The Wrestling Women, No. 4 - Las mujeres panteras (1967)

Well, Las mujeres panteras opens with a ceremonial paganistic underground ritual concerning panther-worshipping ‘60s ultra-babes, making it automatically a better film than Las lobas del ring.

And it sticks with that exploitative angle throughout, the proper phantasmagoric extremes to offset the interchangeable wrestling scenes of lucha libre cinema.

In fact, there’s little point for establishing sequel context within the larger Wrestling Women series, because what this is is simply a delivery system for whatever pulpy lunacy the Mexicans could come up with, so away we go. It solely behooves me to address the recasting of the lead character, Ms. Venus…or maybe not, considering she is renamed, from Loreta to Gloria…Though she was named Gloria originally, before the cast and crew got confused as started calling her one letter off from actress Lorena Velásquez. Well, with Velásquez vanished, enter Ariadna Welter, lookin’ not quite as buxom or comely (really, the one reason a female lucha series exists at all). Not that Velásquez was ever noteworthy enough for her star power to be predicated upon anything more than the strength of her hairspray, creating that bouffant mane. So be it, returning Anglo costar Elizabeth Campbell (as Golden Rubi) is, for me, the more enticing feminine option, what with her Amazonian ways and atomic-strength brazier (it was just becoming the 1950s, evidently, in 1967 Mexico).

Plus, series masterminds Guillermo Calderón y René Cardona hedge their bets, cheesecake-wise, by focusing upon a demonic cult comprised seemingly entirely of underwear models (and this one really lucky older dude…plus the interchangeable fedora-clad goons whenever a fight scene breaks out…consistency and logic have no place in lucha libres). These titular panther-women open their film up on a wonderful note, worshipping their almighty world destroyer Eloim with the sort of verve one associates with Manos – only vaguely halfway barely almost semi-competent.


Because every decent Mexican horror movie I’ve seen so far is a rip-off of a much older Hollywood product, this one takes on Cat People. In fact, it plays as you’d imagine Cat People would from that title alone – not the subtle, eerily elegant exploration of psychosexual repression as in Val Lewton’s final masterpiece, but what his studio masterminds had in (master)mind when feeding him that contextless title in the first place. Wooo, I am so hopped-up on coffee right now!! Namely, Las mujeres panteras takes Cat People into the heady realm of…well, I’m running out of synonyms for “pulpy, ridiculous craziness.”

Meanwhile…wrestling match! It’s a truism of the luchadore movement that wrestling matches make up at least 40% of a film – such an expected regularity, there is no more to say about these, really. Which is why a heady horror story is so welcome. A match reintroduces us to Gloria and Golden (or should I call her Rubi?), a formulaic lucha standard. This reminds us how awesomely undefeatable our protagonists are, before they’re soon thrust out of the sane world of professional Mexican wrestling into terror and crime fighting and whatnot.


Today’s random justification for embroiling Gloria and Golden (okay, G&G) in insanity? Their boyfriend’s uncle is a victim of the Panther Society. (…Hmm, Panther Society, 1960s, counter-cultural, clad all in black…A more socially clever horror film – i.e. something by George Romero – could’ve done something with that!) It’s always a sister, or an uncle, or a cousin or niece or mother-in-law-twice-removed, as each sequel necessitates a new family member to jumpstart silliness – though given how prodigious Mexican families are, this isn’t too hard to credit.

Now, about G&G’s boyfriends…They’ve had paramours in each entry, each time a duo of detectives of, charitably, variable competence and intelligence. Both are usually comic relief (in order to not undermine the chicas, but still maintain essential B-movie gender inequality in some subtle way). Beginning in Rock ‘n’ Roll Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Ape (which remains one of the coolest, craziest titles in ages), one of these doofs was played by Chucho Salinas – a profoundly unfunny Mexican “comedian,” many steps regressed from the cricket-clad Bumblebee Man-inspiring Chapulín Colorado.

Chucho’s been thankfully MIA ever since Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy, but his type remains consistent – a consistency which doesn’t seem to extend to the cop duo’s identity at any given time, who enjoy such a loosey-goosey anti-continuity it’s not worth tracking. Replacing Chucho’s functional role now (as Leocadio) is Manuel “El Loco” Valdés, given to pratfalls so eye-buggingly abstract, it’s on a merely intellectual, archeological level that I understand this to be komedy. I mean, “El Loco?” The actor’s name?! It seems each B Mexican movie identifies a designated buffoon, who behaves wholly out of sync with the other characters’ temperaments (i.e. acting wildly terrified of everything, in a manner 1940s Hollywood movies reserved for black actors).


But then again, all lucha characters are equally archetypal, like stock figures out of a Middle Ages pilgrimage story. We got the evil woman, the dumbass, the innocent child, the moral wrestler, the professor, etc. Combined with the narrative shorthand which states masks may be worn publically and professionally and while sleeping any time a character’s identity isn’t worth knowing, one gets a good sense of Mexico’s storytelling conventions. It’s like how most early luchadores seem to have names derived from lotería (The Boot, the Hand, The Moon, The Bird, The Drunk).

It’s kinda fun, in a mentally deficient sort of way, though it’s hard to credit the characters are unable to identify Torgo (Yolanda Montes “Tongolele” – not sure what that nickname’s all about), the Queen of the Panther Women. I mean, the gal roams the streets in an Eartha Kitt Catwoman suit, with a Rogue-like streak of white hair and other such obvious evil telltale signs. Well, if the pre-literate children watching can immediately ID her as the villainess, it works, and we accept (by these films’ artificial rules) that the in-film characters cannot.


Oh right, seems I roundabout referenced the “Batman” TV show there with Eartha Kitt. That comparison extends to a lot of these films’ tone, though they’re largely without the intentional kitsch komedy of that Adam West saga. The plentiful fight sequences are staged much like the ones Batman would have against the Penguin’s minions, Burgess Meredith quacking on the sidelines the whole time. Every time (and I mean in every lucha epic in existence), characters duke it out in a barrel-filled warehouse lair, the same Churubusco set they’ve never even had to redress. We only lack the comic booky visual sound effects to complete the effect – eh, that and vibrant Technicolor, as these things are depressingly black and white (which does benefit the horror feel).

Actually, Las lobas del ring as a huge exception, I kinda really love the texture of these movies, their uniquely Mexican concept of horror and superheroism and whatnot. The panteras dwell in a mausoleum in a creepy cemetery (the same mausoleum Popoca called lair in The Aztec Mummy vs. the Human Robot) – this graveyard is so wonderfully Mexican, with a Day of the Dead vibe that just permeates the movie…that is, when it’s not stalling in some antiseptic stagebound apartment set, like all of Las lobas, screw that movie! Plot doesn’t matter, which is just as well seeing as I’m watching these things in Spanish now. Going off of those which have been dubbed, things’d be pretty strangely convoluted anyway, so it’s just as well to simply bask in the strangeness, when suddenly a mummy arises out of a coffin without lead-in and holy schnikeys this is nuts!


