Saturday, May 7, 2011

The Aztec Mummy and The Wrestling Women, Nos. 4 and 2 - Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy (1964)


It’s crossover time!, betwixt the Wrestling Women (a franchise so strong, it hasn’t even had a sequel yet) and The Aztec Mummy (which has had sequels, but only because they were made before Part One was released). Meaning this is the first naturally occurring sequel in either enterprise.

Given producer Guillermo Calderón’s track record, one doesn’t exactly expect elegance from this effort. So as crossovers go, this one follows the Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man format – namely, that it’s not so much a combination of film series as it is a mere sequel to one, with a little bit of the other tossed in at the end. Only much worse, naturally, than the old Universal example, because that’s Mexico’s cinematic prerogative. And since Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy is, for 80% of its existence, a mere Wrestling Women movie, let’s just treat it at that, and dive right in.


The first order of business is determining just how the Wrestling Women can have more adventures. How Gloria Venus and Golden Rubi (Lorena Velásquez and Elizabeth Campbell), two mere professional wrestlers, continue to have adventures dropped right in their lap. By having an adventure dropped right into their lap! A tormented archeologist, fleeing the mob (as archeologists do), directly seeks out Gloria and Golden for help. (Wrestlers: Mexico’s superheroes!)

(Sorry, I forgot…Gloria Venus, though the same character, is now officially renamed Loreta Venus, for absolutely no reason whatsoever!)

Why not just go to the police?! Well, A) in this universe they are as useless as the boar’s proverbial teats and B) the police are right there next to the Wrestling Women anyway! That’s right, it really is a sequel, with the Women’s purposeless police paramours (Armando Silvestre and Chucho Salinas) returning. They exist solely to support a 1960s Mexican’s idea of comic relief, in a movie which is damnably hilarious without help. All they do is fall down and say stupid things. Since it’s remarkably difficult to say amusing things about bad comedy, I now take my leave of the cops.

Back to the archeologist. He dies. Turns out those Wrestling Women weren’t much help after all.

Ah, but here comes a second archeologist, himself bearing plot. Dr. Tracy, he is, and he’s played by Victor Velásquez, presumably the lead actress’ father, or relation of another sort, or Velásquez is simply a common last name. Whatever it is, Dr. Tracy tells of a recently discovered codex, leading directly to that most Mexican of McGuffins, Aztec treasure™. The codex has now been split into several pieces, simply because that’s what is done in these sorts of stories. And now villains, specifically in the form of the Black Dragon Gang, seek it.

Now…everyone’s motives are the same – to obtain the treasure for their own material gain (and that goes for the Wrestling Women as well, who have now teamed up with Tracy) – so you can’t fault one party over another. That is to say, the villain is arbitrary. Except the Black Dragon Gang is doing it evilly. They’re killing archeologists, while the Wrestling Women are killing…Black Dragons. How is this okay?! Well, the Black Dragons are Japanese, see, therefore…Oh, I don’t like where this is going.


Let’s look into this. The Red Dragon himself (actor unknown, thanks to the vagaries of the English dubbing process) is your standard Fu Manchu affair, a white guy (in this case, Hispanic) made to look like an outdated Asian stereotype thanks to squinted eyes and other yellowface. I’ve seen this sort of thing before – yeah, in movies from the ‘30s. But this is Mexico circa 1964, which really oughtn’t to be trafficking in such pointless racism. This is just more proof that Mexican movies were helplessly indebted to aping archaic Hollywood schlock, and not their famous schlock like Gone with the Wind or Citizen Kane, but Monogram-style Z-grade exploitation. Only now, many decades removed, the initial “Yellow Peril” offense Fu Manchu intended is lost, leaving only a blind, unquestioning copycat mentality, repeating old movies for no reason.

Dr. Tracy, to keep the Red Dragons from getting their hands on the various codex pieces, determines to portion out the pieces over time to a different member of the Wrestling Women gang. This doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense, frankly, so let’s just sum up the next 30 minutes as simply as possible:

Fights!

The Wrestling Women and Red Dragons repeatedly come to blows, each sequence, regardless of context, playing out the same way. The same way I imagine all luchadore epics play out, with fighting phrased in the specific idiom of Mexican wrestling. Mostly, people hurl themselves bodily at each other, and occasionally employ holds. It gets a little repetitive, and that’s not counting the separate moments where Gloria and Golden wrestle in the ring.


The one point of interest is Red Dragon’s (that’s the Red Dragons’ leader’s name, so hello there needless confusion) favorite tactics. It’s all a bunch of arbitrary pseudo-scientific hooey, which is totally in keeping from the team that brought us Rock ‘n’ Roll Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Ape. For one thing, Red Dragon has a television – a magical television – with total omniscience. Wherever the Wrestling Women go, his TV sees ‘em (with perfect audio and everything!). Forget the loony notion he’s got little cameras everywhere, for most likely Red Dragon has somehow realized he’s a fictional character, and tapped into the actual movie footage, ala Spaceballs. This is some Funny Games shit!

Red Dragon’s other technique involves that old exploitation sawhorse: damsels in distress. Welcome, back, cinematic Mexican misogyny, we knew you wouldn’t be gone long! But that’s the challenge of a Wrestling Women flick, that the Wrestling Women cannot be treated like vapid, inane damsels, yet we still want vapid, inane damsels, because that’s the only story type René Cardona et al know. Therefore we’ve a new female character, Chela (María Eugenia San Martin), a new buddy of the Wrestling Women, a living and breathing plot complication. She becomes Red Dragon’s prisoner, then later his slave, via a combination of screwy misconceptions of chemistry and radio waves and psychiatry and about five other branches of science.

