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I didn't quite know what to expect from the "Aztec Mummy" trilogy, a typically wacky Mexican variant on a classic horror theme. This first entry proved quite a surprise: a highly entertaining confection which, apart from delving into ancient Aztec lore, also incorporates elements of science-fiction and gangster dramas into the fray!

The distinctive Aztec temples and (overstretced) rituals seen here provide an exotic alternative to the Egyptian examples we'd seen in previous Mummy movies. The background to the curse is still the same, however – a girl intended for sacrifice (played by Rosita Arenas, whose other Mexi-horror titles include starring roles in classics such as THE WITCH'S MIRROR [1960] and THE CURSE OF THE CRYING WOMAN [1961]) is caught in the arms of a warrior, for which he's condemned to be buried alive; centuries later, when his lover's tomb is desecrated, he awakens to eliminate those responsible.

The sci-fi trappings are put across with a good deal of persuasion (since they involve reincarnation, this section bears a striking resemblance to Roger Corman's contemporaneous THE UNDEAD [1957]), while the crime-lord involved is a masked figure referred to as "The Bat" (most probably inspired by the 1926 Roland West film of that name or its sound remake, THE BAT WHISPERS [1930]) – his presence is initially intriguing, but the ultimate revelation of his identity beggars belief. Among the secondary characters, then, are a cowardly medical student who acts as comedy relief and is quite amusing (even so, the very need for it betrays the fact that the Mexican horror film was still in its infancy at this point in time), and a kid – ostensibly the hero's (much) younger brother – who brings absolutely nothing to the table except that he's always being scolded by his elders for following them around!

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm for the film was considerably dissipated by the dire quality of the print included on BCI/Eclipse's 3-Disc Set. I didn't mind so much the softness of the image, the rather low audio or the occasional missing frame – but, then, I was intensely annoyed by scenes that were set in complete darkness where it was virtually impossible to tell what was going on. Considering that these include the exploration of the tomb, all the footage of the rampaging mummy and the climax, it felt like I only watched half a film…without even the benefit of getting a good look at the titular creature!!

Pretty damn good and without question the best of the Aztec Mummy series. Like all monster movies, you wish there was more of the namesake mummy. If the translations presented here are accurate (I speak some Spanish, but I'm not fluent) then the dialogue in this film comes across as more intellectual than the average low budget horror movie. The story of the Bat stealing the Aztec treasure is carried throughout all three films. The scenes with the Aztec ceremony and the hypnosis would definitely be considered "padding" within this plot line. That's the main problem with many horror films of the era is that they occasionally commit the cardinal sin of boredom. Regardless, overall the score is excellent and the mummy looks great so I would consider this an above average film.

The horror and terror of the Aztec Mummy is shown in this classic Mexi-horror film! This is the first and most profound movie in the "Aztec Mummy" trilogy of the late 50s as we see the Mummy in all his bandaged and bulky horror.

The Mummy is the cursed spirit of a warrior named Popoca who was buried alive for loving a maiden and cursed to always protect her remains and the valuable bracelet and breastplate left with her that reveals the location of a vast cache of Aztec gold. Soon, the wounded warrior is awakened and sets off to find the stolen items and Flora, the reincarnation of his deceased love. But Flora's boyfriend, Dr. Almada who was responsible for bringing the Mummy to life is out to stop him and save his fiance. Almada also has the trouble of the nefarious Bat, a masked wreslter who also is a major player in the criminal underworld who seeks the Aztec treasure. Will Flora be saved? Can Almada overcome his foes? Will the Bat steal the treasure? Will poor Popoca find eternal rest?

Definately worth checking out and better than the two Aztec Mummy movies that followed!

I give it 7/10!