From what I can gather about the plot (beyond the general luchadore formula about fights interspersed with wrestling interspersed with unnecessary belly dancing sequences), the Panther Women seek to CONQUER THE WORLD…by killing one single little girl. Apparently, they need to kill all of the Santa family (not that Santa, just some normal folks), and this girl is the last one. Yup, it’s the Halloween IV – VI thing. Like Michael Myers’ anti-Strode policy, the Panther Women are profoundly unable to harm the girl, even while their mummy shoulder-slaps dozens of police officers to death along the way. And because the girl just barely escapes each time, thanks be to G&G, well, it is determined that in order to kill the girl, first they must kill G&G.


Really, this is to allow for what seems to be a commonized luchadore element – somewhere nearing the climax, in order to maintain the wrestling milieu, the villains enter certain masked henchmen in the ring to take out the heroes. Yes, masked mystery applicants with no experience and no background checks are let to face the nation’s champions. This is a regular thing, and with repetition, one accepts it just as a necessary scene, and basks in the whateverness of it all. So it is here, two masked chicas (now called Las Sombras) attempting to maul G&G on national Mexican TV with their cat claws. It’s all so weirdly specific, so very committed to a form of zaniness other cultures would never even consider!


Now…about the franchise. It’s called Wrestling Women, and amongst lucha libre cinema, these flicks distinguish themselves by that gender. Therefore, it’s something of a niche notion, and doesn’t engender endless sequels in the same way as the mainstream Santo series does. Hence it takes a couple of years between entries, in a production environment where several sequels could be made in a single year. This also limits the potential longevity of the series.

Guillermo Calderón seems aware of this fact, sensing his flagship series’ shortening lifespan (just one sequel to go after this), and takes steps to alleviate this. So Las mujeres panteras, rather surprisingly, features a masked male luchadore – the expected common element of this subgenre, so far unseen in Wrestling Women. El Ángel is your standard masked man fighter (that’s even the name the luchadore in The Curse of the Aztec Mummy boasted) – a crime fighter given complete access to the Crime Lab and cooperating most casually with the police. It’d be like a movie nowadays where Morgan Freeman’s world-weary captain seeks aid from Kobe Bryant!


El Ángel (actor unknown, to preserve the public appearance of anonymity so many luchadores thrive upon – and unlike G&G, it’s likely this guy is a real wrestler) is a boringly commonplace type. What’s more, his sub-Batman routine takes away from time we could spend in G&G’s exquisite feminine graces. Stripped of much of their superheroic antics, the gals are reduced to just looking pretty – quite a reversion for a series which started (oh-so-ostensibly) as equal opportunity idiocy. It seems kind of useless to saddle a Wrestling Women flick with something you could find anywhere (circa then), but methinks there is an explanation…

It’s all about Calderón. This series is not long for the ring. In a pre-bout bout of doubt, producer Calderón attempts sowing the seeds for a spinoff, an Ángel franchise which would never actually materialize. Not that Ángel movies would’ve distinguished themselves whatsoever in the competitive luchadore movie market, what with Santo and Blue Demon and cronies all enjoying the king’s share of attention. What might guarantee some success would be landing a notable wrestler. I am unaware of any fighter historically known in the ring as El Ángel (though I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there was one) – eh, could be Calderón was trying to form another non-wrestler wrestler series, which simply doesn’t work when not otherwise peddling T&A. So, no, there’s nothing all that valuable about El Ángel.

But that’s all minor pondering in light of Las mujeres panteras’ greater welcome sins against logic. And while Calderón still cannot deliver a “mummy vs. wrestling women” fight that lasts over three seconds (anticlimaxes are the name of his game), there’s just too much strangeness around the edges to be wholly upset. Hell, the mere set decoration in the panteras’ clubhouse is worth mentioning, for no reason except to end this on a note of oddity. Dried stuffed iguanas, gourd husks, voodoo figurines, assorted discarded luchadore masks, flames emerging randomly from wherever, a snake-filled coffin just because, some Aztec stuff, all and more combined into a heady mixture of whatever!

*******************************************************************************

Then there’s the series’ final entry, Wrestling Women vs. the Robot (1969). The video self-destructed on me halfway through, so it doesn’t warrant its own posting, but we are beholden to consider it.

Any doubts about the series’ growing uselessness are silenced by vs. the Robot – pretty much a concentrated combo rehash of The Aztec Mummy vs. the Human Robot and Rock ‘n’ Roll Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Ape (and those two titles have more entertainment value in them than the whole of this latter Robot riot). The Wrestling Women formula is well cemented: Take one B-movie style random villain prone to monologuing, intersperse with wrestling matches and desultory exposition in someone’s apartment. The lone change is the villain type, and we’re repeating mad scientist now…worse, he even has Carfax, neither a vehicle history report nor a “Dracula” setting, but an ersatz Gomar, The Aztec Ape’s Aztec ape.


He also has a robot!...Which looks like one of Pizza the Hutt’s companions from Spaceballs, so basically the robot is a silvery spray-painted dude with a taste for 1930s gangster fedoras. His torso is seemingly made from a keg, with a Videodrome-esque VCR slot so the mad doc can upload, er, people’s stolen brains. Yes, even the brain burglary story is aped from Aztec Ape.


This aping extends to G&G themselves, but not those G&G. The entire cast is new today, and in light of that we get wholly new characters – Gaby and Gemma (Regina Torné y Malú Reyes). Boy, the Wrestling Women franchise is really stretching its luck with this one, again inserting two non-wrestler actresses into the mix, now when the series can no longer coast on mere tight outfits, gams and big hair. It’s no wonder this was the last of the bunch, and no amount of brand new color cinematography – so washed out and pale it makes 1969 Mexico look like the worst of 1959 Italy – can make this loopiness novel again.

Overall, what a strange series! Granted, lucha film was staggeringly popular during that time, but this is a uniquely formulaic, bastardized variation on that format, and simultaneously mired in the long-outdated tropes of old Hollywood. There is joy in Wrestling Women – B-movie spectacle for fans of both cheese and cheesecake. Plus, the proportions are all so off from the more famous exploitation genres, making every triumph and mistake seem genuine. As a historical window into a time and a place, these movies are invaluable.

The Wrestling Women, No. 3 - Las lobas del ring (1965)

Aka Wolf-Babes of the Ring (liberal translation)!

The Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy did what it did for the Wrestling Women franchise (screw that dusty, shambling Aztec Mummy!), opening it up to sequels. That’s all well and good except for one thing: They had no idea for a sequel…

Well, that didn’t stop ‘em (“‘em” being producer Guillermo Calderón and director René Cardona) from simply making Las lobas del ring anyway, accurse it all! As if working under a sense of deadline, Las lobas del ring is a Wrestling Women movie in that the Wrestling Women appear in it and…yeah, that’s kind of all that happens. In the storied luchadore Mexican subgenre, so often rife with vampires, mummies, secret societies, aliens, witches, ghosts, superheroes, mad scientists, robots and sombreros, Las lobas is just a luchadore film…in that it only shows wrestling scenes, and adds nothing else of value.


It is my hypothesis that lucha libre cinema developed when it did as a substitute or supplement for televised wrestling matches. Given Mexico’s technological limitations in the 1960s, broadcasting these fights live wasn’t an option. But so many of the star luchadores – Santo, Blue Demon, Hurácan Ramírez, Mil Máscaras, Rey Mysterio, La Parka, Eddie Guerrero, Hijo de Santo, Nacho Libre – were national superstars anyway, beloved as living iconic folk heroes in a way I can’t even find a parallel for. Audiences wanted to see these storied gods-among-men, and so movies floated that bill, creating fictional escapist fantasies surrounding masked personas in the wrestling arena.


This feels akin to the fictionality which has come to encompass popular U.S. wrestling, where it’s commonly accepted the “sport” is essentially live theater, telling outsized tales of outsized men. By the framework of professional wrestling entities, the WCW, the WWE, the WWF, the WWEF, the WWC, the WWJD, WWWWAFCHFS, the QVC and the WTF, the sport and a larger bizarre interest in narratives unite into a single spectacle – only don’t tell my preteen cousin it’s fake, lest he piledrive his bed in defiance for some reason. (God, it seems I’ve said far more on wrestling over this blog’s existence than I, a total ringside apathetic, have any right to!)

Eh, so it is with lucha libre, that utterly ridiculous fiction becomes intertwined with the films. But owing to the nature of cinema, of lucha flicks, these fictions remain accepted as fictions – that is, unless some young Mexican fanboys genuinely thought Santo went off to defeat supernatural psychotics on a yearly basis in between wrestling professionally, and I wouldn’t put it past them. Still we get wrestling matches in these lucha películas, filmed with all the cinematic verve and energy one would expect from live single-camera recordings in the 1960s third world. These in-film matches, as far as I can tell, are genuine (for wrestling is a sport there); you then add a story about lizard people or some damn thing around the edges, tie it in vaguely with the matches presented (where the hero always wins, which raises some eyebrows), and you got mucha lucha!


Now belatedly I return to Las lobas del ring – and when I say all it concerns is wrestling, I mean there are no otherworldly beasties nor any other such B-movie nonsense for our heroines to contend with. Nope, there’s just a mighty million peso pot (aka $85,506.60) at the end of the year’s wrestling season, awaiting the champ. Some criminals seek the prize; so do our stars, Loreta Venus and Golden Rubi (Lorena Velásquez and Elizabeth Campbell). Intersperse wrestling scenes with static, unenergetic talking scenes, leading up to Loreta’s oh-so-inevitable final victory, incorporate some scant gangsterism and kidnapping and mamacitas into the mix, and that is the entirety of Las lobas del ring.

Therefore, all in all, it isn’t a very interesting movie, certainly not when (having seen but two lucha libre movies to my name at this stage) wrestling is but the baseline for juvenile insanity. I want insanity! Thus this movie is a sequel made without even a plot to support it – pretty much the notion of an automatic sequel dragged to its logical extreme.


Too bad this lucha-chica lunacy doesn’t work on its own. Hence all that dwelling upon the genre above. Unique among luchadore flicks, The Wrestling Women does not showcase actual wrestlers. There’s no way (and I’ve explored this before) that Velásquez and Campbell, with their Amazonian sex bomb bodies and hazardously accentuated breasts and ginormous Texas-style ‘60s beehive hairdos, there’s no way these chicas could function in the professional fighting circuit – let alone escape from every match with their hair unmussed, while the troll-like real “female” wrestlers they defeat so handily emerge looking like Stallone at the end of Rocky. Thus the fights are thoroughly faked, improvised, performed by attractive non-wrestlers with a “do not harm” clause hanging invisibly around their necks. The verisimilitude which actually underwrites fictionalized wrestling, in either its Mexican or U.S. form, is lacking here, which is entirely too fake to be taken as sport, and too lacking in any other qualities too.

It’s telling just how uniform the screen caps are. Hell, I wasn’t even trying to make the movie look monotonous! Well over ten minutes separate each image, at least, to show the sort of visual blandness that is Las lobas del ring.


It goes without saying, with all these handicaps, that Las lobas del ring wasn’t nearly as popular as the greater Wrestling Women efforts, such as Rock ‘n’ Roll Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Ape (that title alone makes it the better film!). At least, Las lobas had no sway in the U.S. – hence my insistence upon its Spanish title. Therefore – and this is me grasping at straws in order to keep on jabbering pointlessly – it isn’t dubbed. I watched it in Spanish. This couldn’t have helped matters much, as much of the dialogue (and there is a lot of it, when wrestling isn’t happening) totally went over my monolingual head. Though not from complexity of vocabulary – they say most movies employ a roughly 3rd grade use of language, and we’re talking Mexican schooling here. It just got tiring trying to translate chatty chatter for so long, when it became quickly obvious how fruitless it was. As an example of my efforts, here’s how my note-taking went at the outset:

Talk on lucha libre, an important deporte. Es mas dramatic que los otros deportes. Necesitamos propaganda. Los luchas mujeres son atractivas. Van a ver…uno cosa yo no sey con las luchas de mujeres.

Then it just became a drinking game. At every utterance of “lucha” or “mujer,” I imbibed. I write about this now the day afterwards, damaged enough from the effort that I lack discussion points more intriguing than my own alcoholism.


At least there’s one other notable fact about Las lobas del ring – it marks Lorena Velásquez’s final entry in the series. It’s not a total farewell, as she’d go on to do some Santo flicks, so whatever ostensible attempt at respectability in Las lobas (by dropping the superstitious hocus pocus we come for – I mean, they couldn’t even deliver on she-werewolves, as the title indicates) didn’t stick. It’d be the nice thing to do at this stage to retrospect upon Velásquez’s Wrestling Women career, except…except I feel none of these casts have ever risen above adequate. The acting itself leaves little impression, so all one can say for Velásquez is that, yup, she sure was an attractive enough lady. Which, you know, is such a rarity in film and all.

Meaning the series will have to continue now without its star. If they can toss in some dinosaurs or zombies or whatever, it’ll be a trade up, frankly.

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.

The Wrestling Women, No. 1 - Rock 'n' Roll Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Ape (1964)

The Aztec Mummy trilogy was so popular, producer Guillermo Calderón didn’t even bother making sequels. Oh, Aztec mummies would continue in Mexican pop culture – La Cabeza Viviente and…really, that’s all. At least from that era. And it’s not even an official sequel of any sort, as Aztec mummies are a generic, non-trademarkable notion. Besides, Calderón wasn’t involved in that one – though it got the same K. Gordon Murray translation/distribution deal in the U.S.

