Curse of the Aztec Mummy

In "Curse of the Aztec Mummy" (1957), the villainous Dr. Krupp hypnotizes Flor, a reincarnated Aztec princess. He hopes to unearth from her memory the location of a hoard of ancient jewels, and he does. He also irritates the mummy of Popoca, an ancient warrior who guards the fortune, and he finds himself heroically inconvenienced by Flor's boyfriend, Dr. Almada, and the luchadore, El Angel. Because, you know, when you're fighting evil, you've just got to have a masked Mexican wrestler in your corner.

Released as "La Maldicion de la momia azteca", the film is the second in director Rafael Portillo's popular Aztec mummy trilogy, which also includes "Attack of the Aztec Mummy" (1957) and "The Robot vs the Aztec Mummy" (1958). Portillo started in the film industry as a film cutter in 1935, from which he moved up to film editor, then screenwriter and director. He garnered dozens of film credits that span comedy, westerns, melodrama and musicals. He retired to California in the eighties.

Mummified bodies have been found in South America, China and Europe as well as in Africa. Many appear to have become desiccated or otherwise preserved by their natural surroundings, such as the bog bodies of Denmark and the mummies of Guanajuato, Mexico. Unlike Egyptian mummies, deliberately mummified bodies in South America were wrapped to maintain a seated posture.