Author: cbcrenshaw

C.B. Crenshaw is a musician, artist, writer, coder, gardener, and maker in Alabama.

Why you Should Watch The Curse of the Aztec Mummy (1957)

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I’m not going to pretend that this is a good movie. The acting and production are about as good as you might expect from a late-fifties crime/horror/monster/science fiction/action hero film produced in Mexico City and dubbed by a crew in Coral Gables, Florida. It’s bad.

I’m not pretending this bad movie is good, but I’ll make an argument for why you should watch it anyway.

  • With all of the strikes against it, this is still just about as good as any Roger Corman feature from the era. And it was produced without access to the deep pool of Southern California talent that Corman could skim to make his schlock.
  • While the Aztec story here shares similarities with Native American fantasies in US films—the Native Princess, the Brave Warrior, forbidden love, and so on—it treats indigenous names, culture, and ideas with sensitivity you won’t see in a film produced north of the Rio Grande.
  • You won’t see a cast like this in a Hollywood film from the era. Stars Ramón Gay and Luis Aceves Castañeda were Mexican, star Rosita Arenas was born in Venezuela, Crox Alvarado was from Costa Rica.
  • You’re bound to get a few unintentional laughs. Look at the obvious toy snakes in the snake pit! Come back and here tell me you didn’t laugh when you saw the Angel jump in his little coupe and drive away in his shiny Luchador costume!

Put it all together, and you get a decent little midnight movie to hell you forget the Sunday night blues.

See you next time!

Presentations

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Here is a small bit of advice which has served me well for years: if you are given an opportunity to speak in front of others, treat that opportunity as a rare privilege. Don’t dread it; use it to make a small change in the world. If your ambitions run closer to home, use it to make a big change in your life. Make it worthwhile.

Design: Bleak House Revisited

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Trying my hand at book cover design with a classic.

Revisiting the classic

This is a difficult one to capture with a cover. The tone, themes, and plot do not necessarily match the title, but the book is so full of life and characters that anything short of a parade fails to capture its vitality. With this design I am leaning into the title itself.

Other designers appear to have made the same choice with this one.

I’m much more fond of the Vintage and Penguin editions below, however. These are much more engaging and do a better job of capturing the story’s themes in a glance.

I still have a lot to learn about cover design, but I think this is a pretty OK first outing. Authors: if you’d like to work with me on a design for your book’s cover, get in touch!