Wailing Wolf-Man

If you’ve seen 1964’s Face of the Screaming Werewolf and walked away confused as all heck, you’re not alone — Screaming Werewolf, made from parts of several different movies (La Momia Azteca/1957 and La Casa del Terror/1959), is a screaming mess, beside the fact it would’ve been better titled as The Screaming Werewolf Face. (Personal preference.)

The movie starts out with doctor-esque archaeologist guys hypnotizing a psychic chic (psy-chic — heh) who life regressions herself as a sacrificial Aztec test dummy. This leads the history dudes to an Aztec pyramid, where they discover and bring back a two mummies (but no daddies — heh). Right here we have several problems — one of the crusty corpses is the sacrificed Aztec gal and the other a regular guy who happens to be a werewolf. How an American werewolf ended up mummified in Mexico is just part of this “movie’s” abstract premise. (Must’ve been a heckuva booze cruise, though.)

So they bring the mummies back and a mad scientist, whose lab is located through a secret door in the back of a horror wax museum, applies volts to jolt the man mummy back to life. With only a meager supply of electricity, the experiment fails. Nature steps in, supplying lightning and one heck of a utility bill. Prior to the power-up, his face looked he fell asleep in a bowl of pancake batter. And because it’s a full moon, his moon-beamed mug becomes covered in fur where there was no fur before. Nothin’ left to do now but go on a choking spree.

The werewolf runs out into traffic and doesn’t bark at even one car. Then he makes a girl faint, throws her over his shoulder like a sack of pancake flour brought to market, and climbs up the side of an apartment building, all the while being climb-pursued by one of the scientists. Then the werewolf climbs through a window and comes all the way back down to the street using the stairs. (He probably didn’t want to wait for the elevator.)

Meanwhile, the Aztec mummy comes back to life and goes after the psychic woman. The werewolf, now slingin’ a different chick who really put up a fight and even smashed a decorative vase over the monster’s head, brings her back to the wax museum. I have no idea why. The scientist throws chemicals around like holy water, starts a fire and battles the werewolf. Somehow the werewolf is bested and catches fire, which makes him turn back into man form, his shirt still buttoned tucked in as if prepping for a school photo. The cops show up to dismiss the numerous “werewolf” sightings as just a simple case of a man burning on the floor in front of them.

The werewolf looked werewolf-y enough, but his upper fangs were grimy and his lower fangs Pepsodent™ bright. He wore a belt to hold up his freshly ironed britches and kept shoes on the entire time. They were neatly tied. Didn’t know werewolves to be such fastidious dressers. Too bad the filmmaker didn’t follow suit. (Heh.)

An Unpleasant Pheasant

Everyone knows about Quetzalcoatl, that Aztecan murdering bird god that flies around murdering people. They even made a movie about it in 1982: Q – The Winged Serpent. If you weren’t murdered by Q, count yourself as one of the lucky ones. If you were murdered by Q, there is literally nothing I can say or do to make your afterlife more comfortable.

But did you know there was a murdering bird god movie in 1946? Yep – it was called The Flying Serpent. Was it a bird? Yep. Did it fly? Yep. Did it murder people? Yep. Was it a serpent as well as a bird? Nope. In fact it looked like a pheasant (same size, too) needing a shampoo and comb out.

Professor Andrew Forbes is an insane archaeologist. Given that nearly all archaeologists are mentally to the left of center (that’s what that the Internet claims), Forbes wants to murder (or “kill”) his enemies. Apparently, archaeologists have lots and lots of enemies. It isn’t until the despised digger-upper unearths (or “diggers up”) Quetzalcoatl and, using his social skills, uses the murder bird to peck away at his antagonists.

Here’s a potential problem with that plan; when you give an intended victim one of Quetzalcoatl’s feathers (looks like it came off a pheasant), the bird tracks you down and gives you the flapping of a lifetime. This means you get tomorrow off…permanently.

Forbes accidentally gives his wife the feather and next thing you know, she’s nesting…permanently. A mere distraction as Forbes uses this knowledge to become the richest man on earth. (Where’s there’s an ancient murder bird, there’s ancient taxable treasure.)

The Flying Serpent is less than an hour long. But we do get a fair amount of murder bird action. The flying sequences, while dated, aren’t too shabby, and it freely uses its beak of doom to exact…DOOM. So in your face, all you anthropology haters.

Mechanics vs. Mexican Preserves

The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy (aka, La Momia Azteca Contra el Robot Humano/1958). Great title. Not so great movie. Once everyone discovered the gold breastplate on the Aztec mummy was real, then everybody, including the predictably evil Dr. Krupp (aka, “The Bat”) wants some ’o that booty.

The professors who first violated the tomb got a wake-up call when the mummy woke up. They got away the first time, but came back with pretty much the same results, minus one professor. Turns out the mummy only gets p*ssed and starts walking like an Egyptian if someone tries stealing his stash.

Dr. Krupp’s plan is to build a human-faced giant robot (eight-feet tall, not counting the high heels) to grab the gold and pound the mummy into a pile of dusty gauze. That doesn’t quite go according to plan.

At least there was some action in this otherwise mostly narrated and plodding tale of reincarnation (the professor’s easily hypnotized wife is the spitting image of the mummy’s ex), greed, and power gone awry. The robot was kinda neat, though.