Ooooh, I haven’t posted since August; whoops! My bad! Time to rectify that, cause it’s October, and that means Halloween is a’comin’, and that means cheesy horror movies. And boy do I have a cheesy flick for us today! Two of ’em, actually.
Dig this: from the primordial days of home video, we have a Hollywood Home Theatre release! From 1980! 1980! As of this writing, a whopping 43 years ago! Because they came so early in the home video era (VHS had only been around for three years at that point, and was still a few away from well and truly taking off in a mainstream sense), these Hollywood Home Theatre tapes tend to be pretty rare; for example, it took me years to nab a copy of their Metropolis release. What happened was I ordered one for sale online, and then waited…and waited…and waited. Evidently it had already sold
in the seller’s brick-and-mortar store, so a refund was issued, and then I waited even longer (WAY longer. SEVERAL YEARS longer) for another to show up. When one did, I naturally bought it, and while my hopes of a Channing Pollock edit were dashed upon arrival (it turned out to be more or less the same print as what we looked at a thousand years ago here), at least I finally had it.
Indeed, they may be tough finds nowadays (and even back then?), but there were plenty of titles to their credit. In fact, several months back, I kept watching (and unwatching) an auction with a bunch of old western movie VHS tapes. Most of them I didn’t care about, but there were three of these HHT tapes, each featuring multiple b-westerns per, and that’s what kept my ears figuratively perked. I didn’t technically need most of the films presented (and the ones I didn’t, to the best of my recollection, already have, I also didn’t really want), but the rarity of the tapes themselves still kept my interest level higher than it might otherwise have been. Eventually the lot sold to someone not named me, but I wasn’t too disappointed – after all, I still had this tape in my arsenal.
I’m just surmisin’ here, but as with other VHS tapes that still hold some value in this day and age, I imagine the horror and sci-fi HHT releases tend to garner the most attention. At least they do in my case. As such, when this “Aztec Mummy Double Feature” release popped up for really cheap, and I had never seen it before (or since), I jumped on it. Funny thing was, I never even had much interest in these films prior, but cornball old horror movies on rare VHS releases for really good prices, hey, that’s always gonna get my attention. In this case, I didn’t even hesitate when it came to hitting the “spend money on this” button. I probably should learn to hesitate more when it comes to that button, but this time around, I’m glad I didn’t!
Presented via an annoyingly uncentered sticker on the front sleeve, the movies that make up our double feature are The Curse of the Aztec Mummy and The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy, which are actually movies #2 and #3 of a late 1950s horror trilogy from Mexico. Beginning with 1957’s The Aztec Mummy, these were all filmed back-to-back-to-back. While that first film seemed to ultimately get some kind of butchered release in the U.S., the second and third parts were imported here in the early-60s by K. Gordon Murray, who specialized in this sort of thing, and it’s those Murray products we have here. (It appears Murray never tackled the first installment.)
There was also a 1960s effort titled The Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy, but near as I can tell, it’s not actually part of this series.
For my part, I tend to run hot and cold on these K. Gordon Murray imports. My interest in this sort of thing was higher in my early, early horror & sci-fi fandom (when I was around 11, 12 years old) but has since eroded precipitously. For example, I’ve never much cared for the bizarre 1959 Santa Claus he brought here (instead, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians has traditionally been my silly Christmas movie of choice), but his World of the Vampires was something that peaked my interest back then but doesn’t really now. (A revisit probably is in order, however.)
On the other hand, I saw The Brainiac for the first time a little over 10 years ago, and quite unexpectedly on my part, absolutely loved it. As such, I was hoping the two movies on this tape would fall more towards that end of this particular spectrum. Did they? Read on!
Actually, before we get to that, let’s take a quick look at the back of this sleeve. I didn’t really intend on including this, because these HHT sleeves are mostly generic from release to release. (I say mostly, because while you’d think they’re all uniform aside from the sticker on the front, the appropriate titles are printed on the sides. So why the sticker at all? A savings in cost is my best guess.)
Anyway, generic sleeves weren’t really uncommon in the early days of home video, especially where the backs were concerned. A good part of the time, these included a standard pitch (like what you’re seeing here) or a listing of other releases, some copyright info, and little else. It took a bit for manufacturers to realize, hey, we could be utilizing the back sleeves to, you know, really sell the movie proper.
