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!

La casa del terror (1960)

... aka: House of Terror, The
... aka: Tin Tan in the House of Terror

Directed by:
Gilberto Martínez Solares

Never released north-of-the-border in its original form, this blends horror and comedy fairly well on a low-budget while also affectionately paying tribute to several Universal genre classics, most obviously King Kong (1933) and The Wolf Man (1941). It had the misfortune of getting "The Jerry Warren Treatment;" Warren took scenes from this and scenes from the schlocky The Aztec Mummy (1957-58) films, blended them together with new footage and released it to the unsuspecting public as Face of the Screaming Werewolf back in 1964. That mess naturally is widely available on VHS and DVD, while this one isn't. And that's a shame because this is actually a pretty fun film. The Spanish-language version is still worth a look even if you don't speak the language. It's easy enough to follow and was released by both Sinister Cinema and Something Weird Video on VHS.

Ne'er do well Casimiro (Germán Valdés aka 'Tin Tan') works as night watchman and caretaker of a museum of horrors exhibit. His boss, known only as the Professor (Yerye Beirut), keeps busy in the back room of the establishment in his lab, where he experiments with corpses he and his two assistants (who refer to him as "maestro") swipe from a local cemetery. Whenever the mad doc needs some fresh blood, he simply goes up to Casimiro with his Pringles can-sized syringe and takes it, causing Casimiro to be lazy and constantly drowsy, and pissing off his girl Paquita (Yolanda Varela), who is holding down two jobs. Failed "experiments" are passed off as wax dummies in the museum. A mummy display comes to town, so the Professor and his henchmen attend, steal the mummy (Lon Chaney, Jr.) and decide to try to revive it. They redress it and stick it in some huge spinning contraption. During the next full moon, the mummy comes to life... as a werewolf. When he returns to human form, he's put in a cage, transforms back to the wolf, manages to escape, runs alongside a busy highway, attacks a woman and a policeman at a a park, kills another woman and scales up the side of a building to the roof! It eventually gets its paws on Paquita and Casimiro must save the day.

While the mummy make-up is awful (it looks basically like Chaney smeared with mud), the wolf design, as well as the black wardrobe, is actually fairly faithful to the original wolf man design. In fact, it looks almost identical to the design the actor wore for Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). Chaney didn't speak Spanish and only gets to utter one word ("No!") but he's actually better used here than he was in the majority of his other 50s and 60s films and even gets an opportunity to play his role for sympathy during one scene. The other actors are fairly good. Beirut is a great Karloff-like presence as the mad scientist. Valdés (a famous comic actor on his home turf) has to yawn, sleep, fake cry, stutter and bumble his way through the film in sometimes annoying fashion, but he has his moments. The end sequence of him pursuing the were-mummy, who has his girl draped over his shoulder, up a tall building in the city has that pleasing silent era slapstick feel to it. He also gets to sing (or lip sync?) a strange musical number that comes out of nowhere, along with his female co-star (who was married to the film's producer, Fernando de Fuentes hijo).

Alfredo Wally Barrón (a veteran of Blue Demon and Santo flicks) and Agustín Fernández co-star as the doctor's assistants. Director Solares, whose career lasted from the late 30s until the late 90s, made many other films (including quite a few others with Valdés) but is probably best known here in America for the horror-exploitation film Satanico Pandemonium (1975).

★★1/2