Are you ready to spend a week discussing Aztec mummies and other ridiculous Mexican exploitation nonsense? I sure as hell am!
Mexican cinema…I don’t know a whole lot about its intimate history. Though I do seem to know that the late 1950s saw certain Mexican filmmakers embracing horror, and that’s “horror” as in 1930s Universal style. Vampires, werewolves, Frankensteins, gill-men…mummies. All this in an era where U.S. horror has “evolved” to concern gigantic irradiated insects and whatnot: The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Them!, The Giant Claw, The Blob, roughly 200 other movies.
The Mexicans, however, like Ed Wood, had little evident use for this trend. Who knows if they were unaware of what was going on up north (unlikely), or if their younger film industry was content to mimic more outdated filmic forms. With their musicals, detective fiction, and pulpy, serial-style matinees, Mexican movies of the 1950s were like Hollywood movies from two decades prior. Horror-wise, certainly no film called El Vampiro comes about unless you’re just starting to dabble in blood-sucking.
And so Mexico’s premier horror franchise of that era – and that’d be The Aztec Mummy, if you hadn’t gathered – borrows quite liberally from an old Universal stalwart, namely The Mummy (1932). But with a difference! Producer Guillermo Calderón knew Mexican audiences weren’t wholly enamored of this trend of imperialist horror inheritance – Hollywood desired gothic tales, themselves taken from largely Anglo-European myths. (Never mind The Mummy is Egyptian, it’s filtered through the distinct phobias of Britain.) Given a certain strand of Mexican culture, a sort of raza/Chicano interest in pre-conquest Americas, there’re plenty of indigenous bogeymen to choose from…even mixing in Mexico’s unique Catholic influence, ya got Dia de los Muertos, El Cucuy, la Llorona. Forget the chupacabra, for Mexico’s goats remained unsucked at that stage.
Surely certain productions contemporary with The Aztec Mummy built on this unique tradition, such as The Curse of the Llorona [link not found]. So it is with Calderón’s franchise, adding on a veneer of Aztec culture to create the impression, at least, of distinction from the Karloff model. The Aztec Mummy isn’t completely divorced from its obvious inspiration, for the story and structure are still hugely indebted to the old Egyptologist tale of reincarnation, mummification and past lives. Still, the mere addition of New World Aztec cacao flavoring sets a Mexican precedent.
The resulting films are remarkably cheap by most standards; indeed, they are genuine “MST3K” fodder. In this sense, even a high end studio-based Mexican effort feels not like even the minor U.S. studio efforts of that time; rather, The Aztec Mummy’s soul mates are Ed Wood, Coleman Francis, Phil Tucker. Herein lies much of the films’ charm nowadays, divorced from concern over Chicano heritage and whatever.
Surely cheapness was a driving principle for Calderón, who saw the potential in exploiting the Aztecs, and went about ensuring a franchise immediately. One Aztec Mummy would be easy enough to make, but under the assumption it would be popular, wouldn’t it be simpler to manufacture the sequels ahead of time as well? Therefore The Aztec Mummy was conceived as a trilogy, for purely business concerns, in imitation of certain cost-cutting measures already in place – measures the Mexicans borrowed from Hollywood’s old, defunct studio system, retaining cast and crew for multiple features to streamline the process. Roger Corman would be proud. And while the three initial Aztec Mummies were filmed like Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings saga – three movies created as one single super-ultra-mega-movie – their one-month production turnaround, and shared 1957 release date, betrays their bargain basement qualities.
Enough setup. What of the first Aztec Mummy? – And mind you I watched this in the original Spanish, with no more translation than my own dormant, casual knowledge of the language. Well, let’s say the language barrier wasn’t a huge problem. Not that the movie is terribly visual – far from it, it’s static and stage bound and full of awkward, awkward blocking (much like Lugosi’s Dracula, actually) – but that’s the glory of B-movie dialogue written in the 1950s, from whatever country. Recall The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, with lines like “Not something I can see or touch or feel, but something I can’t quite see or touch or feel or put my finger on.” This movie is filled full with redundant redundancies of redundant dialogue, aided by characters absolutely enamored with explaining and re-explaining the plot twice per scene. Frankly, it’d make for a great Spanish learner aid, far better than those damned “Destinos” videos they had us watch in high school!
