit, as the creature tries to find the Aztec breastplate stolen from the remains of his beloved Xochitl: he chases our heroes, takes on the form of a rubber bat and a tarantula, and annihilates Black Dragon's gang, running back to the safety of his tomb when the sun rises. If only there had been more of this throughout the rest of the film...

Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy, The (1964)

* (out of 4)

Notorious Mexican film has a gang of criminals known as The Black Dragons killing off archaeologists so that they can find some ancient Aztec secrets. Soon a group of wrestling women try to stop their evil deeds and it eventually leads to an Aztec mummy who has his own plans. Fans of bad movies have been eating this one up for decades now. There's no question that the performance are horrid, the direction even worse and the story itself makes no sense but thankfully the film is so bad that you can't help but get a few laughs out of it. While watching this movie I couldn't help but wonder who on Earth this thing was made for. I know these Mexican "wrestling" movies were popular in their day but it's really hard to see why. I mean, none of the wrestling matches are exciting and they're so poorly filmed that you can't help but laugh. Even worse is the incredibly stupid story that never really makes any sense. One minute you'll be thinking one thing is happening and then all of the sudden, and out of nowhere, the film will go into a different direction. The final twenty-minutes of the film finally has the mummy appearing and it almost seems as if it was thrown in for no reason and possibly just added after production as a way to get the film into more theaters. No matter the reason, the mummy stuff is pretty funny and especially in the English dubbed version. The heavy breathing and moaning will surely get you laughing but I must say that the actual look of the mummy is quite good. The final moments of the film aren't all that exciting but we at least get the mummy in some decent action including one sequence where he attacks all of the criminals. With that said, the appeal of this thing is only going to be for those who enjoy bad movies. There's really nothing else "good" going on here and it's so cheaply produced you still wonder what the entire point was. I do wonder if those involved realized that they were making something that people would still be watching fifty-years later.

The Rock and Roll score appended to the English language release does not mesh well with the cultural mystique. I suggest that Verdi might be better suited. Perhaps La Traviata.