Vintage Mexican Sci-Fi Beams a Blast From the Past, con Queso

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They came from outer space a half-century ago and landed in Mexico, where moviegoers embraced big-headed freaks in Mylar tights and busty female invaders from Venus. Fighting for the survival of Earth: mummies, wrestlers and mad scientists.

These unsung heroes of vintage Mexican cinema mesmerized south-of-the-border moviegoers for a decade in low-budget pictures that threw together science, sex and action with low-budget abandon.

“Part of the charm of these films is that they are so atrociously underbudgeted and the effects are so cheesy,” said UCLA Film & Television Archive programmer Shannon Kelley, who curated the upcoming free film series “Aztec Mummies & Martian Invaders: Mexican Sci-Fi Classics.”

“To make something seem supernatural, they’d just add a strange warble sound effect in the background,” she said.

The Mexican film industry began churning out sci-fi on the cheap in the late ’50s during a period when the nation’s film industry suffered an economic downturn, said Kelley, who likened the movies to Plan 9 From Outer Space, the legendarily bad 1959 sci-fi flick by American director Ed Wood.

“The aliens all wore these very simple Mylar costumes,” she said. “Plus you have the posturing by the actors.”

Starting Aug. 14, five of these Mexican sci-fi gems get unearthed in Los Angeles for the UCLA film series. The lineup includes an Aug. 28 screening of The Ship of Monsters (La Nave de los Monstruos). In the 1959 movie, pictured top, two Venusian women, Beta and Gamma, crash-land in Chihuahua, Mexico. There they enslave a couple of handsome earthlings with their vampirelike bloodsucking skills.

Read on for a look at the pictures, and plots, that once drove Mexican sci-fi fans bonkers.

Santo the Silver Mask vs. The Martian Invasion (Santo el Enmascardo de Plata vs la Invasión de los Marcianos) was filmed in 1966 by Alfredo B. Crevenna.

Santo the Silver Mask vs. the Martian Invasion.

Though it hardly seems like a fair fight, Mexican filmmakers liked to pit their aliens against masked wrestlers, as in Santo the Silver Mask vs. the Martian Invasion (trailer embedded below).

“It’s kind of like in the United States, where you have Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein — combine your franchises and hopefully double your audience,” said Kelley.

“Santo, the main star of the luchador genre, combats Martians using his beefy body and expert wrestling powers plus scientific knowledge and cultural sensitivity.”

In the movie, platinum-bewigged, Mylar-clad extraterrestrials backed by scantily dressed females announce their impending invasion with apocalyptic television broadcasts, then teletransport themselves to private homes and public sporting events in order to vaporize some humans and kidnap others. Heroic masked wrestler Santo comes to the rescue. Screens at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 29

The Aztec Mummy vs. the Human Robot (La Momia Azteca Contra el Robot Humano) was shot in 1957 by director Rafael Portillo.

The Aztec Mummy vs. the Human Robot

First the evil Dr. Krupp tries to snatch an ancient treasure guarded for centuries by a dread Aztec mummy by hypnotizing a colleague’s beautiful fiancee into stealing the jewels. Then he gets down to business and invents a robot. The final confrontation takes place in a cemetery between the mummy and Krupp’s metallic man. Screens at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 14

The Planet of Female Invaders (El Planeta de las Mujeres Invasoras) was made in 1965 by Alfredo B. Crevenna.

The Planet of Female Invaders

Female inhabitants of the planet Sibila want to invade Earth, but need to steal lungs from human specimens in order to breathe in our planet’s oxygen-rich atmosphere. A vanguard force lands near an amusement park, disguising its ship as a carnival ride to entrap earthlings. The intergalactic showdown culminates when scientifically advanced Mexicans triumph over the females from outer space. Screens at 7 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 23.

The Stronger Sex (El Sexo Fuerte) was directed in 1945 by Emilio Gómez Muriel.
All images courtesy UCLA Film & Television Archive

The Stronger Sex

Precursor to Mexico’s sci-fi craze, this 1945 art deco fantasy tells the story of a shipwrecked charro from Guadalajara and his Spanish friend who wash ashore on an island where women are waited upon hand and foot by men. Screens at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 21.

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