Nope, a true sequel at this stage could only come about through a crossover – the fourth and final Aztec Mummy. But that’d require another Calderón product worthy of sequelizing, and all this in a renewed Mexican cinematic marketplace that has ceased producing entire trilogies in one month. Instead, Calderón could simply hope to produce a sufficiently good movie – a significant task, given the general air of cheapness.

Broadening our scope for a bit, recall how profoundly backwards-thinking Mexican horror cinema was in the 1950s, looking to decades-old U.S. films, then just ripping them off wholesale. Enter the 1960s, and while Mexican film remains pulpy programmable schlock, endlessly caught in the tonal idiom of old crackerjack escapist serials, it starts developing its own personality. Enter now without reservations the luchadores! Though briefly toyed with in The Curse of the Aztec Mummy, Mexican lucha libre wrestling truly became a subgenre unto itself shortly thereafter. The first El Santo movie came about in 1958, and from there a veritable avalanche of masked wrestling superheroes took over Mexican screens. And while these B-pictures remain an irredeemable porridge of action, horror, sci-fi and other exploitable filmic elements all mashed together into a lumpy, tasty gruel, the luchadores were the glue that held these messes together. Add to that a healthy taste of ‘60s mod, rock ‘n’ roll culture, and you’ve got a curious thing indeed – movies still somehow stuck in the ‘30s stylistically, but reflecting all the nonsensical biker gangs and counter culture Roger Corman was embracing so lovingly at that time.


Many a luchadore franchise sprung up in Santo’s wake: The Blue Demon, Mil Mascaras, and lesser stars (all sharing the same fictional identity as in their wrestling careers) like Tinieblas, Rayo de Jalisco (both Sr. and Jr.), El Fantasma Blanco, and Superzan!

…Oh, and the Wrestling Women, Calderón’s major stake in the genre – noting a gender-wide genre gap, he thus makes something that is functionally no different, really, only it has breasts. And is, reportedly, more insane!

These Wrestling Women (Las Luchadoras) – Gloria Venus (Lorena Velásquez) and Golden Rubi (Elizabeth Campbell) – are not, like their male counterparts, genuine artifacts of the Mexican pro-wrestling circuit. They’re true creations of film – evidenced by how clearly non-wrestlers they are when placed alongside stocky, squat, genuine female wrestling opponents. Thus, the Wrestling Women weren’t even conceived of as franchise characters. While I prefer to call their first film Rock ‘n’ Roll Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Ape, for how wonderfully loopy that is, it is more commonly known by the generic Dr. of Doom, a title which reveals nothing of the Wrestling Woman wonder to burst forth from it.

That more generic title indicates the general attitude of this first Wrestling Women – the shorthand I’ll refer to this flick from now on. In essence, it’s just your bog standard mad scientist flick, the sort the ‘60s saw so much of before Night of the Living Dead totally redefined what horror was. It reminds me a lot of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, or something Bela Lugosi would’ve done for Monogram. In this aspect, Wrestling Women is at times tremendously boring, and at times ridiculously hilarious – it works like nearly all “MST3K”-ready B-pictures in that way.


For basically, a duo of masked mad scientists have been terrorizing…some city. Presumably, it’s Mexico City, only a Mexico City Podunk enough to warrant only two inept, bungling comic relief police detectives to its name. Which is why this unnamed doctor’s reign of terror – kidnapping, then killing, assorted alley-dwelling women – continues unabated.

Getting into details, the doc is trying to insert a gorilla’s brain into a woman’s brainpan. Yes! What the hell for?! I mean, for one thing he’s already done so successfully with a dude – the resulting ape-like “ape-man” is lovingly christened Gomar. Based on the incontestable lies of SCIENCE, Gomar’s human body is reacting to the gorilla brain the only way possible – by slowly transforming into a gorilla! (A side note: this mania with eeee-vil murderous gorillas is a remnant of older U.S. films, and evidence the Mexicans were indirectly racist for much longer.) It is this physical reversion back into lesser hominid which most disturbs our doctor, which is why he needs a woman – because women, according to SCIENCE, do not transform into gorillas when implanted with gorilla brains. The only problem – they die instead. D’oh! There is some confusion here as to just which brain they’re putting in whose body, so I’ll just let the doctors handle this one:

“All the brains we have transplanted so far have come from totally uneducated women. And their IQs were extremely low!”

Mind you there is a general, unconcerned patina of misogyny to these old Mexican flicks, the automatic assumption (title aside) that women are totally worthless dimwits, who’d barely remember to breathe if a noble man wasn’t there to remind them. It’s kind of remarkable. And so the doc laments the sheer impossibility of finding what he needs – a functionally intelligent woman. What a rarity!

It just so happens that there is one woman who’s been allowed access to Mexico’s educational system, one Alicia (Sonia Infante) – we know she’s smart (despite the same voluptuous Miami model appearance all Mexican actresses evidently cultivate) because she wears glasses and a ponytail. (See also: Alone in the Dark) Too bad that for all Alicia’s hard work, all it earns her is a kidnapping via ape-man, followed by a swift death upon an illegal, underground Mexican operating table.


A pause. I’ve been addressing the mad scientist doctor in generic, lower case terms. This is because his identity is not yet revealed. In fact, he wears the surgical equivalent of a luchadore mask. Now just becoming cognizant of the rules governing luchadore movies, I understand mask-wearing is a widespread custom in Mexican film. And it’s usually a shorthand for our benefit. Characters wear masks to conceal their identities, either for a late-movie twist (as in the doctor’s case), or simply to be unknown in public. In other words, people wear masks for arbitrary in-film reasons, and no one else calls ‘em out on this! With a little logic the cops could figure out the dude wandering around in plain daylight with a mask is the serial killer scientist, but of course you need a warrant to unmask a dude, etc. This is kind of a fascinating development, and likely a major ingredient for lucha cinema.


I bring it up now because the question of the doctor’s identity becomes central. Also incredibly easy to deduce ahead of schedule. I mean, a drooling, isolated cretin never before exposed to film could figure it out! For Alicia, while she still lives, has a certain colleague, a mild mannered, violence-hating fellow – Professor Ruiz (Roberto Cañedo). Here’s our first genuine hint Ruiz might be the Mad Doctor…

Deliveryman: “Here’s your suspiciously large delivery of venison, Professor.”

Yes, that is actual dialogue. No, this is not a comedy (intentionally).

Further hints retain that degree of inelegance (credit to regular Calderón scribe Alfredo Salazar, and director René Cardona). As if to counter this obviousness, there are many scenes of Ruiz held at gunpoint by the Mad Doctor’s assorted henchmen (who apparently have some sort of vested interest in human-gorilla brain transference). Usually, this is a ploy to lure people in, the mastermind acting the victim. It becomes problematic when we even see Ruiz making phone calls at feigned gunpoint, for no reason except so that we mightn’t suspect him. Like the mask thing, the rules about villains, heroes, and other such niceties follow their own illogical paths in this genre.


