La momia azteca

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.

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.

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.

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.