The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy (1958)

Simply Perfect

Powerful

Excellent but underrated film

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

I consider myself a fan of the Mexican potboilers made during the '50s and '60s – the plethora of anything-goes flicks that were heavily influenced by American serials and "old dark house" type movies, and which used plot ingredients that ranged from classic horror to cheesy science fiction, Mexican wrestling and beyond. One series made in Mexico in the late '50s was the Aztec Mummy series, in which the mummy clearly owed a debt to the Karloff creation. THE ROBOT VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY is the third film in the said series, and it has to be said that the mummy itself looks more like Christopher Lee in Hammer's THE MUMMY here, except with hair over the bandages! This film is without a doubt one of the cheapest I've seen (okay, perhaps not as cheap as some shot-in-the-brush Thai action flicks I've seen that were made in the 1990s, but still...). For the first HOUR of the film, there are copious flashbacks to the previous movies in the series, where footage of the major scenes is virtually reprised with little point or effort. The wraparound segments involve Dr Eduardo Almada narrating the history of the Aztec Mummy, attempting to make some sense of the messed-up plot, and the US dubbers saw fit to dub his character with the most boring, insanely monotonous voice in history. Staying awake becomes a feat of endurance while watching this movie.Finally, we reach new ground in the last ten minutes of the film, which revolve around the mummy fighting a robot (with a human head inside it) inside a broken-down mausoleum. The film promises a climatic showdown, but this is a brief brawl that lasts around a minute, and it's no real surprise when the robot gets smashed to smithereens – after all, the mummy was the star of the show. The fight is a bit annoying, largely due to the dubbing of the mummy's voice – in the flashbacks to previous films, it has an eerie howl, while here it's more of a grunter, bit like a wild boar.The cast are openly hammy and the plot one of the most confusing out there – whether it's the dubbing or just the slapdash, poorly-edited nature of the scenes I don't know. Characters come and go, some have more than one identity, and other plot elements – like the strangely masculine wife who is a reincarnation of the mummy's lost love – are included to no avail and for no purpose. The music is generally annoying, especially with the early Aztec chanting which is a guaranteed turn-off. Some serial-style moments lift things briefly – there's a snake pit full of (dead) snakes, for example, and some poor guy has acid poured over his face in an accident before turning into a Krueger-style henchman – and sometimes the cheesy dubbing provides some minor amusement. But the film is generally lacking in entertainment value – the mummy's radioactive touch burns its victims, but we only get to see this process happen to one minor character in a (very) effective show-off in the cemetery. Had there been more scenes like that, this film might have got a better rating, but for 99% of the time it's a real dud.

No longer able to keep a secret, a doctor and his friends learn their efforts of safeguarding a valuable treasure is thwarted by a gangster trying to steal the belongings of an Aztec tomb guarding by a living mummy using his hand-made robot and race to stop him.This was certainly an interesting and enjoyable Mexican drive-in fare. What really works for this one is the Gothic atmosphere is quite creepy at times, giving this one some chilling moments along the way. That it leads off with the Aztec ceremony flashback, a complete elaborate Aztec layout which has a great detail and feel that when it gets to the action of the rituals, from the chanting and the lineup of the maidens, to the actual banishment ritual shown being completed, is a fine start and leads into the big series of underground sequences in the caves. The first sequence, where they break into the tomb and see the mummy laying there in the room with the skeleton and bringing it back to life chasing them throughout the eerie caves when they return again the second time, and the third encounter interrupting the creature' sacrifice attempt leading to the brawl around the tomb makes this an incredibly enjoyable, creepy sequence. Likewise, the sprawl through the cemetery where she passes the elaborate monuments and tombstones is a chilling Gothic set- piece, the return trip leading the robot through is quite fun and there's even more good points from the juxtaposition of the Gothic and cheesy here by featuring scenes like that of the cheesy-looking robot crossing through a Gothic cemetery or the creature's attack on a hideout dispatching a series of gangsters. That also extends to the overall look of the two titular creature which is quite readily apparent of its' low- budget nature throughout, which also brings up the first of the flaws here with this one. The biggest thing against this is that so little of what happens here can be taken seriously because the cheapness is much too distracting here, from the utterly pathetic robot design as it's one of the worst-looking ones in the history of robots on film and the general feel of the sets here give off a pretty obvious low-budget. It becomes all the more obvious in this version where this one decides to focus on the flashbacks of the others as there's three different times this one stops to bring those flashbacks up again which shows a pretty obvious quality-shift between this one and the others, and then partially ruins the effect by talking over the whole scene with a narration that takes away from the scene by describing what's happening during the sequence. The last problematic effort is the length at barely an hour long and keeping so many of the big scenes, from the hide-out assault and the finale fight between the two titular creatures hidden away till the back-end while there's other issues to deal with in such a short effort. Otherwise, this one wasn't all that bad.Today's Rating/PG: Violence.