….Now wait, I’ve been calling this a luchadore film. Where’s the luchadores?! Well, patience, for artlessly intercut with all this mad science hooey, Cardona has generously served up endless scenes of wrestling, with the franchise-making Wrestling Women referred to so far above. They’re sultry, they wear body-tight leotards (and occasionally capes), they’re prone to stilted line readings with just a hint of lesbianism to them: “My new apartment is large, and you are lonely.” Cue the sexy saxophone music – I am dead serious!

All in all, though, Gloria and Golden (those being our two Wrestling Women – I honestly expected something more like a dozen) are presented as competent, heroic…against all odds, this woman-hating 1964 Mexican flick passes the Bechdel Test. We know this is a remarkably difficult thing for the filmmakers to accede to, when they’d prefer to show women as shrieking, eternally-terrified lingerie-clad…entities. But that’s the requirement of Wrestling Women’s premise, to show female protagonists, and the movie men are able to have it both ways by making this an eye candy factory for the entire time as well.

In fact, the Wrestling Women’s competence is no mere trait. It’s a plot point! For the Mad Doctor now, by process of pure SCIENTIFIC logical deduction, concludes that he needs not a smart woman, but an athletic woman. Cue the same hand wringing about how unlikely such a specimen exists. But then the Mad Doc recalls filmic convenience, that Gloria isn’t simply the exact brain recipient he needs (being the national wrestling champ and all), she’s also Alicia’s sister. How likely! This gives Gloria a motive too, the simplest of all: Revenge!

Most of the rest of the story is pretty basic, once Gloria wants to kill the Doctor and the Doctor wants her skull cavity. Toss in a romance between the Wrestling Women and Mexico City’s two guileless detectives – Armando and Chema (Armando Silvestre and Chucho Salinas) I deduce they’re so called, since the damned English dub instead calls ‘em Mike and Tommy. Right. Anyway, the sudden pairing of Wrestling Women and Dopey Detectives demands further analysis.


It undermines the Wrestling Women! Consider that all important gender inequality must be maintained! For while the cops are utterly worthless human beings (in that sort of doofy “Mexican comedy” way, a nation which still finds nasally-voiced men clad as niños bonking each other with mallets the height of humor – to say nothing of Carlos Mencia), they still did get themselves the girls. Two Amazons, the sole two able females in existence – and their equals are a pair of jokers that make Abbott and Costello look like Martin and Lewis. It’s subtly tasteless on one hand, and it simultaneously is such a contrived situation, it keeps Wrestling Women in a bizarre, abstract realm. I swear, for all their similarities to more familiar Ed Wood-style U.S. films, these Mexican efforts are a bit arbitrary, like passion plays with symbolic, archaic types to be filled.

Anyway, the Wrestling Women eventually corner the Mad Doctor…and kill him! This is with a good half hour of movie to go.

Which means the Doctor didn’t die, but just had his face melted away with acid (something which happened to the villain in The Aztec Mummy vs. the Human Robot as well). Now we officially learn that Ruiz is the villain – not like there were many other options anyway. And vowing vengeance against Gloria for initially vowing vengeance against him, Ruiz (now lacking his lair, lab, ape-man and network of goons, mind you) does the unexpected…

He successfully creates his long-awaited gorilla-woman!


Just like that, eh? For all the apparent difficulties, there was evidently another fit wrestling woman nearby. Well, okay then. It’s not every mad science movie which sees its villain actually achieve his climactic goal. And while the initial idea was that this gorilla-woman, this unstoppable (except by bullets, and all other forms of death) paragon of beastliness, this creature would somehow aid Ruiz in conquering the world (I’m sensing a pattern in these movies), well…Well now all Ruiz cares about is slipping a mask over both himself and the Gorilla Gal (now named Vendetta), and entering her in a wrestling match against Gloria. Because Mexico’s commissioned wrestling league is totally OK with a manager and fighter arriving out of the blue with masks on and demanding to fight the national champ.


The fallout of all this is Vendetta tackles Gloria in the ring, Vendetta controlled by Ruiz’s ESP mind control capabilities we never knew of before – this sequence reminds me of that “Futurama” episode where Bender joins Ultimate Robot Fighting. That’s the one where the kung fu alien controls the gigantic mecha in the ring, until the one-eyed space pilot defeats him. Well, Mexico’s serious variation on the same is no less insane, and to simply state that Wrestling Women ends in all out insanity rivaled only by the 1966 version of Casino Royale, well, that’s a much simpler way of wrapping this up than attempting to actually explicate all the nonsense.

Except to say that Vendetta (once Gloria’s good boon friend) is shot dead as a gorilla woman, and that’s after much distress over re-transferring brains to save her…Well fuck it!

And that’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Ape – with very little actual rock ‘n’ roll to its name, and the ape in question being decidedly not Aztec, and perishing at the end of Act Two. Ah, but who cares? The Wrestling Women themselves are the big takeaway from this enterprise, two gals to (somehow) inspire the women and titillate the men. More so the latter. That cheesecake factor pretty much explains how a franchise could’ve been born of this, especially when B-movies were still people’s main source of remotely pornographic notions.

Next stop: Crossing over with the Aztec mummy!

The Aztec Mummy, No. 3 - The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy (1957)

Presented in Hypno-Scope!!!
To Heighten the Horror, Thrill Your Senses, Kill Your Brain!!!

…Well, I suppose that’s one way to make a sequel.

Recall that the Aztec Mummy trilogy (calm down, there will be further sequels) was conceived as a single, gigantic (by Mexican standards) movie. This didn’t hurt The Aztec Mummy too egregiously. But to wrest the maximum amount of motion picture for the minimum effort, director Rafael Portillo formed Part Two, The Curse of the Aztec Mummy, with 25% recycled footage. Now The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy, with two whole movies preceding it, stretches that filthy practice even further. Nearly 50% of this movie is recycled!

Literally the entire first half of this 64 minute film is a recapitulation of what’s come before. In a most inelegant framework, ostensible series hero Dr. Almada (Ramón Gay) invites a duo of his associates over for a friendly exposition session. As if directed primarily towards us, the audience, he begs patience before the new stuff starts, for he has a story to tell. Oh boy! It is one sloppy construction, sitting three men (and a woman) before a table and having one listlessly narrate former set pieces, some of which I’m now seeing for the third time in as many days!


How does a sequel come about to employ this trick?! There are a number of potential explanations…

1. The extensive saga of the Aztec Mummy is so complex, we’d be genuinely confused at this stage without generous time spent getting everyone up to speed.