While giving a speech at a conference "Dr. Eduardo Almada" (Ramon Gay) is greeted with skepticism concerning his work with using hypnosis to facilitate the possibility of reincarnation. To help prove his point his fiancé, "Flor Sepulveda" (Rosa Arenas) agrees to undergo an experiment which results in her remembering a past life in which she was a virgin by the name of Xochi being prepared for sacrifice to the Aztec god Tezkatlipoka. She further recalled that an Aztec warrior by the name of "Popoca" (Angel Di Stefani) was madly in love with her and wanted her to run away with him. Unfortunately, both Xochi and Popoca were caught in a forbidden embrace and apprehended. He was then cursed by the high priest to remain in the burial chamber for eternity while Xochi was subsequently sacrificed. It is at this time that Flor is awakened and although she is badly shaken up Dr. Almada refuses to listen to her plea not to venture into the Aztec pyramid to retrieve the breastplate that Xochi was wearing when she died. Not only is he ambivalent to a curse placed upon anybody who retrieves it but he is also unaware that a mysterious burglar by the name of "the Bat" has been listening in to this entire conversation and plans on stealing it once Dr. Almada obtains it. But "the Bat" isn't the only thing that Dr. Almada needs to worry about. Now, rather than disclose any more of this film and possibly ruin it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this was a decent clone to similar movies on this topic made in the past. Additionally, while the movie I saw was recorded in Spanish with English subtitles I still found it to be a fairly entertaining grade-B movie. I rate it as about average.

This Mexican version of The Mummy (1932) cant even compare to the original, its absurd, boring, dull and predictable. For being the first film in a series its not really all that memorable, the monster doesn't make an appearance until like an hour in, this movie is 80 minutes, this leaves us with about 20 minutes of the most boring mummy action I have seen (maybe Curse of Bigfoot has the worst) but otherwise its a fairly decent film with decent acting, decent camera work and its decently written.

The plot is really just the same thing as the Universal film, but with a few minor (and forced) changes, none of that made this any more interesting or attractive. My biggest problem is that it takes too long to get anywhere and becomes very tedious really fast.

Not too bad but its not good either.

Hypnotic regression to past lives was all the rage in horror films of the late '50s, the subject the basis for The She-Creature (1956), The Undead (1957), I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957), and this Mexican mummy movie from '58, which sees scientist Eduardo Almada (Ramón Gay) regressing Flor Sepúlveda (Rosita Arenas) to her previous life as Aztec maiden Xochi. Destined to be sacrificed to the god Tezcatlipoca, Xochi must remain devout and virginal, so when she is found to have a lover, Popoca, she is put to death and Popoca is buried alive, a curse placed on their tomb.

I'm not a big fan of mummy films -- I find them rather slow and dull -- and The Aztec Mummy hasn't changed my opinion: if anything, it's even more tedious than most. The film's biggest problem is the pacing: it's over an hour into the film before we even see the mummy, and what precedes it isn't very interesting, with several scenes going on and on and on. The hypnotic regression of Flor sees Eduardo counting backwards slowly to zero and then back up to twenty, which is far from scintillating; a sacrificial ceremony with bad dancing to even worse music doesn't know when to end; and there's way too much aimless wandering around temple ruins.

When the mummy finally makes an appearance, it's a very disappointing monster. As if aware of how dull most mummy movies are, the writers include a lame subplot about a criminal mastermind called The Bat (wearing a luchador mask, 'cos Mexicans love their wrestling) who needs the mummy's breastplate and armband in order to locate some hidden Aztec treasure; if anything, this pointless padding only makes the film more difficult to endure.

This is the find of the year (2006), a film that was on EVERYBODY'S lost list. One story even had Jerry Warren hacking up the original negative for one of his edit bay epics. Now you can buy it for bargain prices. THE AZTEC MUMMY looks really great on the new three disc set THE AZTEC MUMMY COLLECTION (BCI),and the remastering is nearly perfect. The exterior parts with the mummy are done on real Mexican ruins and look sensational. You get a feel for the SIZE of the buildings, their age. The flashbacks star a native dance troupe, and the way that THEY recreated their heritage as of the 50's. Some of them are so proud to be in a REAL MOVIE that they grin right into the camera. I like that.

