Can't be serious all day. So here we have a B-grade George Zucco creepy from 1946 with an Aztec twist. Basic plot is the same as any monster flick from the time. Something is killing people is strange ways, and it turns out not be anything normal. There is a lot of police working with specialized scientists (in this case ornithologists) to work out what the hell is going on....only someone may have known the truth all along!
I remember when AMC really gave a damn about their "Fear Fridays" enough to actually show at least one old B to Z grade film each Friday, this way always one of my favorites (along with The Maze---where the strings on all the bats are very visible!!).
One of the things that they actually get very right here, is where the Aztecs actually came from. They have them coming from the area around Azteca New Mexico, claiming that they were responsible for the building of the ruins found in the Aztec National Park, then moving down to the Valley of Mexico to found their mighty empire. While it is highly unlikely that the Mexica were inhabitants of this area when the ruins were built (they claim that were already in Mexico at the time, moving south), their migration story does claim that the original Aztlan (their name for their homeland) does lie somewhere in the southwestern United States. Given their description of living on yet another island in a fresh water lake, the best bet is they are from Pyramid Lake when the lake was at least 3 times the size and not at all salty. To this day the area is an Native community of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe! Anyway it's kinda cool that monster film from the 40's would actually get this right.
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| Ain't he cute! |
Below are some photo of the actual "Aztec" ruins in New Mexico. Their architecture indicates that the builders were a people called in modern times "Anasazi"--the ancestor of the modern Tonoan pueblos.
Did you know? The so-called "Aztec language" never really existed. Whatever language they originally spoke they gave up when they entered the Valley of Mexico, where they adopted the Nahuatl language which became the official language of their empire. Around 25 dialects are still spoken today in Mexico.
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