Dr. Frederick Munson (George Mitchell) is in the office of a newspaper editor (Bruno Ve Sota). Munson has a story to tell and the editor is willing to listen. Munson’s tale started with the death of his sister. Munson and his sister were directors of the Cowan Research Center. When she died her husband Dr. Edmund Redding (Ramon Gay) took over the Institute and managed to have Munson kicked out. He also took over raising his wife’s son Timmy (Jamie Gonzalez Quinones). Timmy and Munson are close. Munson keeps tabs on what’s going on at Cowan Research through conversations with Timmy.
Munson learns about a secret project involving Redding and a psychic named Ann Taylor (Rosita Arenas). Through regression therapy Redding has hypnotized Ann and regressed her to a past life as an Aztec princess. Through Ann’s past memory Redding learns about a hidden chamber in a pyramid that is supposed to be a storehouse of Mayan treasure.
Redding, along with a couple scientists from the Research Center and Ann take a trip to the Yucatan. Ann finds herself walking through the pyramid as if she had been there before. The pyramid does house a treasure but it is being guarded by a living mummy.
Redding is killed by the mummy. The other scientists capture the mummy and bring it back to California. With Redding dead Munson believes that he can regain his position at the institute. Munson conspires with an associate, Dr. Janning. Janning hires a thief (Steve Conte) to steal the mummy. The mummy gets away and kidnaps Ann. While chasing after the mummy the thief loses control of his car and runs into the mummy killing himself, Ann and destroying the mummy. The newspaper editor thinks Munson made everything up to get some headlines.
“Attack of the Mayan Mummy” was released in 1964 and was directed by Rafael Portillo and Jerry Warren. It is an American horror film based on a Mexican horror film.
In 1957 a Mexican horror movie called “The Aztec Mummy” was released. In subsequent years this little film was hacked to death and resurrected several times. The film was the bases for two other Mexican horror movies made back to back in 1957, “The Curse of the Aztec Mummy” and “The Robot vs the Aztec Mummy”. All three films were directed by Rafael Portillo and either written and/or produced by Abel Salazar and Guillermo Calderon. All three films were not exactly Oscar material but they were each fun in their own quirky Mexican way and were cut and paste jobs from the original Aztec Mummy film. This was all fun and games.
Somewhere around 1963 Jerry Warren bought the rights to “The Aztec Mummy” along with some other Mexican and Argentinean horror films. He couldn’t get his hands on the other two Aztec movies since K. Gordon Murray beat him to them. Warren, being opportunistic and not very good at his chosen craft, proceeded to slice and dice this little gem of a film and used it to create “Attack of the Mayan Mummy”. Warren cut about half the film and filmed some additional scenes that were used to explain the portions of the film he cut out. He also added narration to most of the scenes he kept in instead of dubbing all of them. The result was a cute little Mexican horror film gone to hell.
Not satisfied with his Frankenstein monster Warren would once again regenerate the Mexican portions of “Attack of the Mayan Mummy” and using bits and pieces, plus some of his dubbed portions, he combined them with another film he acquired called “La Casa Del Terror” 1960 and created the equally disturbing “Face of the Screaming Werewolf” 1965. In other words he did a cut and paste of his own movie.
The net result is that every single one of Jerry Warren’s cut and paste movies are horrible, confusing, choppy and boring. Welcome to the world of Jerry Warren.