 |
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
|
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
 |
|
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). 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. The story of this film's origin is much more
interesting than the film itself: Face of the Screaming Werewolf started
life as the film La Casa del Terror 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 La
Casa del Terror, 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 Face of the Screaming Werewolf 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 La Momia Azteca/Attack
of the
Aztec Mummy by Rafael Portillo - which had next to nothing to do with
the La Casa del Terror 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. Actually,
the finished film Face of the Screaming Werewolf 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. A complete waste of time,
unfortunately.
|
amazon.co.uk
amazon.de
eThaiCD.com
find Face of the Screaming Werewolf at adultvideouniverse.com
