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.

In 1957 a neat little movie called The Aztec Mummy was made in Mexico.It was the forerunner of 3 more movies in the Aztec Mummy series.While these weren't classics they were fun to watch.In 1964 Jerry Warren bought the US rights to the film Aztec Mummy. He cut out 45 minutes of the original movie.Why he did this is anybody's guess. He replaced the footage with 45 minutes of scientists & newspaper men TALKING!!These "characters" were inserted because they were cheap and were only used as exposition!Remember ol' skip's rule of thumb:Using the first five minutes having actors doing exposition and you have a bad movie on your hands. Try sitting through the first 30 minutes of this agonizing film of truly mind numbing, boring "conversation". Truly cinematic Hell.I would love to see the original movie again but alas it is probably lost to us now.This "cut" is the WORST movie in memory. Rhino just released it. Stay away from this. You've been warned.