Las luchadoras contra la momia

1964's "The Wrestling Women vs the Aztec Mummy" was the second in a six film series featuring beautiful women wrestling in the ring like their male counterparts but without masks to hide their identity or their good looks. Lorena Velazquez and Elizabeth Russell return from "Doctor of Doom," and instead of a masked villain dubbed 'The Mad Doctor' we have an Oriental baddie ingeniously calling himself 'The Black Dragon,' his henchmen in search of several parts of a cut up map that will reveal the location of a hidden Aztec treasure. The big bout features Loreta Venus and the Golden Rubi against the Dragon's judo expert sisters (guess who wins?), and then at the 70 minute mark we finally get to the tomb where the valued treasure is guarded by the mummy Tezomoc (Gerardo Zepeda, who played Gomar in the previous entry), his origin resembling that of Boris Karloff in the 1932 original, here a sorcerer able to transform himself into other creatures, cursed to an eternal existence enslaved to the corpse of his virgin beloved wearing the bejeweled necklace. Once Tezomoc exits the tomb he makes quick work of the Dragon's feeble gang (the Dragon is never seen again) before turning into a bat and returning to his sarcophagus at sunrise like a vampire (he also becomes a tarantula in a later scene). For all his scary appearance he kills no one but the villain's henchmen, and earns another burial for his comeuppance, still an improvement over the one introduced in "The Aztec Mummy," "The Curse of the Aztec Mummy," and "The Robot vs the Aztec Mummy." Las Luchadoras will return in four more features by decade's end but only "Night of the Bloody Apes" would see wide distribution outside Mexico.

Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy, The (1964)

* (out of 4)

Notorious Mexican film has a gang of criminals known as The Black Dragons killing off archaeologists so that they can find some ancient Aztec secrets. Soon a group of wrestling women try to stop their evil deeds and it eventually leads to an Aztec mummy who has his own plans. Fans of bad movies have been eating this one up for decades now. There's no question that the performance are horrid, the direction even worse and the story itself makes no sense but thankfully the film is so bad that you can't help but get a few laughs out of it. While watching this movie I couldn't help but wonder who on Earth this thing was made for. I know these Mexican "wrestling" movies were popular in their day but it's really hard to see why. I mean, none of the wrestling matches are exciting and they're so poorly filmed that you can't help but laugh. Even worse is the incredibly stupid story that never really makes any sense. One minute you'll be thinking one thing is happening and then all of the sudden, and out of nowhere, the film will go into a different direction. The final twenty-minutes of the film finally has the mummy appearing and it almost seems as if it was thrown in for no reason and possibly just added after production as a way to get the film into more theaters. No matter the reason, the mummy stuff is pretty funny and especially in the English dubbed version. The heavy breathing and moaning will surely get you laughing but I must say that the actual look of the mummy is quite good. The final moments of the film aren't all that exciting but we at least get the mummy in some decent action including one sequence where he attacks all of the criminals. With that said, the appeal of this thing is only going to be for those who enjoy bad movies. There's really nothing else "good" going on here and it's so cheaply produced you still wonder what the entire point was. I do wonder if those involved realized that they were making something that people would still be watching fifty-years later.

I first saw this movie as part of a double video, with Phil Tucker's Robot Monster..needless to say, this bill wasn't put together as two brilliant examples of the best films ever made.This one rules, though..there is nothing like seeing overweight wrestling women, Samson (the masked mexican wrestler) and the WORST EVER mummy costume all together in one feature. Don't bother trying to follow the plot, or searching for the myriad errors in continuity..just lay back with your sense of the absurd in hand, along with something cold and refreshing, and let your troubles melt away in a fine and glorious wash of true silliness.

I'd be exaggerating if I said I'd rather have my brain pulled out through my nostril than watch another mummy movie, but I'm sure you catch my drift: I find them so boring, doubly so if they happen to be Mexican and have been Americanised by Gordon K. Murray.

The Wrestling Women vs. The Aztec Mummy is just that: a crappy combination of crumbling monster madness and lovely luchadoras, repackaged for a US audience, that isn't anywhere near as much fun as it sounds. The main problem with the film is that the mummy, who is actually quite a lot of fun when he's on screen, doesn't appear for well over an hour. The first 69 minutes involve a villain called Black Dragon (Ramón Bugarini) who is attempting to get his hands on an ancient Aztec codex that will reveal the whereabouts of a vast treasure; trying to prevent him from doing so are an archaeologist, his daughter, her fiancé, and two female wrestlers, Loreta (Lorena Velázquez) and Golden Rubí (voluptuous beauty Elizabeth Campbell).

The action is dull and repetitive - even a wrestling match between the luchadoras and a pair of female judo experts is boring, going on for way too long - and René Cardona's direction is, for the most part, unremarkable. I had way more fun trying to work out how Black Dragon's hidden camera was able to track, pan, zoom and change position than I did with the story.

When the mummy finally appears, things do pick up a bit, as the creature tries to find the Aztec breastplate stolen from the remains of his beloved Xochitl: he chases our heroes, takes on the form of a rubber bat and a tarantula, and annihilates Black Dragon's gang, running back to the safety of his tomb when the sun rises. If only there had been more of this throughout the rest of the film...

(aka: WRESTLING WOMEN vs. THE AZTEC MUMMY)

Our two wrestling babes from DOCTOR OF DOOM are back, ready to kick some more ass.

This time it's a oriental villain called the Red Dragon who is having his gang kill off a group of archeologists who have stumbled on to code that will lead them to an Aztec treasure. The Red Dragon needs the last surviving member of the group, a Dr. Tracy, in order to get it. And of course our two wrestling babes are called in to help.

This one is so laughingly bad, it had my sides splitting. I love the scene where they encounter the Aztec mummy in the tomb and he looks like he's wearing a Halloween mask.

And then he changes into a bat, too!

(laughs)

The Something Weird video is doubled up with DOCTOR OF DOOM and has tons of extras including many trailers for other Mexican horror films they have in their library. Although the b/w print shows it's age, it's far better than the old grainy VHS tape.

6 out of 10 for giving it the old college try…

(more laughs)