Setting the stage, The Aztec Mummy opens (following an expository voiceover narration, which is standard for all ‘50s sci-fi/horror/garbage) at a lecture, a meeting of Mexico’s mightiest intelligentsia. Dr. Eduardo Almada (Ramón Gay) exposits on end about – and this is partly guess work on my part (thank God for cognates) – past life regression and reincarnation and other such stuff that indicates we’re in a mummy movie. This scene, like every one in The Aztec Mummy, wears out its welcome well before it’s over, likely because director Rafael Portillo desperately wanted to stretch the final peso out of his sets – hence repeated dialogue ad nauseum, in favor of that dread screenwriter challenge of additional dialogue. Well, one way or another it’s a 90 minute long movie.
The university types disbelieving Almeda’s claims, he promises a demonstration – and each stage, from their request to his response to every further inching towards the actual demonstration, is an opportunity to reiterate the story as it stands, which isn’t very far yet. We’re nearly a good twenty minutes into The Aztec Mummy once Almeda has finally put his fiancée Flor (Rosa Arenas) into a trance – complete with a spinning hypnosis disc, natch, because this is one of those sorts of movies. Realism, or even convincing technobabble, is never even considered – just as well, for the film was evidently intended for sugar-crazed Mexican children rampaging throughout the theaters on their way to a cincianera, or something.
Meanwhile – oh right, I nearly forgot! The Bat has escaped (or rather, El Murcielago)!...Say what?! The Bat (Luis Aceves Castañeda) is the villainous mad scientist we just couldn’t go a B-movie without – not that mummy movies need mad science, but when you’re ladling on the clichés heedlessly, well… The Bat, for what it’s worth (we learn this from the come-and-go omniscient narrator, because no actual character was interested in a multi-minute exposition session re: The Bat), likes to experiment. Specifically, he likes to graft random animal and human parts onto other random animals and humans – SCIENCE! I dunno what his mini-Mengele purpose is, though it’s likely I just couldn’t parse that info out.
The Bat is my favorite character. He wears a black luchadore-style mask, for no one’s benefit except ours, so that his identity can be a “surprise” at the end. Given no mightier motive, the Bat merely skulks around the edges of Almeda’s story, a random villain to account for the mightily delayed commencement of mummy mayhem. All in all, he seems like the baddie from 1930’s The Bat Whispers – that being one of the movies to inspire Batman himself – as if taken in a totally different direction, in a weird amalgam of 1930s pulp and Mexican wrestling. Also, the Bat occasionally contacts goons for no reason.
Frankly, the Bat serves no evident function in this movie. By film’s end, the police arrest him for doing “bad” things (apparently simply going around in a black mask and a cape is a crime). Then they unmask him – gasp!, it’s Dr. Krupp, someone who was never previously identified by name. But keep in mind, this is a trilogy, and all this is likely to play out later on. …Oh, and a further example of the film’s odd, plot hole-ignorant mentality: The movie opens with the Bat escaping police custody – wearing his mask. In fact, they never bothered unmasking him until The Aztec Mummy’s most dramatically “appropriate” moment. Goes to show how strangely theatrical and arbitrary this thing is!
Meanwhile, Flor enters a trance – the only emotion Rosa Arenas is capable of portraying. She tells of her past life in Tenochtitlan, as the Aztec princess Ankh-es-en-amon – no, wait, excuse me, Xochitl! She enjoys forbidden (for whatever reason) love with mummy-to-be Imhot- no, Popoca. We don’t even see Popoca, mind you (all the better to preserve the “surprise,” I guess, when his mummy is finally revealed in the final 15 minutes), so it’s up to various expository sources to tell us of Xochitl’s love affair – all while we simply veg out to stock footage of ancient Mexican pyramids.
Then the duo, Xoxo and Popo, are sacrificed to the Aztecs’ heathen gods – here I’m not sure what attitude the filmmakers hold in regards to their supposed ancestors, especially in regards to their heart-ripping, head-removing sacrificial ways. I just don’t. It makes sense for an ostensible horror show to play the mummification process for maximum squirm points, but…there’s some evidence that the Aztecs are to be respected, perhaps one reason for the Bat’s more Euro-tinged villainy.
Okay, so, sacrifice…As with all scenes, this is many minutes longer than it ought to be, somehow reverting into a full-on King Kong dance routine. I suppose someone hired traditional folk dance extras, and had to get their peso’s worth.
