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Sunday, March 15, 2020

Attack of the Mayan Mummy (1964)

... aka: Mummy Strikes, The

Directed by:
Rafael Portillo (uncredited)
Jerry Warren

"I was in the business to make money. I never, ever tried in any way to compete, or to make something worthwhile. I only did enough to get by, so they would buy it, so it would play, and so I'd get a few dollars. It's not very fair to the public, I guess..." ~ Jerry Warren.

Now that you know you're in capable hands, here's a little lesson in how to quickly turn a profit at the audience's expense. THE AZTEC MUMMY (1957) was a mediocre Mexican film trying to capitalize on the Bridey Murphy past life regression via hypnosis craze of the late 50s by injecting that scenario into a horror film plot. In order to get more bang for their buck, they made three Aztec Mummy films back-to-back-to-back. The first sequel, THE CURSE OF THE AZTEC MUMMY (1957), used a fairly long chunk of the previous film as flashback footage to push the running time to over an hour. The second sequel, THE ROBOT VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY (1958), went a step further by using ample footage from both the original and Curse to make it to an hour. In fact, around half of Robot's running time was reused footage! While K. Gordon Murray ended up with the U.S. distribution rights for the sequels, Jerry Warren got his hands on the first film and used ample footage from it in two of his own movies: this one and FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF (1964), plus incorporated shorter snippets into his The Wild World of Batwoman (1966)! Unlike Murray, who mostly left the originals intact outside of having them English dubbed and re-scored, Warren re-edited them, added stock music in place of the original score, had them dubbed, added his own new footage and gave himself sole director credit.


In order to get these films both out at around the same time without being detected, Warren had Face released theatrically; by itself, on a double bill with another Warren cut-n-paster called Curse of the Stone Hand (1965) and even on triple bills with both Curse and the British horror comedy My Son, the Vampire (1952) starring Bela Lugosi. All were then distributed by Warren's own company Associated Distributors Pictures Inc.. Meanwhile, the Mayan Mummy cut was sold into TV syndication. Wholla! Money in the bank with minimal effort! Makes you wonder though if anyone back in the day actually caught the Attack version on TV and then went off to a drive-in to see Face only to have to sit through much of the same exact footage!

Aside from a new title card and new credits for four of the pseudonymous top-billed actors, this opens with the same exact credits on top of the same skull, woolly mammoth skeleton and window backdrop as Screaming Werewolf. We then visit the office of a nameless newspaper editor, played by portly Roger Corman movie regular Bruno VeSota. Scientist Frederick Munson (George Mitchell, who has the impossible task of trying to drag this entire film along) shows up to give the editor the scoop on a strange and unusual case that he was a part of while working with Cowan Research Incorporated. Now wanting to give up his latest gig as TV talking head ("A scientist is best suited to sit in front of a microscope, not a camera!"), he'd rather relay this particular story to the print press.








Munson's sister, who owned C.R.I., was married the one Dr. Edmund Redding (Ramón Gay) before her untimely death in a jet crash. As a stipulation of her will, she left the foundation to be split between her husband and brother. However, Redding won full control during a court battle. He then had Munson expelled from the staff while helping himself to his research papers and his primary guinea pig Ann Taylor (Rosita Arenas), who has the amazing ability to recall her past life as a Mayan princess under just the mildest of hypnosis. You could say Frederick's a little bitter about the whole experience. We then go into flashback mode as Munson narrates right over characters during a scene from the original Aztec Mummy explaining that Redding was not yet ready to reveal the nature of his research to colleagues at a "Scientist's Association" meeting, which angers everyone.






In more new footage (a positively grueling scene that lasts over eight minutes with very few camera changes), Munson goes to shoot the shit with friend Dr. John Janney, who was one of the attendees of the association meeting. John talks about his ulcer flare up, bad hotel food, flying in from Hong Kong, how he gave up being a practicing physician and researcher to become an administrator and a bunch of other stuff that doesn't have much to do with anything. With a cigarette in one of his hands and a glass of scotch in the other, Dr. Munson lectures him about his health before the two discuss the possibility of swaying Ann back to their side. After all, she was first discovered by Munson so it's only fair. Because John is having financial problems and Munson is out of work, they're mostly interested in getting their hands on a treasure "that could actually affect the gold standard," which is rumored to be hidden somewhere in the pyramids.