Also, I just noticed it’s spelled “theater” on the back here, but “theatre” everywhere else. This discrepancy mildly disconcerts me, especially since I’m going against my every natural instinct and going with the “theatre” spelling in this article. It feels wrong. It feels dirty.
Oh alright, I’m gonna come clean: the real reason I’m bothering with the back of the sleeve is the old Blockbuster sticker still affixed to it. Forget the era the sticker alone evokes; I’m just amazed a tape of this nature could survive at a Blockbuster as late as May 24, 1994! Want an added bit of age-related depression? As of this writing, we’re coming up on the 30th anniversary of that date. No, that doesn’t make me feel good either. I think we need to wrap ourselves in some nonsensical silliness now.
I was passingly familiar with The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy beforehand (more on that aspect momentarily), but The Curse of the Aztec Mummy was the more new-to-me flick here. Online reviews made it sound like it would be sufficiently goofy for me – and it was.
(WARNING: some spoilers are ahead, as if anyone cares.)
Our title, our Angel, and our mummy.
The plot evidently picks up immediately after the first entry, which is odd since it seems that flick, in a butchered English translation at least, hadn’t even been released in the U.S. yet. A flashback at one point fills that part in: previously one Dr. Almada hypnotized his fiancée Flor in order to recall her past life as an Aztec maiden (a plot element obviously inspired by the Bridey Murphy craze of the 1950s; U.S. filmgoers had already gotten homegrown cinematic efforts in the horror vein with fare such as The She-Creature and The Undead, flicks that dealt with past life regression or some gobbledygook like that). It seems that the former-Flor had defied Aztec law and fallen in love with a warrior, which resulted in her being put to death and the warrior being given an eternal sentence as undead guard of an Aztec breastplate and bracelet. (That’s our titular mummy!)
Apparently the first Aztec Mummy was a big fat rip-off of Universal’s 1932 The Mummy, with the Egyptians being replaced by the Aztecs. Wanna know a secret? Despite being a classic horror and sci-fi lover, I’ve never much cared for the Universal Mummy films. Even the highly-regarded original has never been of much interest to me. I recall kinda enjoying one of the later b-movie entries in the series, but without doing a bit of (admittedly minimal) legwork, I couldn’t even tell you offhand which one that was. I guess I could go look, but that seems like an awful lot of trouble for an article only 7 people will ever actually read.
Anyway, as Curse opens, villain of the first film Dr. Krupp (alias “The Bat” for some reason) is in police custody (his interrogation seems almost entirely too informal and nonchalant, but then, I’ve been watching a lot of Miami Vice lately so maybe my perception is just skewed. I do wish Tubbs was here to yell at him, though). Krupp is, in almost comically short-order, rescued by his underlings, and seemingly undeterred by the events of the first film, continues on his quest to retrieve the breastplate and bracelet. It seems deciphering the hieroglyphics on them will lead to an ancient Aztec treasure. I guess the probability of making an undead mummy with superhuman strength really, really mad by doing this isn’t something he considers a big issue.
This may all sound like pretty standard cheapie horror flick material, but what drives Curse is just how unrelentingly nutty it is. This is some cheap, goofy stuff, and I consider that most definitely a good thing. For instance, as Krupp’s gang is breaking him out of police custody (the cops shake clearly non-firing machine guns at them while sound effects tell us, yes, they are indeed firing bullets and how dare you think otherwise), who should arrive to attempt saving the day? A masked superhero called “The Angel.” Think of a lucha libre, though I’m not sure he’s technically a wrestler. Nevertheless, the scene with Angel matter-of-factly driving down the road to intercept the baddies is wonderful, and his ineffectiveness at doing so gives me some real Prince of Space vibes. Angel is pretty useless for the most part, but his random presence gives this movie just the over-the-top factor it needs.