So, as I said, the movie just devolves into fight after fight. It’s going nowhere, which Red Dragon at least is wholly aware of (more evidence he’s aware of his own fictionality). Thus he proposes a compromise, that all bad blood between the Red Dragons and Wrestling Women be solved in the ring. Wrestling Women vs. Red Dragon’s two judo chopping twin daughters. Mostly, this is an excuse to wedge in a proper wrestling scene. Whomever wins gets all the codices. And amazingly, this isn’t a sneaky double-cross on Red Dragon’s part, not because the Mexicans doubt the slimy underhanded deviousness of the Japanese (you’d think WWII was still going on!), but because they’re so dismissive of the race they doubt even this degree of competence. Lovely!

Friday night. The National Wrestling Arena. Gloria Venus and Golden Rubi, our vivacious and comely heroines –


- versus these two dour, unnamed Japanese “women.”


Note the subtle cinematic trick by which we’re made to cheer on one group over another.

The following fight is a legitimate unexpurgated ten minutes of pure wrestling. This is no doubt the central highlight of a luchadore movie, possibly in an earlier era where wrestling on television wasn’t yet a thing (excepting Red Dragon’s television). A single, listless master shot from overhead covers all the ringside action, with occasional completely necessary cuts to the other characters watching from the sidelines. Considering the lead actresses were cast for their buxom hourglass forms and not their wrestling skills (as evidenced by the stocky real female wrestlers they regularly slap around), this deathless match isn’t even proper, though it is improvised, and therefore an awkward, stilted, crazy, hilarious thing. But remember, down there it’s a real sport!

The match ends with the Wrestling Women victorious, because this is one of those franchises where the protagonists are always successful, at all times, like a peplum. (Suspense? What’s that?) True to his word, Red Dragon gives them the pieces of codex he’d stolen from all those pre-murdered archeologists, and his notorious gang of ethnic caricatures retires for good.

And…switch!


It’s a new movie now, essentially, as we enter the Aztec Mummy phrase of things, an Aztec Mummy plot told over the course of a mere half hour and change – which proves to be a much more sustainable running time for this exact same story than any of the proper Aztec Mummies.

By that series, we start with human protagonists (here the Wrestling Women) learning of Aztec treasure™, and the whole history around it. Thoroughly eschewing the former forgotten memories, the translated codex reveals this. The tale, same as ever, about forbidden love in Aztec times between a princess and a warrior. We know this one, she’s Xochitl and he’s Popoca – Hold up! Nope, he ain’t Popoca! The mummy-to-be male lover is called Tezomoc. He’s a new character!

So…how is this a sequel to those Popoca mummy movies, when other generic Aztec and Mayan mummy movies (sadly, never an Olmec mummy) aren’t? Well, it’s all about producer Guillermo Calderón. If he’s delivering mummies, it’s technically an Aztec Mummy. Sure, whatever.


Name changes like this, to titular undead, are part and parcel with movies of this quality; it’s possible Calderón simply forgot what Popoca was called. Except Tezomoc is functionally different than Popoca – who was, recall, a mere shambler and a shoulder-slapper. Tezomoc is oh so much more dangerous, a nagual (Aztec sorcerer), able to shapeshift himself into a bat, a spider, whatever rubbery “scary” prop they already had lying around the studio. In other words, vampirism and mummification are intentionally confused for the hell of it. (In all this, it’s heartening to know Popoca’s story really did conclude in The Aztec Mummy vs. the Human Robot, and he’s still chilling out in that mausoleum to this day.)

Now we’re an official Aztec Mummy movie that just happens to involve the Wrestling Women, things fall out as predictably as the Red Dragon section, but according to different rules. The Wrestling Women find Tezomoc’s tomb, steal away the breastplate which reveals the location of the thing which reveals the location of the thing which reveals the location of the Aztec treasure™. Tezomoc stalks them back home, kills whomever, the Wrestling Women return the breastplate, the end.

As always, there are lapses of illogic which warrant at least some examination. Tezomoc kills people, something all these Aztec mummies seem very fond of. Specifically, he kills all the Red Dragons, never mind they’re now genuinely disinterested in the whole story, now that it’s moved them by. Still, they were the “bad guys,” so I guess for no reason they deserved it. It wasn’t gruesome, anyway. They merely see Tezomoc, shot their prop guns to no effect, and he nears them. The end. We don’t even get shoulder-slapping, the usual ceremonial indicator that a death has occurred.


Oh, and Chela, now freed of the Red Dragons’ grasp (that is, in the stages well before their deaths-by-mummy), becomes a new damsel. Tezomoc’s damsel. Not because he, the mummy, has any specific need to sacrifice her, but it’s just what Aztec mummies do, and it gives the Wrestling Women someone to save at the end, even if we’re still a decade away from movies allowing all three women smooch as an ending.

And there’s some randomly humorous dialogue wedged in the proceedings as well. Most of it is in response to Tezomoc’s shapeshifting:

“Look, it’s a vampire now!”

“He’s a mummy again.”

Well, Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy served its purpose…I guess. It solidified The Wrestling Women as a franchise unto itself, with several more sequels to follow. The Aztec Mummy, meanwhile, ends at this stage, not that it was ever really moving to begin with. And interesting that they needed to do a crossover (even if we never really get the glorious “wrestlers fighting mummies” nonsense promised) to justify further movies about spandex-clad vixens. You’d think that sort of franchise could perpetuate itself.

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