Scare Me On Fridays: The Aztec Kolchak Episode

Friday, July 29, 2011

The Aztec Kolchak Episode

This is part of the original, and one season wonder, that was "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" television series of the 1970's starring Darren McGavin (a favorite actor of mine.) For a show that only lasted 1 season, it managed to have several Native American themed episodes. This is one is "the Aztec one." It guest stars Puerto Rican American actor Erik Estrada (famed from another 70's show....) as the very gullible Pepe Torres. The theme is part pure Aztec and part total monster bull. The part that is pure Aztec involves the real practice that they had of "the handsome captive." It was a practice were the most handsome of captives taken in war was kept for a year, treated like a god/king, with women, good food, music, poetry, and as much pulque (Maguey beer) as he wanted. At the end of a year, he was lead out to the main teocalli (temple) and lead up the stairs, along the way he smashed flutes. When at the top, he was ritually sacrificed. That part is the true part.

The part that is monster bull is the whole Aztec mummy thing. Oh but what wonderful monster bull!! The Aztec NEVER mummified their dead, either on purpose or by accident. They almost always cremated (unless you were an executed criminal or a certain type of sacrificial victim). Even their emperors were cremated. So the mummy here to take the sacrifice of Pepe is pure fiction--but cool fiction none the less!

The Aztecs typically cremated important people, such as high priests and kings and emperors (other members of the royal family) and interred them beneath fierce looking gravestones sometimes with the image of the god/goddess Tlaltecuhtli who was so fierce his/her image was always either buried and carved on the bottom of things so as not to show. In 2006 E. Matos Moctezuma announced that they had found a huge buried image of the god and that it was thought to cover the cremated remains of emperor Ahuitzotl.