(re)search my Trash

<body> <div align="left"> <table border="0" cellspacing="0" width="800" cellpadding="0" height="100%"> <tr> <td width="100" rowspan="3" background="../stylepix/square.gif" valign="top">  </td> <td width="4" rowspan="3"></td> <td width="592" height="1%" valign="top">  </td> <td width="4" rowspan="3"></td> <td width="100" rowspan="3" background="../stylepix/squareright.gif" valign="top">  </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="592" valign="top" height="99%">   <p>By putting medium Ann Taylor (Rosa Arenas) under hypnosis, scientist Professor Redding (Ramón Gay) and his men learn about a secret chamber in an Aztec pyramide, where they find not one but two mummies. The first one one leaps into action right away, abducts Ann Taylor and is ultimately run over by a car and killed (and so is Ann). <p>The other mummy (Lon Chaney jr) is stolen from Redding by Doc Janney (Yerye Beirute) and his men, who for some reason try to resurrect it - only to find out that the mummy leads a double life - as a werewolf ... and soon enough the werewolf breaks free from Janney's hideout - a wax museum - and roams the night, abducting and killing people, until he too is shot and turns back into a human while dying.<p> <p>The story of this film's origin is much more interesting than the film itself: <p><b>Face of the Screaming Werewolf </b>started life as the film <b><a href="casadelterror(1960).shtml">La Casa del Terror</a></b> from 1960, a Mexican comedy directed by Gilberto Martínez Solares and starring Mexican star comic Germán Valdés as the lazy night watchman of a wax museum in which a mummy comes to life and turns into a werewolf - played by Lon Chaney jr at the decline of his career. Somehow, American schlock producer/distributor Jerry Warren got hold of the US-American distribution rights of <b><a href="casadelterror(1960).shtml">La Casa del Terror</a></b>, but decided he didn't want a horror comedy but a straight horror film ... so he cut out pretty much all of Germán Valdés' scenes (who only pops up twice in <b>Face of the Screaming Werewolf </b>and his presence only irritates the viewer). Thing is, Warren wasn't left with too much of a film, so he added scenes from the 1957 film <b><a href="momiaazteca(1957).shtml">La Momia Azteca</a></b>/<b><a href="momiaazteca(1957).shtml">Attack of the Aztec Mummy</a></b> by Rafael Portillo - which had next to nothing to do with the <b><a href="casadelterror(1960).shtml">La Casa del Terror</a></b> footage, so to fill up the gaps, Warren filmed a few explanatory (?) scenes himself and somehow padded the whole thing out to roughly an hour of screen time ... but the film feels much longer.<p>Actually, the finished film <b>Face of the Screaming Werewolf</b> is little else but a big bore, an utterly uninteresting piece of none-horrific horror cinema that is even choppier than its origin story would make it seem to be, and that despite its many weird plot elements (especially the mummy turning into a werewolf) never seems to go anywhere.<p>A complete waste of time, unfortunately. <p>  </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="592" valign="top" height="1%">  <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> currentyear = "2008"; </SCRIPT> <SCRIPT language="JavaScript" src="../scripts/endcredits.js"></SCRIPT> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> dosworsdonn(); </SCRIPT> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </body>