THE CURSE OF THE AZTEC MUMMY (1957)
(a.k.a. LA MALDICION DE LA MOMIA AZTECA)
Article #1323 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-28-2004
Posting Date: 3-27-2005
Directed by Rafael Portillo
Featuring Luis Aceves Castaneda, Crox Alvarado, Rosa Arenas

The evil Dr. Krupp escapes from the police and plots to once again get hold of the Aztec necklace and breastplate, despite warnings that this will arouse the wrath of the Aztec Mummy.

It feels a little silly to be comparing this movie with its immediate sequel, THE ROBOT VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY; as both movies are largely cut from the same cloth, it’s like comparing one Pringle’s potato chip to another. Nevertheless, I think this movie is markedly better than its sequel. I can actually sit through this one straight without my interest flagging, whereas ROBOT is tough going in that department. I think one of the things this movie does right is that it doesn’t start out with twenty minutes of footage from the previous movies of the series; it does manage to fit in five minutes in the middle of the movie, but that’s still an improvement. It also adds a new character to the mix, a masked crime fighter known as the Angel, though there is a reason this character doesn’t appear in the sequel as such, but I won’t give that away. Finally, I think the big difference between the two movies is that this one actually has enough plot to fill the whole movie, where ROBOT does not. Consequently, things rarely grind to a halt as they constantly do in the latter movie; in fact, the only padding in the movie is that five minutes of footage it took from THE AZTEC MUMMY (we don’t really need to see the sacrifice sequence). This movie also gives us a lot more of Dr. Krupp, whose evil dialogue is pretty amusing. Now if only I could see the first movie of the series, which is inexplicably unavailable except in the bastardized Jerry Warren version THE ATTACK OF THE MAYAN MUMMY, which is not an adequate substitute.