**SPOILERS** The third and mercifully last of the Aztec Mummy trilogy in the fact that the series major star-besides the Mummy- actor Ramon Gay, as Dr. Eduardo Almada, was gunned down by the outraged husband of a woman he was having an affair with on May 28, 1960! Still that didn't stop Gay, in him being edited into them from his previous films, from being in a number of future Mexican horror movies made over the next four years after his death.In "Robot vs the Aztec Mummy" we have the once again mad scientist Dr. Krupp trying to get his hands on the Mummy's golden breastplate and bracelet in order, by having them deciphered, to find the Aztez treasure that's been secretly buried somewhere in modern Mexico City over 500 years ago. "Robot vs the Aztec Mummy" is not much as a movie in itself in that its made up of stock footage of the previous Aztec Mummy films that take up over half of the films running time.After getting introduced to the movie's cast members, some who have been killed in the previous Aztec Mummy films, we get down to the real nitty gritty in it involving the evil as well as criminally insane Dr. Krupp also know as "The Bat". Dr. Krupp-who looks like a wild eyed and crazed Orson Wells-is a man with boundless visions of grandeur in him not only uncovering the long lost Aztec treasure but now, unlike in the two previous movies he was in, creating life and using it in making an army of human robots to take over the world. An idea he must have gotten from watching Ed Wood's 1955 "Atomic Superman" classic "Bride of the Monster".Unable to handle the Mummy in his two other encounters with it, where he ended up getting thrown by it into a snake pit filled with deadly rattlers, Dr. Krupp had created a robot, with a human cadaver stuffed in it, to the job, of doing in the Mummy, for him. With he Mummy sleeping in its tomb at a local Mexico City cemetery Dr. Krupp has his Robot-Man brake into the Mummy's crypt to do battle with it and destroy it with its bolts of deadly radiation. ***SPOILERS*** The big built-up to the Aztec Mummy Robot-Man confrontation turns to be a big let-down with the Mummy having no trouble at all dispatching the "Tin-Man" in less then 30 seconds together with its creator Dr. Krupp. All this while both Dr. Almada and his friend and assistant Pinacate, who came to the Mummy's aid, have nothing at all to do but sit back and watch the action. Now without the mad and off-the-wall Dr. Krupp annoying it the Mummy can go back to its eternal resting place without ever worrying about the problems of the modern world at large, like Dr. Krupp, that it has really no interest in.

I was expecting this to be even worse than the second entry in the "Aztec Mummy" series, but it's basically on a par with it. That said, about a third of the 64-minute running-time is lazily devoted to a reconstruction of previous events (yet again!): the corny Aztec sacrificial ritual is boring enough on first viewing but, watched three times in a row, it becomes positively exasperating!! However, I was gratified for their inclusion because, at least, scenes in which detail was indistinct in the prints utilized for the other two films in the set were far clearer now... Anyway, this hastily-written third (and final) chapter of the saga provides standard excitements – with yet another attempt by the villain (who miraculously escaped the grisly death set out for him at the end of the preceding entry!) at hypnotizing the heroine, in an effort to locate the dormant mummy and its valuable artifacts (which will enable him to lay his hands on the mythical Aztec treasure). All in all, it's a very painless way to kill an hour.The Bat's ravings are at their ripest here (assisted by his acid-scarred lieutenant, the result of an unfortunate encounter with the Mummy in the second film – and whose vengeful predicament introduces an unexpected poignancy to the proceedings!): he conceives a radioactive human robot(!) in order to fend off the inevitable marauding mummy. It's not clear just why the robot needed the body and the brain of a man to function, but the hulking automaton – with its clumsy movements yet deadly exterior – is obviously a topical nod to Nuclear paranoia (which, from what I've seen, wasn't so much a concern of the Mexi-horror subgenre).The one-on-one between the two 'monsters' is O.K. – the robot has the upper hand at first but, once the controlling device is destroyed, the mummy is able to take it apart in a matter of seconds! While the appearance by the hero's pesky brother is thankfully limited this time around, the latter's sidekick – somewhat incongruously – also reverts to his cowardly persona here.With this film's ending, the Aztec Mummy saga is brought to a nice closure – as heroine Rosita Arenas (the reincarnation of the mummy's lover) returns the Aztec breastplate and bracelet to Popoca and appeals to it to seek a definitive (and well-deserved) rest in the ancient temple. I've failed to mention in my comments about the two earlier films in the series, the important contribution of the musical score – simply but perfectly evoking the requisite aura of mood, mystery and dread.