Wednesday, July 15, 2009

El Latigo contra las Momias Asesinas (Mexico, 1980)

El Latigo (aka “The Whip”), who was the subject of a trio of Spanish language films during the late 70s, is not to be confused with El Latigo Negro (aka “The Black Whip”), who was the subject of a trio of Spanish language films during the late 50s, not to mention a long running series of Mexican comic books. Unless, of course, he is. Like El Latigo Negro, El Latigo is virtually indistinguishable from Zorro, with the only difference being that, while Zorro is known to occasionally use a whip when the situation calls for it, Latigo appears to use a whip for everything, be it to disarm a bad guy, activate the garage door opener, open a bottle of beer, or turn off the TV.

In the final Latigo film, El Latigo contra las Momias Asesinas, Latigo (Juan Miranda) spends most of his time -- either in his Latigo garb or as his civilian alter ego Alfonso, who looks and dresses like a tax lawyer -- walking around very slowly and looking at things, stopping occasionally to peer into a closet, page through a book filled with hieroglyphs, or simply sit and sigh resignedly. When this starts to become too boring for the audience, the producers have him stumble across a dead body. As you can imagine, this becomes boring quite often, so after a while the corpses really start to pile up.

And who is responsible for all of these corpses? Mummies! Four mummies, to be exact, who are acting under the orders of a much larger, shouty mummy played by Manuel Leal -- aka the masked wrestler Tinieblas, who also played a mummy in Las Momias de Guanajuato, as well as Beatnik Frankenstein in Santo y Blue Demon contra los Monstruos. But these mummies are not the oatmeal-faced zombie-type mummies of Las Momias de Guanajuato and its sequels, but instead the more traditionally Hollywood bandage-wrapped kind, with the added feature of having eyes that flash on and off as if they were very slowly moving Chinese-made battery operated toys.

Eventually Latigo catches up to the four mummies and whips them until they explode, after which he goes after the boss mummy. Who will win: the whip-wielding, relatively athletic Latigo, or the slowly shambling, bandage-wrapped man? Watch El Latigo contra las Momias Asesinas to find out!

8 comments:

  1. Still have to see this. It sounds as if El Latigo has changed his secret identity between his run-in with the satanists and this one.
    Too bad, the last one was a bit more flamboyant.

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  2. Yeah, House, it seems you got the best of El Latigo. I think the problem is that this one was taken out of the hands of Alfredo B. Crevenna and placed in the less sure ones of his former AD Angel Rodriguez, whose only previous directing credit was on the first Superzan movie. And as you and I both know, the first Superzan movie is truly one of the worst films ever made.

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  3. Oh, that guy. In this case you were probably lucky to survive the experience.

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  4. Mummy-Mia! Where the heck do you find this stuff!!! (I don't mean the dvd but just the topics themselves?) The flashing eyes are a nice touch...

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  5. Shouty Mummy- band name?...

    i HAVE to have a "Flashing-Eyes Mummy"! you know it's Mattel, it's Swell!

    i have to disagree, i thought the first Superzan movie was pretty neat-o...

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  6. Prof: Ever since I wrote that sentence I've been plagued by the nagging vestigial memory that there actually was, back in the day, some kind of a thingmaker that allowed you to make your own wind-up versions of classic monsters. Another hallucination, perhaps?

    Speaking of which, while I respect your opinion regarding Superzan el Invencible, I must say: Whatever it was that you were drinking, smoking, injecting, or inhaling while you were watching it, I need to get me some of that.

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  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  8. I saw this the other night on a Spanish Language station. It had its moments and Latigo was great with that whip. I didn't copy it as it's not the kind of film I'd watch again. It does have the bonus of Rosa Gloria Chagoyan.

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