Some of the prevailing nuttiness of Curse is there naturally, while some of it is a result of the insipid dubbing. For example: Angel is promptly overpowered by henchmen, and while he’s on the ground unconscious, Krupp stops one of his underlings from shooting Angel dead. Krupp then clarifies that he wants Angel dead, but he wants to kill him in his own special way. They then leave him on the ground, get in the car and drive away! Ignoring the fact the baddies just gunned down a bunch of cops without hesitation or remorse, what really confuses me about this scene is that Angel’s head looks like it’s positioned under the tire of the getaway car, but Krupp’s gang hesitates just long enough to allow him to move it to the side before they drive away. This whole moment is handled so, I don’t know, lackadaisically I guess, that I honestly can’t figure out if squishing Angel’s head was Krupp’s special way of offing him, or if that’s just where the actor was and someone off camera told him to move so the car can split.
A lot of the goofiness is strictly dialogue-based, however. Certainly this is purely a fault on the part of the dubbing, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love it. When Angel randomly shows up at the home of Dr. Almada, his sudden appearance is treated with less shock than you might expect a masked stranger to elicit. Angel then refuses to explain why he’s wearing a mask because it’ll take too long, then just moments later explains he wears it to make his crime fighting job easier. (It neither takes too long to explain nor even really needs explanation.) During that same scene, after Angel explains how Krupp escaped by gunning down cops, Flor states “what a ruthless thing to do” in a tone that doesn’t at all capture what a ruthless thing it was to do.
Dialogue dumbness doesn’t end there, either. Speech is redundant or nonsensical time and time again, and while we’re at it, I noticed the voice given to Krupp doesn’t fit the villainousness of the character; he actually sounds sorta kind and compassionate!
Also, Angel is eventually revealed to be Almada’s wimpy, bespectacled assistant. It’s something you can see coming a mile away, but it gives the film an additional, mild Superman vibe. Just, you know, minus the whole genuinely heroic thing.
The Aztec Mummy himself (itself?) doesn’t actually figure into the plot all that much until the film is nearly over, though at only a little over an hour long it’s not like it takes all that long to get there. Basically the breastplate and bracelet are stolen, mums wakes up, heads to Krupp’s hideout, does some pummelin’, retrieves the items, and leaves. Alright then, thanks for stoppin’ by!
I genuinely enjoyed this movie! It’s so fast-paced, goofy and at times outright stupid that you can’t help but love it. Plus, its brevity is an attribute, not a detriment. So does it indeed fall towards the Brainiac end of the silly Mexican horror spectrum for me? Yes, and in fact, I may like it more! As far as this tape goes, The Curse of the Aztec Mummy is worth the price of admission alone. Well, as long as said price is pretty cheap, like it was for me.
Okay, time for the second feature…OH HEY, WAIT!
Lookit that! In between the movies, HHT actually included the old Let’s All go to the Lobby snipe, plus intermission and feature presentation cards! I sure wasn’t expecting that! It’s a small thing, but it sure adds to the whole “double feature” aspect of the tape! I would have expected something quirky like this on a release from the 1990s, but for one as old as 1980, it’s definitely a pleasant surprise!
And that brings us to movie #2: The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy. As I said before, I’ve had a passing familiarity with this movie, but until this tape, it wasn’t something I had actually watched. Besides this VHS, I own it twice-over, as part of the Grampa series (because of course), and as a longtime MSTie, I have that particular Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode on its respective DVD set. The Grampa tape is a later release so his intro/outro isn’t even on it, and the MST3K episode, that’s a first season installment, one I’ve heard isn’t particularly great even by the standards of that year, so I never even bothered firing it up. Add to that the movie’s reputation as dull and littered with flashbacks to the previous two entries, and yeah, I wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to dig into this one beforehand, not until I had fun with Curse anyway.
(WARNING: some more spoilers coming, like it matters.)
Our title, and our titular characters.
Despite being filmed immediately after the movie we just saw, and in stark contrast to that flick’s plot, Robot doesn’t take place right where Curse left off. Instead, it picks up five years after the events of the preceding film. I’m not sure I like that, but it’s not like I had much say in the matter.
One thing’s for sure: it’s definitely loaded with flashbacks, including lengthy ones from the first film in the series. In the context of this tape, that works, and really, even in the context of the time in which this was first released here, it’s appropriate, since as previously stated that first movie hadn’t properly hit the U.S. yet. It’s kind of a drag seeing things we had already seen flashbacked to an hour or so before, and even more of a drag seeing flashbacks to the movie we had just watched, but it is what it is. And, there are large portions from the first movie seen here that we didn’t see in Curse, which helps flesh out the overall story somewhat. It’s here that we first see the mummy repelled by the sight of a Crucifix, Dracula-style, and while it’s not something touched on again (not in these English translations at least), it’s something that pleased this good Cat’lic boy.