To help him keep tabs on what Redding and Ann Taylor are up to, Munson has enlisted the aid of a spy: his teen nephew, Timmy (Jaime González Quiñones). Timmy, who's now unhappily living with Redding, is much closer to Munson and more than willing to stab his stepdad in the back. Once Timmy finds out new information, he then passes it along to his girlfriend and her friend Lynn, who then come and relay that to Dr. Munson, which is exactly what we see during one hilarious scene where the teen girls yap on and on to the flustered doctor at a soda fountain while a bunch of dancers gyrate all around them.








We then return to more Aztec Mummy footage as Redding and his assistants (Crox Alvarado and Jorge Mondragón) hypnotize Ann and she flashes back to her former life as a maiden set to be sacrificed. That's interrupted by a TV broadcast from newsman Douglas Banks (Chuck Niles), who announces that Redding and his team have decided to solidify their research by visiting the pyramids. And that they do, eventually discovering their activities have aroused a 2000-year-old mummy, which manages to kill Dr. Redding. We then go back to new footage as Banks interviews Dr. Munson, Dr. Munson talks and talks some more with John, a couple of detectives (Fred Hoffman, William White) snoop around and a thief (Steve Conte) is hired to steal the mummy. We only cut back to one more scene from Aztec Mummy where it sneaks into Ann's home and carries her off, which is cut with a scene of the thief fleeing and (we're to assume) running the two over. Back at the newspaper editor's office, Bruno then delivers the heavy-handed "moral" of our little story. The last image is, fittingly enough, the shot of a trash basket.



After watching this and Screaming Werewolf back-to-back, I pretty much now want to die. But I did learn a valuable lesson here, and it's not that lead and pulp can be re-purposed into printing ink and paper as Mr. VeSota intones. It's that next time I'm in the mood for a little self-torture on a Sunday, I'll skip on a Jerry Warren double feature and just go to church instead. It's far less painful!


This was released on home video by most of the big cult movie distributors of the 80s and 90s, like Something Weird, Sinister and Rhino. In 2013, VCI Entertainment released six of Warren's 'B' bombs on DVD in two sets. The first collection contains Man Beast (1956), Stone Hand and Batwoman. The second volume has this one, Creature of the Walking Dead (1965) and HOUSE OF THE BLACK DEATH (1965). The best thing about these VCI releases is that now a few of the films have nice new poster art.

NO STARS!

Face of the Screaming Werewolf (1964)

Directed by:
Rafael Portillo (uncredited)
Gilberto Martínez Solares (uncredited)
Jerry Warren

"Heinous Chills in the Lab of Death!" Heinous is right! Here's another thoroughly inept Jerry Warren patchwork, this one swiping most of its footage from Rafael Portillo's THE AZTEC MUMMY (1957) and Gilberto Martínez Solares' HOUSE OF TERROR (1960). For the record, both of those films had already received a Spanish language only theatrical release here in America but that didn't deter Warren any. He took what he wanted from each, shot his own new footage (mostly people sitting around talking), edited it all together and had the whole package English dubbed, resulting in a "new" movie he could make some quick cash off of. To no one's surprise, the whole thing is a cheap, clunky mess. Even though the original Mexicans films were low budget schlock themselves, they were still made with far more skill than what Warren is able to muster up with his long, static, poorly-written and dull medium-shot dialogue scenes.

We open with a six minute block of footage from Aztec as test subject Ann Taylor (uncredited Rosita Arenas) is being hypnotized by "naturalist scientist" Dr. Edmund Redding ("Raymond Gaylord" / Ramón Gay) and his assistants (Crox Alvarado and Jorge Mondragón), working on behalf of the Pasadena-based Cowan Research Foundation. Ann has visions of "the ancient land" and a "city of stone." She is now, "part of the past and of the city in which I place myself in obedience to the ceremony of devotion and to the opening of hope before the shrine." Ann in her past life is told not to enter a sacred pyramid but she does anyway. We then cut to an utterly pointless new scene of newscaster Douglas Banks (Chuck Niles), who discusses Redding and his experiments currently taking place in "the Yucatan."