Anyway, Flor awakes from her flashback and…exposits. She tells Almeda (who then grows the urge to tell the same info to others, then et cetera) about a lost Aztec ruin, and a fabulous breastplate and bracelet therein. And wouldn’t you know it, this undiscovered ruin is within easy driving distance! How great. Actually, cars instantly drive out to the site (in a shot perfectly mirrored by similar ones in Plan 9 From Outer Space), as the massive complex of skyscraper-sized pyramids proves less isolated than most of Mexico’s touristy Aztec/Mayan sites. Pretty hard to accept this all. A shame too that it’s so readily accessible, as it eliminates the possibility for a good, Indiana Jones-style cliffhanger trek.
But we gotta get to the next major set piece – entering one pyramid’s obvious opening, then wandering from catacomb to catacomb. Each new tomb necessitates another exposition session, almost as if – hey, the set guys made several tomb rooms, let’s use each one at length! It’s a chance to dwell upon the notion of a mummy’s curse and – You know how these mummy movies go, I suppose, an assumption The Aztec Mummy does not share. It really is the Cliff Notes version of Karloff’s Mummy, it is.
Summarizing the rest of the picture (something I could’ve done at this stage totally as a guess): The travelers shall steal certain relics – the aforementioned breastplate and bracelet, not that the props department makes them look like such – and head back home, at which point the titular Aztec mummy shall rise, retrieve said amulets, kill a dude or two, the end. There’s an outside possibility they’ll play up the reincarnated love storyline of Flor/Xochitl, only…they just ignore that one. After spending those 12 minutes in an Aztec flashback setting up precisely this story…though Popoca (the mummy) still collects Flor up in his arms at some stage, because it’s not a classical monster movie without an unconscious chick in the beast’s arms.
The plotting becomes pretty awkward at this stage, as they have to make do with action, not just explanation. Having squandered so much of the film on the premise, Portillo’s posse pusses out on what we all came to see – though it’s a truism about B-grade cinema that the poster’s promise usually occupies, at best, but a few minutes of screen time. Just enough to satisfy an undemanding, stoned viewer, because why deliver anything beyond the bare minimum? Otherwise, what’s left for the sequel?
As it is, Popoca the Aztec mummy is reasonably effective. He looks nothing like the old toilet paper-clad Egyptian model; Popoca looks like anthropomorphized bacon, crossed with certain hippies I’ve known in New Mexico. Kept appropriately in the dark, he remains creepy, and the makeup’s shortcomings aren’t terribly obvious. I wholly expect the sequels to mess this one up.
Naturally, Mexican mummies are a potent source of terror. Not that there are specifically Aztec mummies – this is a stretched effort to Egyptify a local culture, to accommodate an old Hollywood pastiche. Surely I hope the Mexicans, of all people, are aware that the Peruvian Incan mummies are not their mummies. Still…there are Mexican mummies…dating from most ancient antiquity: 1833! The Guanajuato mummies are the fucking creepiest thing I’ve ever seen in person, certain Beverly Hills examples of plastic surgery aside, and they seem to be the visual inspiration for Popoca.
As an example of these mummies’ genuine, soul-sapping terror, witness their effective use in Werner Herzog’s 1979 Nosferatu remake – I swear, this scene may just well be the most unsettling single moment in any film!
Meanwhile, The Aztec Mummy is a fun-loving bit of monsterism, and has no evident desire to disturb. So its mummy simply does the old Frankenstein routine – Woman asleep, monster creeps in, takes her away. That’s mostly it, really! Toss in but one death – the mummy lightly slaps some old guy’s shoulders, he falls over, is pronounced dead. This is so derivative of the old Universal idiom, without an understanding of its effectiveness, and without (I gather) the same Hays limitations dictating death-by-slapping. Pretty doofy stuff.
So The Aztec Mummy isn’t very good, in the grand scheme of world cinema. No surprise there, and frankly it was never aiming for the Criterion Collection to begin with. This is a cheapo programmer, devised (with its sequels) just as a business ploy. That being what it is, the imitation of Universal makes sense – it’s what sold. The addition of Aztec trappings, those genuine elements which distinguish The Aztec Mummy – they’re what sold too. It’s that minimal promise of the new with the old which serves sequels so well, and it’s a mentality which encompasses The Aztec Mummy to its very core. Whatever else is of note– the stilted, barely adequate form of scrapped-together Z-cinema this is – well, that is all purely unintentional. Like so much of 1950s filmdom – when independent, non-studio entities were just getting into the biz – our enjoyment now is ironic…a weird legacy to be sure.
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