(1957)
Dir - Rafael Portillo
Overall: MEH
Though it is not entirely void of merit, the first in Mexico's Aztec Mummy trilogy is still primarily a sluggish viewing experience. Filmed in conjunction with the next two installments which were all directed by Rafael Portillo and written by Alfredo Salazar and producer Guillermo Calderon, The Aztec Mummy, (La Momia Azteca, La Momia), somewhat follows the blueprint laid out by Universal's Mummy sequels from the previous decade, be it in a considerably low-rent fashion. More akin to Universal's initial The Mummy which also used the resurrected lost love gag and only featured Boris Karloff in the full garb for a brief scene, here the title monster does not show up until an hour into the movie. Once he does, he poses about as big of a threat as a slightly annoyed turtle, though his initial scene is actually pulled off in a creepy manner as he slowly emerges out of the darkness with merely his dragging feet being heard on the soundtrack. Elsewhere, a silly sub-plot involving a masked criminal and his gang proves utterly pointless and tremendous amounts of screen time feel padded with stuff like a flashback ceremony, the exploration of ruins, and scientists sitting in chairs, all of which goes on for ages upon ages.
(1957)
Dir - Rafael Portillo
Overall: WOOF
Filling the "gotta have a guy in a mask for some reason" quota by beyond randomly throwing a superhero into the mix, the second entry in the Aztec Mummy series The Curse of the Aztec Mummy, (La Maldición de la Momia Azteca), is substantially even duller than its predecessor. Director Rafael Portillo still shoots nearly every scene in the least engaging wide shot possible until each character has finished all of their dialog, but there is particularly laughable redundancy to the plotting here. The same information is relayed over and over again and even at only an hour and four minutes in length, several of those minutes are taken up with a montage of already boring footage from the first film just to catch anyone up who forgot that they saw it within the exact same year. Speaking of same shit different movie, the mummy of course does not show up until about fifteen minutes until the end, but at least the audience can enjoy one of the dumbest crime gangs in the history of cinema, a chubby superhero who gets easily thwarted three different times while doing absolutely nothing helpful, and an overall comatose-inducing structure that is likely to put anyone into a lights-out coma quicker than anesthesia.
(1957)
Dir - Rafael Portillo
Overall: WOOF
For anyone thinking that the proceeding The Curse of the Aztec Mummy was the most pathetic and useless sequel ever made, apparently the filmmakers said "Hold my beer" when vomiting out the final installment in The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy, (La Momia Azteca contra el Robot Humano), which takes the hilariously lazy formula and plows it full-on into a brick wall. This "movie" is an hour and four minutes long and, (no joke), the first forty-three of those minutes is spent recapping the two previous films as Ramón Gay stands in his living room to catch-up some old friends on what any viewers of the rest of the franchise have already seen, (and in the case of the aforementioned Curse), have already been caught up on once before. It should be applauded how the personnel behind these laughably embarrassing crud rocks managed to squeeze a trilogy of barely full-length films out of such material, but the results of course are as wretched as B-movies ever get. Furthering the trajectory of keeping the actual mummy off screen for as long as humanly possible, it shows up with only three-minutes left this time, at which point it and the bulky, waddling, clunkiest robot in the history of cinema, (which itself only shows up a few minutes before the mummy does), awkwardly choke each other for a few seconds. Then the same cackling parody of a mad scientist yells, falls down, and the heroes hug each other. The point is, Mystery Science Theater 3000 choosing this as their second ever episode was truly fitting.
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