While some people view Mexican Horror Cinema as fodder for MST3K, people like me grew up watching these films in two languages and take them very seriously. Of course, these films can’t be called technical masterpieces, but they are fun, fairly fast moving, some have evocative b/w photography and quite often there are masked Lucha Libre wrestlers involved.
In 1957 producer Guillermo Calderon started production on a trilogy of films involving the treasure buried with Popoca, an Aztec warrior caught in an illicit liaison with a maiden named Xochitl. Popoca is wrapped in bandages and cursed to guard the tomb of Xochitl with its treasure and sure enough years later in 1957 the treasure is discovered and one of the scientific types who discovers it is also a criminal known as The Bat. If the plot, with the exception of the gangster sounds a little familiar, like so many other Mexican horror from this era it takes a lot from the Universal Studios classics.
The trilogy was more like a serial than a film series as the movies were made back-to-back and all released in the same year. Following The Aztec Mummy came The Curse Of The Aztec Mummy and The Robot Vs. The Aztec Mummy. The other two films use a lot of footage from the first one for flashback sequences but also to pad out the running time. Since they are all basically one big “epic” the three films have a sameness to them and are all enjoyable. In 1964 a film was released called Wrestling Women Vs. The Aztec Mummy. More of a sequel to Doctor Of Doom, this film has nothing to do with the previous films and features a mummy named Tezomoc. This film focuses less on the Universal influence and goes more for a batshit crazy approach with the wrestling and awesome scenes of Tezomoc turning into a bat!
A previous DVD box set release featured the US version of the first film titled Attack Of The Aztec Mummy that had a handful of scenes from the Mexican film with newly shot scenes with American actors inserted. It also contained The Curse Of The Aztec Mummy and The Robot Vs. The Aztec Mummy but not the Wrestling Women film. This Blu-ray release from VCI omits Attack but includes Wrestling Women and this makes some kind of sense as the first film was handled for the US by producer Jerry Warren. The three included here were handled for US markets by K. Gordon Murray so there is some kind of continuity. The films are presented here in widescreen and the quality is crystal clear. It is odd seeing the films widescreen and I’m not sure if they were originally shot this way but they look and sound great. All three films are on one Blu-ray disc with a documentary on the Aztec Mummy series also included.
