Let's say you're an ultra-low budget film maker who wants to create a classic horror film that will be remembered through the ages. Additionally, let's assume your budget is so awful that you decide to take two completely unrelated Mexican movies and mash them together. Now all you have to do is film a few portions that bridge scenes from the two movies. Add in a terrible eye for cinema, a bunch of goofy friends who can't act, and lots of horrible props and stage designs.
Add all of those up and congratulations! You've given birth to "Face of the Screaming Werewolf".
This travesty of cinema was released upon an unsuspecting world in 1965. It's so bad that it's good, along the lines of classics like "Plan 9 from Outer Space" and "Manos: The Hands of Fate" especially the full version with the first 15 minutes of driving in a cornfield. If you want to torture a loved one you should look up this film, currently available on YouTube.
The two Mexican movies that were scavenged by filmmaker Jerry Warren were "La Casa del Terror" (The House of Terror) and "La Momia Azteca" (The Aztec Mummy). The former came out in 1959 whilst the latter debuted in 1957.
The Aztec Mummy was the first movie of a trilogy originally produced by Guillermo Calderon, scripted by Alfredo Salazar, and directed by Rafael Portillo. The other two films in the trilogy were "The Curse of the Aztec Mummy" and "The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy". The film was later re-edited by producer Jerry Warren as "Attack of the Mayan Mummy" in 1963, where it saw a short-lived United States screen run. Note that The Aztec Mummy was typical of the cheap horror flicks of the time and the series became a cult classic akin to Plan 9.
The House of Terror has a similar lineage except it had a bona-fide American horror star in it -- Lon Chaney, Jr.. He flew to Mexico to film the movie, playing an Egyptian mummy who gets revived with blood transfusions that turn him into a werewolf during the full moon. Yes, it's The Werewolf versus The Mummy in one film (and inside one character). Also starring a Mexican comedian, Tin-Tan, it was the same quality as The Aztec Mummy but with some name recognition.
Now back to our scheduled program. Jerry Warren decided to buy the two movies and create a new one, saving lots of money in the filming process. He (thought he) got rid of the comedy portions provided by Tin-Tan and tried to bridge the two films with some newly-shot footage. The result is this ridiculous film which runs about an hour.
Some of the horror includes a very long overdone scene where the characters of The Aztec Mummy hypnotize a young woman who goes back into her past life as an Aztec. There's some dancing, some operatic singing and a one-man band that plays the drums and a flute simultaneously. This goes on for ages until the woman gets sacrificed...and it instantly cuts from the knife in the air with a scream back to the opening scene. It was six minutes (out of sixty) of horror, except the horror was the wailing of the opera singer and the drum-and-flute virtuoso.
Another hilarious scene has the werewolf grabbing a woman in the street, climbing up a building to the roof, breaking in, then going back down to the street level and putting the woman back on the sidewalk completely unharmed. Yes, that's the kind of hilarity you can watch if you track this film down. It's worth watching once, especially with friends.
You can watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIWwGWeDxXw
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