Excellent, a Must See

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

However you slice it, this alleged T.V. movie is basically a rip-off of the original Boris Karloff "The Mummy", set in South America as opposed to Egypt. It is all basically the same with a character strangely named Ann Taylor being revealed to apparently be the descendant of a Mayan princess. On a visit to Mayan pyramids, they find her skeleton, and the mummy guard instantly comes to life, chasing them through the catacombs of the pyramid and literally crushing one of the victims to death. (It appears in this scene, however, that with the other pyramid visitors pulling on one side and the mummy pulling on the other side that they would actually have pulled the poor victim in two). The film is set up as one of the survivor's attempts to tell this story to a reporter, and most of the first 20 minutes is a discussion of basically what happened with little action. That is until a flashback sequence from some 2000 years before where the princess becomes a seemingly willing sacrifice to the Mayan gods and the mummy-to-be is given a hot liquid potion which turns him into some sort of undead monster. The dancing girls do not look remotely like they'd be close to of Mayan decent, and the men playing the drums look like Broadway chorus boys. Even the Mayan set up to be the mummy doesn't look convincingly strong, but I guess when you've been wrapped up in a giant one gauze piece for 2000 years (trying to squeeze your way out of it), you must gain some strength. Basically, it's pretty boring with only a few interesting moments and those come from the bad acting and outrageous action going on. Truly the epitome of the dummy mummy, and no threat to either Karloff, Christopher Lee or the modern day series which didn't outwear its welcome as fast as this one did.

Attack of the Mayan Mummy (1964) BOMB (out of 4) Director Jerry Warren made a career out of making some of the very worse movies ever made. Why is his name never brought up as one of the worst directors ever? That's probably because most people fall asleep within minutes of hitting the play button. When he wasn't making his own movies, which was rare, the director was buying foreign movies, cutting them to pieces and then filming additional scenes with American actors. The Mexican horror movie LA MOMIA AZTECA (THE AZTEC MUMMY) is the victim here as Warren takes a few of its scenes and adds all sorts of overly long scenes dealing with people talking. This is usually what happens on these butchers jobs but I was really shocked to see how little footage was used from the original picture and how long the added dialogue scenes actually are. It's hard to determine what Warren movie is his worst but this here was pretty hard to sit through for a number of reasons. For one, the dialogue scenes are just so drawn out and long that I couldn't help but nearly nod off during each of them. Even worse is the fact that the dialogue rarely makes any sense and it's hard to follow what they're even trying to say. Another problem is that there's not too much good footage from the original film but I'm going to guess this was due to the original movie not having too much footage of the actual mummy monster. Even in the original film he didn't show up until the end and that footage is here. When viewing the work of Warren today we already know his history and how he cut up pictures and added footage and narration. I can't imagine what it must have been like back in the day when this was first released and you just happened upon this awful picture.

This miasma of poor film-making is captivating in that it so tactlessly lays bare the paltry mechanisms it employs. It is essentially a Mexican film that "director" Jerry Warren bought and interjected American "actors" into it. The movie opens with a lengthy rambling conversation, whose only purpose seems to be to kill time. Then we get the Mexican movie with an English voice-over, ala The Creeping Terrot), which is allegedly describing some events pertinent to the story. It is astounding. Throw into the mix some bizarre teenage dancing (by adults), baaaaad acting, and the genuinely creepy-looking, yet slow moving, mummy of the title. One can easily imagine people leaving the theater after ten minutes when this was first shown, leaving perhaps an old man snoring as he falls asleep in his seat. Part of the attraction I have to Jerry Warren's movies is trying to figure out what the hell he was thinking. He could've just dubbed the entire Mexican movie in English, so why hire bad actors to be inter-cut into it? Some questions will never be answered.

I am risking professional ridicule for saying this but there was one of Jerry Warren's movies that I actually liked, MAN BEAST (1957) which certainly no classic did have certain moments. Now this Mexican import is another story. In it's original form it was probably a good movie (I don't speak Spanish so I can only guess) but Jerry took it and actually made this an overly complicated hodgepodge that is breathtakingly boring. One scene after another of people sitting and talking endlessly, a few precious minutes of the original Mexican footage, and then more scenes of people sitting and talking. FINALLY we get into the main plot but Jerry has reshuffled the scenes so much the Mexican plot has been totally supressed. Scenes of American actors reacting to the South-Of-The-Border footage would be funny if the overall tone of this re-edited mess was not so yawn inducing. The mummy is pretty authentic looking but we lost the subplot of the evil Dr. Krupp and his attempts to steal the sacred Aztec breastplate showing the location of the lost treasure. And thanks to Jerry's re-editing 2 of the main characters appear to get killed when in the original film they survive! Yow! if you like Mexican scary movies do yourself a favour and see the ones imported by K. Gordon Murray. He had sense enough to just dub them and release them intact. Jerry Warren, shame on you!