A Review of The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy

Also known as The Aztec Mummy Against the Humanoid Robot. With either title, you know exactly what you are going to get: a mountainous pile of schlock stacked so high it is capable of blacking out the sun. There should come a time during every production when the director needs to ask, “Why?” I asked myself that same question numerous times during a viewing of The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy (or we can call it by the original Mexican name to give it an air of mystery and intrigue: La Momia Azteca Contra El Robot Humano). Judging by all of that, you probably assumed correctly that there is indeed an Aztec mummy wreaking havoc in some way and then an ultimate final showdown with a robot. While they are included in the form of a paper mache-coated limping mummy and a robot made out of some pretty rad cardboard, both title characters are on-screen for what seems like less than five minutes. The rest of the film, though, drags on for an eternity. What on earth was TCM thinking in showing this movie last week? Did a studio exec lose a bet?

This has to be one of the worst films I have ever seen in my life. It is insufferable from beginning to end, and yes, I watched it until the bitter end because I really could not believe what was happening. I don’t understand how something like this was allowed to be made, budget or no budget. What kind of desperation was the studio going through that it had to complete this disaster? Whoever wrote the script must have been high. Scratch that, I hope they were high when they sat down to write it. Maybe a bad batch of acid? First of all, the film was originally shot in Spanish and then overdubbed. This is fine. Many productions of the era underwent the same process. But during this dubbing, the use of English is so literal and serious that is sounds as if the characters are reading from a book. There is no life or form to it. No one really talks like they do in this movie. The audio is terribly unbalanced, with background noises barely audible and the dialogue so loud you have to lower your television volume. The actors talk at each other, not too each other. Not like it really matters.

Rest of review located at: https://gcaggiano.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/halloween-twenty-fifteen-a-review-of-the-robot-vs-the-aztec-mummy-1958/