2. Owing to Mexico’s relative cinematic isolation (as evidenced by their 1957 habit of aping solely movies Hollywood made in 1931), it’s possibly they seriously believed this was the way all sequels were done.

3. It’s a cheap ploy to save money.

Bingo!

In three movies, totaling 210 minutes, there are only 165 minutes of footage (estimation). I can’t say that I feel too kindly about this. Trusting you yourself can recall what’s come before (or can at least find out somewhere someplace online – possibly this blog – or simply don’t care), I shan’t attempt an in-depth recap of Almeda’s in-depth recap. For what it’s worth, here’s how the movie bides its time:

4th minute: Flashback to the series-opening lecture on past lives. “Years ago.”

6th minute: Flashback to the Aztec mummification.

9th minute: Almeda’s hypnosis of Flor (Rosa Arenas).

10th minute: Almeda’s group discovers the tomb of the mummy Popoca

16th minute: Almeda’s group returns to the tomb, does the same thing.

20th minute: They reach the tomb yet again, resolving Part One.

Pausing (as the film is wont to do) for new footage of Almeda relating all this – like the visits with Verbal in The Usual Suspects, only without dramatic interest – Almeda makes the awkward verbal pirouettes necessary to make the seamless transition between Part One and Part Two.

23rd minute: The entire climax of Curse is barreled through heedlessly, edited into shreds in order to eliminate all that film’s evidence of luchadores, so as not to confuse matters more.


Then new footage starts up, in the 27th minute. Let actual discussion of The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy commence – or rather The Aztec Mummy vs. the Human Robot, a title I prefer, since it accidentally suggests Aztecs and humans are two separate classes. An actual discussion of The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy addresses the falsely created impression of a crossover (there is no Human Robot franchise to speak of). However, we’re too far into the running time to do so now.

Rather, Almeda’s narrated flashbacks continue, even though the footage now is brand new. This highlights the noted inelegance of the whole construct, that even now we’ll be well into the 47th minute by the time Almeda finally shuts up, and lets some actual plot take hold. Something tells me they should’ve done another pass or two at the screenplay.

Anyway, even as it is, let’s count this as the film’s proper start. And for all that effort in getting here, the situation is no different than ever: The evil mad scientist called the Bat (Luis Aceves Castañeda, the series’ best element) seeks to obtain certain artifacts from the Aztec mummy in order to find the Aztec treasure. Almeda & Co. wishes to prevent this. It’s a sequel, you know.

Therefore, the Bat starts out by again putting Flor into a trance, so that she might pinpoint Popoca’s latest hangout spot. This time (simply to save effort, time, etc.), the Bat merely has to drive up to Flor’s house, and speak towards the front door! Flor, who’s sound asleep mind you, thus wanders out under his power – it’s just that easy! There is later suggestion this is post-hypnotic suggestion. Quoth Almeda: “It’s logical.” I love how easily their whatever-babble patches up the plot holes the crew was aware of.


Flor knows, for no reason, that Popoca is in “the ancient cemetery.” Indeed, there he snoozes, clutching his artifacts. Discovering this, the Bat lets Flor go and…does nothing. Again let us examine the Bat’s motives. He needs to translate something that “devilish mummy” possesses, to go find a treasure to get the funds to further his research. I imagine it’s like Doc Ock – yeah, the Bat is making a miniature sun in Manhattan. Now it all makes sense!

The only way the Bat can think of to translate these objects is to steal them from the mummy. Doing so will arouse the mummy’s ancient dire wrath, and the Bat will die. Therefore, because no other notion occurs to him, the Bat vows to first defeat the mummy. To that end he sets about creating, well…well, the climax reveals it, as does the title, but we’ll leave it be for now.

Meanwhile, there’s plenty of Almeda’s bloody exposition to get through still. Back in the unclear past, he spies mud on Flor’s slippers, and suspects the obvious – An affair! No…wait…that the Bat temporarily kidnapped her again for the fourth time or so. Following his own line of reasoning, which does not involve hypnosis (because the series has perhaps finally grown bored of that conceit), Almeda discovers the same graveyard, and discovers the same mummy-housing mausoleum. And…does nothing. Instead, Almeda just pays the restful mummy an occasional visit, to ensure the Bat has done nothing.

Then…five years pass. Really?! Yet still we remain in Almeda’s flashback, because that’s how sloppy this thing is. And flashback Almeda learns in the newspaper of the local university’s stolen cadaver. Obvious signs of the Bat, who’s been inactive lo this past half decade. Furthermore, a whole pile of lead has just been delivered, and isn’t it just like the Bat to freely give out his secret hideout’s address to local businesses? Naturally, those businesses then happily give this info to Almeda. Everyone is a perfect little cog.


And only now do we enter the present time. Almeda explains the reason he invited several of his associates over, and told them these heaping, steaming reels worth of exposition: He (Almeda) is going alone (that is, sans policemen, for arbitrary reasons) to bust up the Bat’s secret lab. He simply needs these two men to phone the police, should he not return by a certain time. Of course, Flor could just as easily accomplish this except, A) there’d be no value in expositing to her stuff she already knows, and B) this is one of those movies that posits women are incompetent. Seeing how Flor eventually bungles the task Almeda gave other people, it’s a reasonable assumption on Almeda’s part.

So Almeda heads over to the Bat’s lair and – to no one’s surprise – he is captured instantly. So much for that then.

It having been five years since we’ve spent time with the Bat, he feels the same compulsion Almeda recently expunged, and treats Almeda to his expository recap. Thankfully, it’s shorter, and with no flashbacks – just Castañeda bugging his eyes out and acting rather like Coffin Joe mixed with your average sub-Frankenstein Dr. Frankenstein.

It takes the Bat a good long while to get to his point – naturally. He monologues about discovering a new realm of science – justification for the five year gap, I suppose. Dr. Almeda, himself a scientist, gets the usual anti-science screed each and every one of these B-movies boasts: “Then that means that you [the Bat] defy all the limits that were put down by God.” Buh?!?! By discovering a…something?! At least let the man finish, Almeda, before jumping to reductive conclusions!

So the Bat digs his own ethical grave as he droolingly spouts his Bela Lugosi-esque nonsense: “I tortured many animals – with pleasure – to find the answers to man’s existence.” And this grand “answer to man’s existence” turns out to be…a robot! Betcha didn’t see that one coming!


Let’s see that again!


But this is no mere robot. It’s a human robot – a robot shell with a rich, gooey, delicious human center. Sure, why the hell not, it isn’t like the other incidental Aztec Mummy details aren’t insane. Plus, it means they don’t have to hide the obvious stuntman inside that gloriously chintzy robot costume – I really do love that robot design.

(Mind you the robot doesn’t even appear until minute 54 of 64. While we have seen the mummy before, we haven’t seen it move – ignoring flashbacks – so this movie is a long way from satisfying its titular claim.)