Tastes have moved on since then, and what they regarded as totally authentic seem dated now, but don't be too fast to throw it over. The group worked long and hard to get the routines down, and are on par with a lot of the dance troupes that you see on Ed Sullivan reruns. This is also how Mexicans saw their own culture, and as such should not be taken too lightly. And the background instrumental grows on you in a world music sort of way. The plot has something to do with returning a beautiful lady (Rosita Arenas) by hypnosis to her past to locate an Aztec breastplate proving the existence of previous lives. There's a masked super villain who wants the breastplate for his own nefarious ends, a cowardly second banana, car chases, gun battles, you know: something for the whole family. You also get the essential plot of Apocalypto stripped down to less then one reel and without the blood and guts that would give the kiddies nightmares..and APOCALYPTO doesn't have an evil masked doctor in it, or policemen with machine guns. When the Aztec Mummy finally decides to get up and get moving, the scenes are on par with anything Universal came up with in later Mummy movies. Very effective. A lost movie saved from the ashes

The plot of this vintage Mexican horror film revolves around a scientist who develops a technique to help people recall their past lives.

Using his daughter as a guinea pig to test his hypothesis, he undertakes the procedure, and she recalls being an Aztec woman who get's sacrificed to the Gods, for having an illicit affair with a warrior.

Not only is she killed- wearing a golden bracelet and breastplate- he is sentenced to be buried alive alongside her, to protect the secrets that surround their ritual deaths.

In order to prove to his theory to his peers, the scientist follows his daughter's directions, to retrieve the golden breastplate, which he plans to use as evidence that his claims are sound.

But, upon doing so, he awakens the mummy sworn to protect it...and initiated it's curse.

A subplot, meanwhile, plays out alongside this, concerning a local villain named the bat, who follows the scientist's every move, with plans to use him to track down a lost Aztec treasure...so he can steal it.

But it plays out rather awkwardly...and seems almost unnecessary...other than to lengthen the runtime a bit.

That aside, it's a pretty decent film, with a message similar to that of The Vampire Bat, which clearly had an influence on this film.

Hence The Bat character as a representation of the Bat God of the Aztecs (itself derived from the Mayan God of the Popul Vuh).

The film conveys a very similar message- as does that film- spun together with the story about Tutankhamun's curse.

The most standout portion of this film, is definitely the great scenery.

Having been shot on location at temples in Mexico City.

And the mummy is pretty cool, as well..with a demeanour similar to that of the monsters from the Blind Dead series.

In the end, it's actually a pretty decent little film, even if it does repackage and repurpose previously established storylines.

And it would go on to spawn it's own trilogy...though...the latter films did not garner the same praise as this one did.

4 out of 10.

Momia Azteca, La (1957)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Mexican horror film about a scientist (Raymond Gay) who uses hypnosis to look into people's past lives. He experiments on his girlfriend and learns she was a sacrificed princess who was buried with a golden breastplate. The scientist decides to go looking for it and eventually runs into the title character as well as a master thief known as The Bat. Here's a good idea to all future filmmakers if you're going to make a movie called The Aztec Mummy. Make sure the mummy is in the picture for more than three minutes. Technically speaking this is a fairly well made film but one can't help but be letdown since the title character hardly gets any screen time.

When I first saw this I was 6 years old and it scared the hell out of me! Even though the trilogy ended a few months later (in 1958) I remember I was disappointed with the "human robot" ending of the Aztec mummy trilogy. I still think that this mummy could have been better exploited in films, but I guess that even for the producers it was such a discovery that when they realized what they had in hand, they had already blown it apart, with the lowest budgets and the retelling with minimum variations of the same story in parts 2 and 3 ("The Curse of the Aztec Mummy", and the awful "The Aztec Mummy Against the Humanoid Robot"). Maybe the reason is that its main writer, Alfredo Salazar (brother of producer-actor Abel Salazar, the man behind Fernando Méndez' 1957 classic "The Vampire") was marginally interested in horror films. Even if he also has to his credited the original script for Benito Alazraki's "Devil Doll Men" (1961), most of the movies Alfredo wrote were about wrestling stars, fighting the occasional monster. As frequent in Mexican horror films, there is also a mystery here: nobody seems to know the name of the little girl who played Dr. Almada's daughter.

