The Aztec Mummy

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...

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.

This is the find of the year (2006), a film that was on EVERYBODY'S lost list. One story even had Jerry Warren hacking up the original negative for one of his edit bay epics. Now you can buy it for bargain prices. THE AZTEC MUMMY looks really great on the new three disc set THE AZTEC MUMMY COLLECTION (BCI),and the remastering is nearly perfect. The exterior parts with the mummy are done on real Mexican ruins and look sensational. You get a feel for the SIZE of the buildings, their age. The flashbacks star a native dance troupe, and the way that THEY recreated their heritage as of the 50's. Some of them are so proud to be in a REAL MOVIE that they grin right into the camera. I like that.

Tastes have moved on since then, and what they regarded as totally authentic seem dated now, but don't be too fast to throw it over. The group worked long and hard to get the routines down, and are on par with a lot of the dance troupes that you see on Ed Sullivan reruns. This is also how Mexicans saw their own culture, and as such should not be taken too lightly. And the background instrumental grows on you in a world music sort of way. The plot has something to do with returning a beautiful lady (Rosita Arenas) by hypnosis to her past to locate an Aztec breastplate proving the existence of previous lives. There's a masked super villain who wants the breastplate for his own nefarious ends, a cowardly second banana, car chases, gun battles, you know: something for the whole family. You also get the essential plot of Apocalypto stripped down to less then one reel and without the blood and guts that would give the kiddies nightmares..and APOCALYPTO doesn't have an evil masked doctor in it, or policemen with machine guns. When the Aztec Mummy finally decides to get up and get moving, the scenes are on par with anything Universal came up with in later Mummy movies. Very effective. A lost movie saved from the ashes

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.

I didn't quite know what to expect from the "Aztec Mummy" trilogy, a typically wacky Mexican variant on a classic horror theme. This first entry proved quite a surprise: a highly entertaining confection which, apart from delving into ancient Aztec lore, also incorporates elements of science-fiction and gangster dramas into the fray!

The distinctive Aztec temples and (overstretced) rituals seen here provide an exotic alternative to the Egyptian examples we'd seen in previous Mummy movies. The background to the curse is still the same, however – a girl intended for sacrifice (played by Rosita Arenas, whose other Mexi-horror titles include starring roles in classics such as THE WITCH'S MIRROR [1960] and THE CURSE OF THE CRYING WOMAN [1961]) is caught in the arms of a warrior, for which he's condemned to be buried alive; centuries later, when his lover's tomb is desecrated, he awakens to eliminate those responsible.

The sci-fi trappings are put across with a good deal of persuasion (since they involve reincarnation, this section bears a striking resemblance to Roger Corman's contemporaneous THE UNDEAD [1957]), while the crime-lord involved is a masked figure referred to as "The Bat" (most probably inspired by the 1926 Roland West film of that name or its sound remake, THE BAT WHISPERS [1930]) – his presence is initially intriguing, but the ultimate revelation of his identity beggars belief. Among the secondary characters, then, are a cowardly medical student who acts as comedy relief and is quite amusing (even so, the very need for it betrays the fact that the Mexican horror film was still in its infancy at this point in time), and a kid – ostensibly the hero's (much) younger brother – who brings absolutely nothing to the table except that he's always being scolded by his elders for following them around!

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm for the film was considerably dissipated by the dire quality of the print included on BCI/Eclipse's 3-Disc Set. I didn't mind so much the softness of the image, the rather low audio or the occasional missing frame – but, then, I was intensely annoyed by scenes that were set in complete darkness where it was virtually impossible to tell what was going on. Considering that these include the exploration of the tomb, all the footage of the rampaging mummy and the climax, it felt like I only watched half a film…without even the benefit of getting a good look at the titular creature!!