That satisfaction, that title fight, is comin’ right up. For the Bat has designed this earth-shattering new technology – one with which he, if sane, could become a legitimate entrepreneur, or by his own admission enslave all of mankind – this wonderful new machine the Bat has created solely to kill the Aztec mummy. So he can then have Almeda translate the same thing Almeda translated last time, to be 1/20th of the way towards discovering the Aztec treasure…so that then the Bat can get the funding he needs to realize his true scientific desire, which is never outright stated. Okay then.


So be it, the (human) robot fights the (Aztec) mummy. As these sort of things go, it’s more Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus than Alien vs. Predator. That is, the matchup is profoundly disappointing, and this is coming after days of realizing old B-movies always renege on their promises. With but three minutes of running time left, the battle begins. One minute and a half later (being generous) it ends, with Popoca easily the victor. That danged robot’s useless, T-Rex arms never even did anything! Though Popoca, true to his compulsion, limits himself to the old shoulder tap attack, which somehow does the trick.

At least this time Popoca unequivocally kills the Bat (and friend), ensuring at least this particular Bat-based arc is good and done. Though there will be a sequel.

Even at this stage, it’s amazing how useful footage from these films has proven. Ignoring the in-series recycling, Aztec Mummy imagery has (illegally?) found its way into a few of Jerry Warren’s U.S. B-sagas – Attack of the Mayan Mummy, Face of the Screaming Werewolf, The Wild World of Batwoman. These movies do not count for the official series – thank Quetzalcoatl, for I don’t know how many more times I could’ve weathered that exact same sacrifice scene – but so be it. Producer Guillermo Calderón would do well enough on his own.

The Aztec Mummy, No. 2 - The Curse of the Aztec Mummy (1957)

One fact about this series which was barely pertinent to The Aztec Mummy now becomes inescapable: The Aztec Mummy trilogy was conceived all at once, and filmed as a single movie – in one month! Therefore The Curse of the Aztec Mummy (released later that same year) is an inarguably inferior film, merely quantitatively. Consider…

The Aztec Mummy is a perfectly functional rip-off of Universal’s The Mummy, told in the lurching, static idiom of an Ed Wood movie – in Spanish. But at least it’s identifiable as a complete movie, at feature length.

The Curse of the Aztec Mummy is only 2/3rds the length of the original. That’s a mere 63 minutes now…and around 25% of that is recycled footage from The Aztec Mummy.

On top of all that, The Curse of the Aztec Mummy epitomizes the “sequel as repetition” school. In Part One, an Aztec tomb was discovered, artifacts were stolen, and (surprise surprise) an Aztec mummy rose to retrieve them, and possibly kill a dude for fun. Here in Part Two…an Aztec tomb is discovered, artifacts stolen, you get the drill – by the same characters.


At least the villainous criminal mastermind known only as the Bat (Luis Aceves Catañeda) has an actual function this time, as now it’s his mania which fuels the activity surrounding Aztec mummy Popoca. And since the Bat was unmasked at the end of the last one – by both Popo and popo – and revealed as Dr. Krupp (dum dum dum!), he is functionally different now. Given a face – plus hammy, expressive eyes and a Satan beard – the Bat completely changes his temperament. Channeling a Bond villain’s worst neuroses ahead of schedule, the Bat runs an underworld gang of interchangeable Mexican mooks, casually cultivates something called a death chamber, and – he – never – stops – monologuing! Seriously, this Bat gentleman feels whatever need to filter the entire story through his own mouth, and when the story isn’t enough to sustain his time, he simply loops back around and starts again.

It must be said that this time out, I saw the movie dubbed into English – sadly removing a no-doubt insane vocal performance from Catañeda, but whichever voice actor they got could’ve been better served by a Speak ‘n’ Spell, so the entertainment value’s still pretty high. Credit K. Gordon Murray, a U.S. film distributor with the special distinction of being in the rarified Phil Tucker, Hal P. Warren circle without even ever making his own crappy movies. Rather, Murray snatched up other countries’ dreck (often Germanic kid flicks like Santa's Enchanted Villag and Rumpelstiltskin and The Living Coffin), dubbed ‘em and made ‘em his own. And at least this unintentionally comic approach makes the recycled footage somewhat new.

Anyway, the Bat was arrested at the end of the last film, so first order of business is rescuing him from his prison transport bus, much like Vin Diesel at the start of Fast Five. So the Bat’s chief minions, the Bear and the Lilac (I love these goofy names, and what they say about Mexican mid-century pop culture), direct a henchman-heavy assault. Cue the singularly most uninvolving shootout I’ve yet to encounter: Cops and robbers each lift up their (obviously prop) guns, then stand perfectly still and…don’t fire. Hell, even the sound effects (possibly Murray’s) underwhelm in the extreme, sounding exactly like pop guns.

It’s all so unimpressive, and my attention seriously wanes, when suddenly –


Holy shit, was that a luchadore?!

Indeed, El Ángel (Crox Alvarado) just drives on up in his mid-range coupe and runs right into the gunfight…bare handed. Ooh, he’s gonna win! Indeed, the awesome powers of Mexican wrestling overcome the Bat’s buffoons for a good long while, until the baddies have the good sense to switch from guns to fists, at which point they gain the upper hand, and knock out El Ángel. We’ll learn time and again that El Ángel is a profoundly incompetent luchadore superhero, easily beaten up and saved by children and whatnot, which seems not some attempted comic reversal of the usual El Santo idolatry, but a product of the sheer Mexican incompetence of director Rafael Portillo.

Character incompetence rules the roost. With El Ángel immobile, the goons are about to kill him, just as they’ve done to around a dozen police officers just now, when…the Bat says he has a better (read: worse) idea. In one of the dumbest death traps outside of Diamonds are Forever, he just tells ‘em to drive off – because El Ángel is asleep under the car’s wheels. Except… El Ángel awakes, completely unaware of his predicament, and rises as they drive off. So neither party handled that situation with too much aplomb. Get used to this.

Now…about luchadores. This is a gigantic separate genre in Mexican cinema, and one I’ll have to visit at some stage, thanks to the interbreeding of franchises that is El Santo, Mil Mascaras and Blue Demon. In fact, Mil Mascaras would eventually appear in Mil Mascaras vs. the Aztec Mummy, which is thankfully not a part of this Aztec Mummy franchise, for how convoluted that would make things.


Just accept for now that lucha movies were enormously popular in Mexico – I believe they were even before the Spanish conquistadors arrived. As such…it’s still odd for a luchadore to just appear out of the blue (demon) in The Curse of the Aztec Mummy, to then rise alongside the Bat as this entry’s main character. Odd since The Aztec Mummy, whatever its flaws of cheapness, is incontestably a horror movie, and a relatively serious one at that. This is full-on comic book pulp nonsense here…that’d have huge implications in Mexican B-cinema, as it seems at some point every wrestling star would have to battle mummies. Weird, the sort of influence a movie like this can have.

