La momia azteca contra el robot humano (1958) Directed by Rafael Portillo

Sometimes I just want to watch a movie because of its title. The English title of this movie is "The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy" or "The Aztec Mummy Against the Humanoid Robot", depending on what version you watch. In either case, it's an awful yet very intriguing sounding title. A mummy versus a robot, in a low-budget '50's movie? I'm in!

But of course, as one would expect, the movie is not half as fun or good as its title makes it sound. The problem isn't necessarily the fact that this is a very low-budget movie, with poor effects and cheap looking sets, or the weak acting and terrible dialog but the simple fact that this movie is an absolute lackluster one. Here you have a movie with both an ancient mummy and a big robot in it, yet the movie is doing absolutely nothing with either one of them!

So I wouldn't even call this movie necessarily bad but more of a boring and overlong one, despite that the movie is only just barely over 60 minutes long. The storytelling is terrible and it doesn't ever feels like the movie is progressing or building up toward anything remotely good or interesting. Part of the reason for this is the fact that the movie its first half is being told in flashbacks. You're constantly going back in time and you just keep waiting and waiting for the main plot line, with all of its main characters, to finally kick off and start to develop. But it's not like the movie is getting a much better one, once the flashbacks stop. Chances are that you also already have lost all of your interest at that point and the movie does absolutely nothing with its story or visuals to regain your attention, at any point.

I'm not entirely sure of it but I believe that the reason why the first half of the movie is filled with dozens of flashbacks is because this movie is part of a long running series of movies, with this one being the third one out of the bunch and the first half of the movie is basically being used to bring people up to speed about the events of the previous two movies. Normally this is something movies do in just mere minutes at the start of the movie but for some reason (probably money) this movie re-uses footage from the first two movies to entirely fill up the first half with.

The story of the movie is of course a very simple one, yet the movie still manages to make things messy and hard to follow. Half of the time I don't even really know what is going on in this movie, since it often isn't making much sense anyway. Something to do with a golden plate, a stolen brain and a mad scientist everybody refers to as the bat. All of the things and events in this movie feel barely connected to each other, as if they are all part of entirely different movies, thrown together. It isn't just confusing to follow but annoying and tiring as well.

The movie absolutely never becomes and entertaining one, which probably is the biggest disappointment about this movie. After watching this movie I have no interest in watching any of the other movies out of the long running series of Mexican movies, that started off in 1957 and ended in 1969.

No idea what the film-makers were trying to achieve with this movie but whatever they had in mind, they failed miserably. It still isn't the worst or even silliest genre movie that I have ever seen but it absolutely is one of the more boring ones!

4/10

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