After getting the preliminary flashbacks out of the way, the film then starts flashing back to (presumably) new footage to set up the main story, and actually, now that I think about it, much of the movie is one big flashback, being related to friends of Almada and his now-wife Flor. (Nice continuity!)
It seems Krupp escaped his apparent death at the end of the last film, and for the past five years has been working on his ultimate plan to defeat the mummy, retrieve the artifacts and get his precious, precious treasure. By hypnotizing Flor, Krupp is able to find out where the stupid mummy is now located, and with that knowledge in hand, his scheme is revealed: he’s built a remote controlled, atomic powered robot! When the breastplate and bracelet are retrieved and the mummy predictably wakes up to deliver a beat down, said robot should be able to withstand the assault and instead defeat the mummy once and for all.
And what a robot! This thing is a boxy, stereotypical 1950s bot, beyond cheap looking and impossible to take seriously. Inside its helmet is a real person’s face, assumed to be a corpse Krupp stole, and decked out with lightbulbs, the thing is just plain goofy.
But you know, when the climatic-yet-brief fight finally occurs, it does seem that the robot has the upper hand; it withstands every attack from the mummy. Like the last film, the mummy doesn’t really factor into things (barring flashbacks) until the end here. It does seem like he/it/whatever might lose the battle, though since it’s an eternal, supernatural mummy, maybe the fight would just go on and on and on in a repetitively endless draw or something. But when our protagonists arrive and shoot the remote control out of Krupp’s hands, the mummy makes quick work of the thing, shaking it apart like a bunch of tin cans. It’s both funny looking and highly anticlimactic.
I have less to say about Robot than I did Curse, because Robot just isn’t as much stupid fun. The titular bout is wacky enough, but the first half or so (it’s not like I timed it) of the film is mainly recounting the previous entries, and even when the new story proper gets rolling, it’s not as entertainingly stupid as the last movie. Even the dubbed dialogue takes awhile to get funny. The movie starts promisingly enough, with an introductory narration that promises the events to be notarized as true (yeah, okay) but then immediately contradicts itself by claiming the film is a work of both fact and fiction (which may hold some truth; the Aztecs apparently did have their own mummies, though I’m not sure how close they looked to the cinematic representation here, and at any rate I’m fairly certain none of them ever came back to life to fight crime), but until the end of the movie, things just never live up to that silly goose hype.
Furthermore, Almada’s assistant is back, but The Angel doesn’t make a reappearance, not even in the flashbacks (at least not masked and in action). Krupp does obliquely reference The Angel once, but if you hadn’t seen Curse first, you’d be none the wiser. That’s a let down, and takes away a lot of inherent goofiness, something Robot has but needs more of. A LOT more of. It’s just not as entertaining as Aztec Mummy #2.
I did really like the cheap-but-endearing cemetery and laboratory sets, however.
So that’s Hollywood Home Theatre’s Aztec Mummy two-fer. The second half of the double feature may not live up to the first, but you know, as a whole this release is still a lot of fun. Certainly it’s an early example of home video; the sleeve is mostly bare bones and the prints utilized aren’t exactly pristine (Robot looks a bit better than Curse, but not by much. That said, both are entirely watchable). Nevertheless, the movies are just wacky enough to recall the drive-in double features of yesteryear, something that is only reinforced by the intermission segment. If that’s what HHT was seeking to achieve, I dare say they succeeded!
Is this the most sought-after release on the label? I’m almost positive that it isn’t. There’s at least one Godzilla entry in their oeuvre, and I’d imagine that is worth some mega bucks to ‘Zilla/VHS collectors. Nevertheless, I’d think there’s some inherent value to anything vintage horror and/or sci-fi on the label, but even if there isn’t, I’d still say this is a cool way to visit, or revisit, these flicks. Provided you can find the tape in the first place, that is!
THE NORTHEAST OHIO VIDEO HUNTER 