The Robot vs the Aztec Mummy (1957)

Original title: La momia azteca contra el robot humano

The very epitome of lazy and opportunistic film-making, The Robot vs the Aztec Mummy was one of a trilogy of films about a revived Aztec mummy, Popoca, made in 1957 by director Rafael Portillo for producer Guillermo Calderón. La momia Azteca/The Aztec Mummy was the first in the series, shot back to back with its sequel, La Maldición de la Momia Azteca/The Curse of the Aztec Mummy (1957), and the original film was later bowdlerised by Jerry Warren who re-edited it, shot new footage and foisted it off on an unsuspecting American public as Attack of the Mayan Mummy.

By the time the third and final film in the series, The Robot vs the Aztec Mummy, rolled around at the end of the year, one can detect a degree of exhaustion setting in and it’s not hard to see that the money was on the verge of running out. The Robot vs the Aztec Mummy is largely made up of footage lazily recycled from the first two films with barely twenty minutes of largely incomprehensible new footage spliced in to bring it up to even a meagre 65 minutes.

Dr Krupp (Luis Aceves Castañeda), a mad scientist also known as “The Bat” (we never find out why) was thrown into a pit of snakes at the climax of The Curse of the Aztec Mummy but at the start of this film is suddenly alive and well, again with no explanation. He’s soon up to all his old tricks, trying again to steal Aztec treasure from the tomb of the mummified Popoca and this time he’s built a robot (technically a cyborg, a machine with a human head) to help him out. Krupp’s former colleague Dr Eduardo Almada (Ramón Gay), his wife Flora (Rosa Arenas) – they weren’t married in the earlier films – and fellow scientist Pinacate (Crox Alvarado) work together to try to stop Krupp but he still manages to get inside Popoca’s tomb and make off with his stash of gold. An enraged Popoca is revived again and battles the robot as our heroes race against time to get to Krupp and put a stop to his schemes.

It’s hard to know where to begin really… Drawing a veil over the extraordinarily shaky grasp of basic science and history (the Aztecs didn’t even practice mummification – that was the Incans) we’re still left with a film that will leave you scratching your head trying to work out how anyone could make a film about a resurrected mummy fighting a robot seem as dull as this. It’s a thoroughly lethargic film, one in which nothing much happens and which can make 65 minutes feel like an eternity.

Technically the film is dreadful – some footage has the narrator rabbiting away while actors’ mouths move wordlessly and the less said about the laughable robot, like something out of a particularly cash-strapped 30s serial, the better. Add to that some staggeringly silly dialogue (“You devilish mummy… Come on, we’d better go now”) and even in 1957, The Robot vs the Aztec Mummy must have felt a good twenty years out of time. The fact that the eponymous conflict only happens in the last few minutes doesn’t help matters much.

If you’ve already seen the first two Aztec Mummy films, you can safely give this one a wide berth. You’ve already seen great chunks of it anyway and the new material really isn’t worth your time. It marked the end of the Aztec Mummy trilogy, though a similarly mummified villain turned up in The Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy/Las luchadoras contra la momia (1964) and Mil Mascaras vs. the Aztec Mummy/Mil Mascaras: Resurrection (2007), an American/Mexican homage to the wrestling horror films of the 1960s and 70s.