Chicanonautica: Gorgeous Widescreen Mayasploitation

by Ernest Hogan

The poster with the crucified/spreadeagled woman gave me the wrong idea about The Living Idol. The style of the credits told me it was a slick, widescreen, color production from the Fifties. It also looked Mayan. Hmm . . .

Then:

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico for cooperation in the making of this film.

Somebody spent some money on this. It was written, produced, and directed—the whole autre deal— by Albert Lewin, who also made the 1945 version of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Also, René Cardona, responsible for The Brainiac, The Batwoman, Night of the Bloody Apes, Doctor of Doom, Wrestling Women Vs. the Aztec Mummy . . . (better stop, I’m getting distracted) was credited as “associate Mexican director.”

I was intrigued and amused.

It opens with scenes filmed in the Yucatán in Mayan ruins, with Mayan extras. Every shot looks like a postcard. My overactive visual cortex was happy.

Not a bad story, been done before: An ancient artifact housed an evil spirit, the presence of a girl who is the reincarnation of a virgin—though in this case, the word is carefully avoided—sacrificial victim, brings it to life . . . 

And this wasn’t a cheap quickie that Roger Corman, or even Cardona, slapped together on a minimalist budget, meeting a ridiculous deadline. It was a lavish Hollywood production with international connections. Ambitions are apparent. And that seems to be the problem.

Instead of a horror flick with a stuntman in a rubber suit playing the monster, we have a visual spectacular--what I like to call an eye-fry--with a lot of good intentions wrapped around a pulp plot, and packaged like exploitation.

I already mentioned the poster with French-Italian actress Liliane Montevecchi splayed out for sacrifice. She’s supposed to be a Maya, but when she’s in the same scene with real Mayan women in huipiles . . . 

In the beginning, she’s supposed to be in her early teens, and in love with the hero who looks near middle age. This was a common plot point in entertainment of the era. The photojournalist hero then, in an awkward attempt to avoid impropriety, goes away on assignment for a few years, giving her time to grow into an “of age” university student.

 

There are a lot of beautiful Mexico City scenes, but it all moves very slow.

When the idol–the red jaguar throne, from El Castillo, AKA the pyramid of Kukulkan in Chichén Itzán–comes to life, we don’t see it, we just hear it wrecking the room it’s locked in. As an adult intellectual, I understand that the director was trying to make a point–there's an entire illustrated lecture on the history of human sacrifice, suggesting that modern warfare is carrying on the tradition–but the monster kid in me feels gypped.

Still, they get away with showing more blood than in other 1957 films.

The heroine does finally assume the position of sacrifice, in a dream sequence/flashback.

Still, I found myself enjoying The Living Idol. Maybe, someday, when I'm in the right mood and have a some Escorpion Negro Black Ale, I’ll watch it again.

Ernest Hogan is the author of Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song: 15 Gonzo Science Fiction Stories.