Mummies, Monsters, Muscles

Of the 1,000 movies starring the strongest human this side of Popeye, Hercules in the Haunted World (1961) stands out because it has flying ghost mummies, a talking rock monster, damned women, and feats of physical strength unseen since I managed to get that really tight lid off a jar of peanut butter last week…with my bare hands!

Hercules and his stylish facial hair is back from dicking around on a bunch of adventures and wants to hook up with Princess Dianara. But she doesn’t recognize him as she’s in a trance. Or on drugs. Same diff. Her only hope is for Hercules to go to Hell and bring back the Living Stone to get her to snap out of it so they can get down to getting down.

Hercules flex battles an army of flying grease mummies, throws stone pillars around like they were made of Styrofoam and punches the smirk off Lyco, the main evil dude.

I ask you — how could anyone not like a movie with all these entertaining elements, as if seeing muscle men running around in alarmingly small togas wasn’t enough?

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.)

Face Without A Face

The Faceless Man wasn’t born faceless. He had the geographical misfortune of chillin’ on the villa of Pompeii when the famous volcano blew its load, encasing many taxpayers in searing lava juice that, once solidified, turned them into stone cold stone mummies. This made it impossible for those affected to make boom boom happen in a hygienic method.

Once such stoner was uncovered after being covered since 79 A.D by an Italian farmer. First order of business – kill people, ’cause that’s what mummies do. (Note: Mummies aren’t really good for anything else, so cut ’em some slack.)

The mummy, whose name is Quintillus Aurelius (which is hard to pronounce in any A.D.) stays frozen in time until it’s time to strangle future humans and retrieve a gold brooch or “vintage bling.” (Quick thought – how did the archaeologists figure out his name? Quinty’s wallet must sure be encased in stone as well, yes?)

Q pulls up his hot pockets and goes after Tina, medical researcher Paul Mallon’s fiancée. I can see why – she’s a hot blonde and makes him hard as rock. Heh. But Tina screams and passes out a lot, so it’s very easy for the need-for-snail-speed mummy to pick her up and walk into the ocean for a little skinny dipping.

And here’s where Curse of the Faceless Man (1958) has its best, albeit short, moment: he starts to dissolve when immersed in sea water! Granted, he looks like freshness expired pie dough over-rolled in discount flour. But dang if he doesn’t start turning to Alka-Seltzer™ when the water reaches his swimsuit area. It was either gonna be that or sink to the bottom of the ocean because hey – MADE OF STONE!

The movie moves as slow as Quintillus and the scares come in the form of realizing he’s not the Etruscan gladiator slave he once was, but reduced to nothing more than what the volcano shardded.