We then return to a huge straight block of Aztec footage as Ann, Redding, his son Kenny (Jaime González Quiñones) and the two assistants go to the pyramids. Ann looks up at one, her voice-over says "Yeah" and then we're in for a longgg and dialogue-free flashback scene of an ancient ceremony that goes on for six+ minutes. Afterward, the present day expedition explore the pyramid and make it to the temple, where they not only use footage of the Aztec Mummy but also splice in a shot of Lon Chaney Jr.'s mud-covered mummy from Solares' House of Terror. The scene ends with Redding throwing something at the Aztec Mummy. He's next sitting at his desk listening to a radio news broadcast. We then cut to a new scene at the radio station for an interview with "science editor" Dr. Frederick Munson (George Mitchell), who informs us that Redding has returned from his travels with two "embalmed creatures." One is an actual mummified resident of an ancient civilization. The other is a mummified modern man who was placed in the pyramid only recently "after an exchange of body fluids with the mummy" (!!)








During a press conference with the Chaney mummy on display (which poorly edits together footage from both of the Mexican sources), the lights go out, Redding is shot dead (off-screen, of course, since he doesn't die in the other film) and the mummy is stolen. Now we get a big block of straight House of Terror footage as the criminals take the Chaney mummy to their lab, which is hidden inside a wax museum. Ringleader Professor Janning (uncredited Yerye Beirute) wants it for his regeneration experiments. He and his assistants ("Donald Barron" / Alfredo Wally Barrón and uncredited Agustín Fernández) put it in several big steel contraptions, hook it up to oxygen, inject it with blood and then uses electricity to try to bring it to life. Unfortunately, they lack the voltage in their lab to make their experiment a success. Never fear, it's nothing a little lightning surge can't fix! When a bolt strikes the lab, Chaney is brought back to life. Since it's a full moon, he then transforms into a werewolf and goes on a rampage that includes killing one of Janning's assistants before it can be restrained.










Another new scene has been grafted on where Janning's associate calls up a thief (Steve Conte) and orders him to steal the second (Aztec) mummy from Cowan Research Foundation. When he shows up and tries to break into the center, he encounters the mummy and is thrown against a tree and passes out. The mummy then goes to visit Ann Taylor, snatches her up after she passes out and then starts walking down a road. The thief reawakens, gets in his car and starts frantically driving. Next thing we know a newspaper headline screams "Ann Taylor Killed; Mummy Destroyed" so I suppose we're to fill in the blanks here and assume the thief ran over the mummy and Ann. That's followed by (boring) new scenes where Detective Hammond (Fred Hoffman) goes to the research center and then interviews Dr. Munson.










Back to the House of Terror footage, Chaney pops off the operating table long enough to kill Janning's other assistant, but the scientist manages to corral the creature into a cage with a light. However, the full moon makes him transform back into a werewolf and he easily breaks out of his cell. He then escapes the lab, runs down a busy highway, kidnaps a woman in the park, scales a building while being pursued by the wax museum night watchman (uncredited Germán Valdés), scares a bunch of people, pursues another young woman ("Landa Varle" / Yolanda Varela), chases her around her apartment and eventually grabs her and drags her back to Janning's lab for the final confrontation. 

A few snippets of newly-added footage is edited in here and there, which includes a shot of a woman in an elevator screaming, she and other eyewitnesses tipping off the cops and Det. Hammond and his partner seeing Chaney dead. While some of the reused footage is actually a lot of fun, what Warren added to the works and how it's all edited together is the pits. Strangely, with endless footage used from two sources plus the new scenes added, the full running time is just a little over 59 minutes. A true blessing in disguise, folks!



Of course, you're missing out on nothing by pretending like this abomination doesn't even exist and you'd be better off checking out the originals in their unaltered form. This played theatrically both as a standalone feature and as part of an A.D.P. (Associated Distributors Pictures) double bill with Warren's Curse of the Stone Hand (1964), which utilized footage from THREE otherwise unreleased-in-the-U.S. Chilean films. Warren also reused Aztec Mummy footage for his Attack of the Mayan Mummy (1964). Something Weird and Sinister Cinema both offered this on VHS and it's now easy to find online. A fan-made composite utilizing restored footage from the Mexican films (the hopeless Warren scenes still look like crap, though) with the English audio track is also available.

NO STARS!
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