THE ROBOT VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY (1958)
(a.k.a. LA MOMIA AZTECA CONTRA EL ROBOT HUMANO)
Article #1277 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-12-2004
Posting Date: 2-9-2005
Directed by Rafael Portillo and Manuel San Fernando
Featuring Ramon Gay, Rosa Arenas, Crox Alvarado

A mad scientist intent on gaining an ancient treasure builds a human robot to do battle with an Aztec mummy.

By any conventional standards this one is a stinker. By certain camp standards, it holds a lot of promise; we have a gleefully mad scientist, a robot with a human head that looks like it came from a cheap serial from the thirties, moments of howlingly bad dialogue (some samples: “I tortured many animals…with pleasure!”, “You’re not only mad, but ignorant also!”), and some frightfully bad dubbing. Unfortunately, I find the movie sorely lacking in energy, and it has a static quality that gives it the feel of some of the very earliest talkies. In fact, there are stretches here where nothing is happening, such as the first few minutes of the robot resurrection scene, and cutting back and forth constantly between the characters staring at the robot on the slab does nothing to cover this up. As a result, watching this one is a bit of a chore. Other notes –

The big fight in question takes up about a minute of screen time near the end of the movie.

The movie itself is only forty minutes long. The reason it runs sixty-five minutes is that it opens with twenty minutes of footage from THE AZTEC MUMMY followed by five minutes of footage from CURSE OF THE AZTEC MUMMY.