If you have paid attention to stuff Ive been doing online, you realize that I like gardening, accordions, and mummy movies. I really, really like the last of these. While I love the best-known Hollywood mummy flicks, the familiar ones made by Universal, I also like mummy movies from other cultures.
Embalming plus the dry sands of Egypt and enclosure in stone pyramids preserved the bodies of Ancient Egypiian nobility, but clay did the same thing for people of the Yucatan, where they also had pyramids. These were actually Mayan structures, but "The Aztec Mummy" sounded cooler when movie producers needed a scary-movie title. (Later, an English-language version released in the U.S.was given the title "Attack of the Mayan Mummy.")
A studio called Calderon had been making films since 1943, starting with a horror film with a title which means "Inn of Blood." Fourteen years later, the studio scored a hit with "The Aztec Mummy," then did the same kind of series which brought Universal success. There were three movies, the second being "Curse of the Aztec Mummy." All three films were shot at the same time, and then the scenes were divided up into different movies.
Calderon seems to have switched over from horror to sex comedies in the 1970s, and they made movies for another twenty years after the changeover. Low-budget all the way, as you can see from these stills from the DVD intro. We are taken through a graveyard to a mausoleum called "The Crypt of Terror." All the epitaphs and the entrance sign for the crypt were done in the kind of text design used to make poster headings in word processing programs. The raven with outspread wings is sort of cool, though.
Once we enter The Crypt of Terror, the DVD menu options are on the doors to buiral vaults, and choosing any of them makes ketchup-colored blood splashes appear on the metal door plaques.
In the "Extras" vault menu, we get to see some film stills and lobby posters, and there's also this movie poster stuck to a marble pillar. The posters and stills are for all three Aztec Mummy flicks, including the last one, "The Aztec Mummy vs. The Robot Monster."
Another burial vault is marked Play so here we go, starting with title cards.Next, we briefly tour the Great Questions of All Time. Don't worry as it's all scientific and fiction is all right as long as it's also factual. Ish.
It's nice to be able to turn on the English subtitles so we can tell what's going on.
All that science and spiritual searching, and then we have gratuitous gangsters versus cops film noir shootout because there's about to be dialogue scenes to set up our story and the director wants audiences to know things will get exciting soon.
Meanwhile, there's a convention of psychic researchers in town, and we're about to see the keynote address.
The speaker is not the father, just old enough to be. He's this woman's boyfriend.
The reception to the doctor's presentation, alas, is poor. An hour or two later, he and his supporters are back at stately Wayne Manor. Or the castle where the French Knight taunts people from a turret.
Ooh, cliffhanger end to this first part of our look at "The Aztec Mummy." We'll pick up the story next week right from this point, sinister shadow and all.
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