One is sorely mistaken to generalize and overlook the cinema of other countries for any reason, and I think that this Mexican sci-fi horror flick is apt demonstration of why. At a time when genre fare in Hollywood was dominated by low-grade B-movies and monsters exploiting an obsession with the new Atomic Age, I dare say that this rather firmly comes across as something distinctly more earnest and well made. Even in the early stretch of the length that zeroes in on hypnotism, and the flimflam of "past life regression," there's a noteworthy vibrancy and level of care to the film's construction that's more intense and absorbing than what many comparable contemporary titles were able to offer. True, one could perhaps say that 'La momia Azteca' was leaning partly on the popularity of other works that played in similar spaces, yet I think any discerning viewer can easily distinguish between features that are made and stories that are told with sincerity, and those that are crafted with a mind for a quick and easy profit. I'm not saying that this 1957 romp is perfect, but I don't think there's much arguing that it's marked with skill and intelligence, and even more than sixty years later it stands taller than a lot of other pictures that are much more well known.

Alfredo Salazar and producer Guillermo Calderon penned a genuinely interesting, compelling narrative, one that maybe even has stronger foundations and connective threads than some of the more widely renowned flicks it calls kin. From the notion of proving past life regression is woven a tale of adventure in which reliable horror concepts come to prominently figure, naturally culminating in the awakening of a mummy. Name points of comparison if you will, but I'm delighted by how imaginative the story is, and the scene writing and dialogue are just as sturdy and robust in providing fuel for the action, drama, and horror, and the efforts of cast and crew alike. To that point, my commendations to director Rafael Portillo, for he orchestrates every shot and scene with the shrewd intent of capitalizing on all possible heightened emotions, impactful beats, and spectacular moments, and he absolutely achieves that goal. Why, there's some outstanding shot composition here, truly artistic and lovely to behold, and to that end, cinematographer Enrique Wallace is to be congratulated for sharp, vivid work. Moreover, such quality is both made easier to achieve and further elevated in light of superb, beautiful filming locations, and sets that are rich with marvelous detail that help them feel truly alive.

Antonio Díaz Conde's original score is an unexpected highlight, a panoply of striking, dramatic chords and themes that lend to the atmosphere of the proceedings and quite ably command one's attention. I'm impressed with the acting, too, for I think the cast capably embrace the serious tenor of the production and give appreciable performances of emotional depth and nuance. Of course the most prominent stars have the most opportunity to illustrate their skills, and to that end I'm well enamored of Ramón Gay and especially Rosita Arenas, but the rest of the ensemble is just as swell. Any stunts and effects that are employed look great, matching the excellence of other facets even down to the costume design, hair, and makeup. With all this having been said, the faults here seem even smaller than they already were. There are a few times when a scene is allowed to go on a little too long, bogging down the pacing and sapping some of the buzzing energy the title otherwise carries with it. I would also suggest that this is an instance where the lighting in scenes set in darkness - at night, and/or within the tomb into which our characters delve - is simply insufficient, to the point that we viewers can't see what's going on. Emphasizing the point: a major scene near the end is characterized by both these flaws, and has an outcome that turns out to be different from the one that I thought I could make out. Even the climax is diminished in a like manner. Lastly, though it's not a criticism per se, I would observe that the horror element doesn't really show up until we're five-eighths through the runtime. That horror element is wonderfully solid, and 'La momia Azteca' is very much worthwhile even before it shows up, but the incidence should be noted.

If these points are the worst critiques that I have to give, however, then I'd say the movie has done pretty well for itself. In all other regards I'm rather overjoyed by just how good this is, an entrancing viewing experience far exceeding my expectations. In most every capacity this is splendidly well done, and its strengths considerably outweigh its weaknesses. By all means, personal preferences vary, and other will no doubt think less of this; all I can say is that my assumptions were done, and I had a fantastic time watching. It might not be a total must-see, but as far as I'm concerned 'La momia Azteca' holds up terrifically and is well worth checking out if you have the chance!

In THE AZTEC MUMMY, we're introduced to Dr. Eduardo Almada (Ramon Gay) and his beautiful fiance, Flor (Rosita Arenas), who turns out to be the reincarnated girlfriend of the titular terror, Popoca (Angelo De Stefani).

Oh no!

The eeevil Dr. Krupp, aka: "The Bat" (Luis Aceves Castaneda) is up to no good. Along with his henchmen, Krupp attempts to abscond with Popoca's ancient golden breastplate, bracelet combo. This upsets Popoca to no end!

Hilarity ensues.

If you want to get into Mexican horror cinema, there's no better place to start than with this fine film. Though it suffers from a distinct dearth of action, it's still a lot of fun to watch...