La Aztec momia contra el robot humano

A mad doctor builds a humanoid robot to fight an Aztec mummy. Female aliens conspire to remove the lungs of a group of humans and use them to invade earth. An alien collector of monsters lands on earth to gather human specimens … And learns about love? 

These are just three of the four plot lines from Mexican sci-fi movies released in the 1950s and 1960s that are being shown beginning today through Sunday in New York as part of “The Future South of the Border” film series sponsored by Cinema Tropical.

The movies are “The Aztec Mummy vs. The Human Robot” (1957), “The Monsters’ Ship” (1959), “Planet of the Female Invaders” (1965), and “El Santo vs. The Martian Invasion” (1966). 

The authors of the one — and from what I understand only — study of Mexican science fiction cinema from this era will present their book “El Futuro Más Acá” on Nov. 1. In an article published in La Jornada when the book was released, the authors said of the “cinematic value” of the movies: 

Es un nacionalismo que estaba hecho en una época en la que había que construir identidad. En este cine los mexicanos somos únicos. Luego de conocer planetas maravillosos, los extraterrestres llegan a México y dicen: “es el paraíso”.

Without further ado, then, a spectacular scene from “The Monsters’ Ship”: