Face of the Screaming Werewolf is a 1964 horror film about a hypnotised psychic leads archaeologists to an Aztec pyramid to find two mummies, one of which is revived in a lab and turns into a rampaging werewolf. Simultaneously, an escaped Aztec mummy stalks the psychic through the city until both monsters meet messy, separate ends
The movie was created by filmmaker Jerry Warren using scenes edited together from two Mexican monster movies, La Casa del Terror (“The House of Terror”) and La Momia Azteca (“The Aztec Mummy”), plus with some additional footage he produced himself, ostensibly in order to improve the narrative flow.
The werewolf mummy is played by Lon Chaney, Jr. in footage from La Casa del Terror, his last film role as a werewolf.
Plot [includes spoilers]:
A psychic woman named Ann Taylor (Rosita Arenas), having been regressed to a former life via hypnosis, leads archaeologists into an Aztec pyramid where they discover a tomb containing two mummies, one of which turns out to be a mummified Caucasian werewolf (Lon Chaney Jr.), the other a mummified ancient Aztec warrior (Angel di Stefani). A mad doctor (Yerye Beirute) kidnaps the werewolf-mummy to his lab and manages to revive him, the unwrapped creature transforming into a snarling werewolf when the full moon rises.
Meanwhile, the second mummy (the Aztec warrior) escapes from captivity later that night. The mummy tries to kidnap Ann Taylor, the psychic, from her apartment. They are both anticlimactically hit by a car and killed (off-screen) as he tries to carry her off. A hastily inserted newspaper headline alerts the public that the mummy has been killed, bringing that plot to an abrupt end.
The werewolf kills the mad scientist, escapes from the lab and goes on a killing spree in a nearby city. Near the film’s finale, the werewolf kidnaps a young woman (Yolanda Varela) from her apartment and Mexican comedian Tin-Tan (German Valdés) battles the monster on a high ledge. However, since almost all of his scenes had been edited out of the original Mexican film by Jerry Warren for this Americanized edition, his appearance at the climax makes no sense. The werewolf escapes back to the lab with the woman, but the lab catches on fire and the nameless hero (Tin-Tan) beats him to death with a burning torch. As the werewolf reverts to his human form in death, a pair of American actors playing policemen dismiss the idea that there was ever a werewolf at all.
Release:
Face of the Screaming Werewolf was released on March 3, 1965, on a double-bill with another of Jerry Warren’s films, Curse of the Stone Hand.
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