For what it’s worth, the recurring Aztec Mummy characters have a deeply hard time grasping the concept of El Ángel the luchadore – essentially, he’s Superman, only mortal (just as the Bat unintentionally spawns from movies which inspired Batman). He wears a mask to preserve his identity (he also sleeps in it, et cetera, which begs the question). He randomly drives around in his jalopy and fights crime. Why this all inspires a multi-minute exposition break is beyond me, except this is clearly S.O.P. for these Aztec Mummy movies. And most laughably, El Ángel gifts young Bobby (née Pepe) a two-way wristwatch communication device, ala Dick Tracy – which is hilarious since A) our cell phones are eons beyond this now, and B) this is such a Junior G-Man cereal box prize bit of nonsensical juvenilia, which’d’ve been anachronistic anywhere but Mexico in 1957, truly showing this franchise up as the fever dream of a mescaline-crazed producer (Guillermo Calderón). This series is nuts!

Now, when El Ángel isn’t expositing, the Bat is. He narrates to his politely assembled goons the whole plot of The Aztec Mummy – how a vacant gal named Flor (Rosa Arenas) visited a past life as an Aztec, revealing the location of an Aztec ruin and the treasure therein. Also mummy. Cue an extended needless flashback to The Aztec Mummy’s sacrifice/mummification/King Kong-rip-off sequence, still getting their peso’s worth from that routine. And now the Bat intends to rob this same Aztec tomb.


The Bat’s motivations shouldn’t be too complicated, especially since the bizarre moral universe of the Aztec Mummy series simply dictates that tomb robbing is “bad,” full stop. Hence his villainy. But still, let’s try to run through the whole of the Bat’s mad genius reasoning underlying his intended stone temple piloting:

• The Bat wants to experiment. Repeated dialogue (only now in English) indicates he really just wants to graft things to things, and hence to rule the world. Okay then.

• The Bat needs to fund his experiments, because “things” don’t come cheap.

• To do so, the Bat needs to acquire Aztec treasure™, because somehow that’s the only way for a madman to get money. And that’s with many dozen henchmen under his belt, mind you.

• Directions to the Aztec treasure™ are written upon an Aztec breastplate and bracelet, and it’s these which lie in the sought after tomb. Hence first the Bat must find the tomb.

• Ignoring the fact that in Part One the Bat was at the tomb, he’s apparently forgotten where it is. Therefore he must kidnap Flor and hypnotize her just as Dr. Almeda once did, only now it’s added on that Flor is suddenly immune to hypnosis…unless the Bat has “a drug” (no greater specification than that, because these movies are damnably unscientific). Really, this is all an excuse to recycle Part One’s reincarnation nonsense, something the filmmakers were clearly enamored of.

• And then, once the Bat has the breastplate and bracelet, he must kidnap Dr. Almeda (Ramón Gay) to translate it for him.

• To ensure Almeda’s cooperation (do note the English translation can never get “Almeda” straight, calling him in turn Alamanda, Alandan, Almeda and Alamor), the Bat must kidnap more of Almeda’s family, you know, to torture.

• At some stage, all this also necessitates the acquisition of many, many poisonous snakes.

Wait…what is this movie about?!


Naturally, this is a damned lot of random, arbitrary nonsense to pile on, all of it needed to retell the same mummy tale as before, and to allow a luchadore story to be grafted onto it, like one of the Bat’s unseen experiments. Along with selective ignorance of the natural world, this story demands a fantastic degree of amnesia for nearly every character. Among other things, the Bat is damn well aware of Popoca’s (the mummy’s) threat, yet does nothing about this.

I mean, at the very least you could translate the mummy’s items without removing them from the tomb – because it’s only once you’ve stolen that Popo is on your tail (heh heh!). Or you could always just take a picture of the artifacts, translate them at your leisure, and that’d be that. Oh well…


Let’s assume by now in the movie the Bat has retrieved the breastplate and bracelet, and returned to his evil lair. Meanwhile, he’s already captured El Ángel several times, and El Ángel has escaped several times. And the Bat has freely handed out his lair’s address to Almeda’s entire extended family, all a part of his “brilliant” plan. Yet he’s still surprised when these characters burst into his lair to stop him, except…except these good guys, knowing for days where the Bat resides, never alerted the cops. Really, everyone is functioning according to some strange, unstated B-movie code of honor, working overtime to keep the villainous Bat a menace until the formulaic climax, logic be cursed.

Following this curious Mexican anti-logic, every time the Bat captures El Ángel, he refuses to unmask him. He doesn’t merely refuse it, he orally justifies carrying the idiot ball. Because El Ángel will no longer be a problem; just toss him in that death trap unguarded, then let’s all leave, and assume it’s done. MORONS!

So the Bat has no one to blame but himself once Popoca finally makes his delayed entrance in the movie’s final few minutes. What was that about B-movies just barely delivering upon their titular promises? Surely with the costume already built (for Part One), they could’ve done slightly more with the series-justifying Aztec mummy than this!

As it is, Popoca is exposed to brightly lit sets, highlighting how rubbery his decaying, jerky-fresh flesh actually is. He don’t look too good, he don’t. Oh, and a horror movie? Eh, Popoca is now the hero. With the Bat 1/3rd into his evil, evil, evil treasure-stealing scheme, it’s up to brave Popoca to keep Aztec gold randomly, purposely hidden…by killing a dozen men! It’s staged like a Mexican wrestling match. Popoca lightly taps goons on the shoulders, and they die from the sheer force of it. There are at least two nicely gruesome fates in here: Acid eats one guy’s face away, and another fellow tumbles into the Bat’s snake vat (psst – it was the Bat).


Popoca retrieves his beloved breastplate and bracelet, or something, and wanders off. With no logical justification, Dr. Almeda hypothesizes Popoca shall now wander to someplace new, instead of back to his old beloved pyramid. I think Almeda sees the pre-filmed sequel on the horizon.

Well, that was inept. The Aztec Mummy baseline isn’t great, yet The Curse of the Aztec Mummy is made worse by being a second movie made when they barely had the resources for one. The film’s editing scheme really highlights their financially friendly recycling. It’s like with Ed Wood: You get one shot of a car driving, so it becomes reusable forever. Just add a night tint, or reverse the image. So action bits featured in Part One return in new contexts – I swear the same cop dies two or three times throughout.

Actually, there is one particularly curious example of this phenomenon – where Part One uses footage from Part Two! The Aztec Mummy opens with the Bat escaping prison, just as its sequel does – and it’s the same footage, but only used as an entire sequence in Part Two. So what’s it doing in the original? Creating a plot hole, mostly, for there’s no reason for this stuff to appear when it does otherwise.

Boy, with things folding in on themselves in this way, I’m excited to see what the trilogy’s final entry can offer!