Halloween 10: The Robot Vs. the Aztec Mummy

The I'm So Glad My Suffering Amuses You Weird Shit Countdown to Halloween continues with a relatively recent discovery. About a week ago, I stumbled across a movie airing on Turner Classic Movies (TCM), The Robot Vs. the Aztec Mummy.





I was, to say the least, intrigued.

The movie was in Spanish but had helpful English subtitles.

I will endeavor to share the wonder I found.  

There's this evil mad scientist named Dr. Krupp but is also known as "The Bat" for some reason. This dude has a hard on for some Aztec treasure buried in an Aztec tomb of a living Aztec mummy named Popoca.  This dude is out of his Aztec mind.  So Dr. Krupp, aka The Bat builds a robot with a human brain (as one sometimes does) to fight the Aztec mummy and steal the Aztec treasure.  

ACE is the place of the helpful hardware man!

ACE Hardware employee: Hi, may I help you?  

Dr. Krupp, aka The Bat: I need to build a robot.

ACE Hardware employee: That would be on Aisle 3. 

Dr. Krupp, aka The Bat: With a human brain.

ACE Hardware employee:  Oh, with a human brain? Then that will be Aisle 4.

Dr. Krupp, aka The Bat: Thank you!  

ACE Hardware employee: You're welcome!



ACE is the place of the helpful hardware man!

There are some other dudes and a woman. The woman has a very important role to play, to scream in terror, to be tied to a sacrificial altar and to sit quietly when the men are talking.

There are scenes where the dudes and the woman go into some caves, wander around a bit, look out there's a mummy and wander back out.  These scenes are paired with other scenes set in a library where the dudes talk about wandering around the caves as well as speculating what Dr. Krupp, aka The Bat and the Popoca the mummy are fucking around with.  

Meanwhile, Dr. Krupp, aka The Bat gets inside the mummy's tomb, steals a gold breastplate, pissing off  Popoca the mummy. 

Enter: THE ROBOT!!

It looks like we're gonna have some kind of fight where the Robot versus the Aztec mummy!

Wait a minute! that's the name of the movie!!!!

ROBOT and MUMMY battle to the DEATH!!!

It's time for those dudes to wander back in to the caves again. One of the dudes knocks the robot remote control from the hands of Dr. Krupp, aka The Bat. 

Popoca the mummy goes ker-razy and tears the robot into scrap metal and strangles Dr. Krupp, aka The Bat. 

The Popoca the mummy shambles off to find another tomb where people will leave him and his shit the fuck alone.  

The End!

The Robot Vs. the Aztec Mummy was a Spanish  language movie released in 1958 specifically for audiences in Spanish-speaking American communities. 

An English dubbed version was distributed nationally in 1964.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffed on this film way back in 1989 in their first season.  Somehow I missed that; 29 years later I catch the dang thing on TCM.

TCM does not have robot pals to watch movies with.

There are a LOT of historical errors in this film.

Aztecs did NOT practice mummification and did NOT use  hieroglyphics. In reality, they used pictographs and practiced cremation and simple burial, frequently waiting until the person was dead which was a nice touch. Incas practiced mummification while Mayans used hieroglyphics.

The mummy is depicted in the Egyptian style as upright or lying on its back rather than in the Inca style, hunched into a ball with its feet pulled to the body and its knees close to the face.

Spanish Americans had not developed robotic technology in 1958. The first Spanish American robot was not created until 1963 with the Charo Mark I, a development made possibly on because of the breakthrough invention of the

 "cuchi-cuchi" circuit.