Moctezuma and Me
“For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men. ”
-Herman Melville, Moby Dick 2: The Revenge
As a Moctezuma scholar and the primary restorer of this project, this has been a deeply personal, ten-year journey for me. As the child of Mexican immigrants, I have sought to reconnect with my heritage through this project and engaging with Moctezuma’s works; in its completion, I hope to earn the privilege of calling myself Mexican.
Every film geek needs their white whale. Something to look for at flea markets and yard sales to see if you can find just one more piece of evidence that your crazy obsession touched other lives. Moctezuma's movies are that for me. The few that have seen his films remember. Moctezuma's work has influenced not only myself, but Guillermo del Toro, Robert Rodriguez, Sam Raimi, and more. The last film Moctezuma made was, "1000 Paths of Death", his first US film. The movie was made in complete secrecy because Moctezuma was so afraid of the production being upended by his nemesis, the Scorpion a famous Mexican Luchador who found a way to destroy every film Moctezuma produced.
There are three theories as to who produced, "1000 Paths of Death," Roger Corman, Lloyd Kaufman of Troma films, or Yoram Globus of Canon Films.
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Moctezuma was close to finishing "1000 Paths of Death" his first Hollywood film, a film that would have put him in the international spotlight! However, in the middle of production, Moctezuma stole all the shot footage and disappeared. WHY?!?!
I started this page as a teenager to reach out to the world to see who could tell me more about this unknown director. Currently, we are acquiring interviews with Moctezuma scholars, and people who worked with him. Our goal is to go to Mexico this year, get more interviews and retrace Moctezuma's steps.
Where is Juan Moctezuma? Trailer
Where is Juan Moctezuma? Cannes 2019 Trailer
Who is Juan F. Moctezuma II:
Moctezuma with DP and actor on, "Las fieras"
Moctezuma birthplace - Janitzio Island
Moctezuma workplace - Cine Ópera
Juan Francisco Moctezuma II is a Mexican horror and sci-fi filmmaker from the 60's and 70's. We believe he was born in the early 40s on the Isla de Janitzio on Lake Pátzcuaro in the state of Michoacán. He found his way to Mexico City in his early teens and worked as a projectionist at the Cine Ópera theater. There are no records of payment, but it is believed he learned the craft of filmmaking from his work as a projectionist and from sneaking onto film sets around the city when he could.
Moctezuma's first project of note is "Time to Die (1959)" (more below on each film) which won him an Ariel from the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias y Artes Cinematográficas. Moctezuma created "A Priceless Woman (1961)" with his winnings. Which not only failed but upset the Luchador community—luchores where synonymous with Mexican films in the 50s and 60s. A Luchadore in your film guaranteed success, but Moctezuma cut out the films featured wrestler! Moctezuma's career was crippled.
There was a long break while Moctezuma worked with Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky before making his next film in response to the Tlateloco Massacre in 1968, "Las Fieras (1969)", most of which was destroyed by the government. Moctezuma's next and last completed film was Demonoid (1971). After struggling to get his next film made, he had the huge opportunity to make a US-produced film, "1000 Paths of Death." However, Moctezuma threw away this opportunity and stole the footage they had shot, and to this day, we do not know why, where he went, or what happened to the film.
Moctezuma on a Cantinflas set in 1953?!?!?
Check out Moctezuma's WikiFandom page --->
Jodorowky
??Corman??
Ripstein
del Toro
Isaac Ezban
"Moctezuma is a pivotal director in Mexican Cinema for making bold and personal films during a time of social unrest and government oppression.. ”
- “Masked Men and Mummies: The Encyclopedia of Mexican Pulp Cinema.” By J.D. Chalston
“Directors such as René Cardona, Alfredo B. Crevenna, Alfonso Coronoa Blake, Federico Curiel, Miguem M. Delgado, Juan Moctezuma II and Chano Urueta take the horror film and ‘horribly mutate’ it. The eaisly recognizable formula of the Universal and Hammer horror films is taken to bizarre extremes in mexploitation.”
- "Mexploitation Cinema" by Doyle Greene
Filmography
Reviews by my good friend, Curtis Dye and myself.
Tiempo de Morir (Time to Die) 1959
Ever been watching an old drive-in style movie and thought to yourself: "This story makes no sense! It feels like something is missing!" Well, folks, I have an answer. It's probably that our boy Juan F. Moctezma II probably cut up the film and stole some scenes for his own work. Apparently when he used to work as a projectionist he'd cut out shots and scenes that interested him. Later he cut some of them together into this short time travel story. It's a pretty wild way to make a film, but it works out all right for JFM2.
The short film follows Dr. Augistine as he chases an evil Don Juan who stole his girl and also kills his girl. He uses basically the HG Wells Time Machine to try to prevent this but crazy shit always goes wrong. Over and over in an unbreakable cycle! Blimp explosion! War! Death! Cowboys! DINOSAURS! Really all you needed to tell me was that dinosaur attacks were involved and I'd be done to like this movie.
It's all shots of Moctezuma interspersed with the stolen clips, and it works out way better than I would have thought with the narrative actually being reasonably clear. It's actually way more coherent than a lot of the drive-in crap from the day, so if anything he's actually improving these old movies. I tip my hat to your editing skills, sir.The odd thing is how this film would mirror Moctezma's own obsessions with women during his career. The hero of Tiempo jumps through all these hoops and sees the destruction of multiple timelines all in pursuit of the girl. We're still picking up big piles of dinosaur poop in our cities because of a level of time travel shenanigans that would cause the X-Men to blush. It's not even clear that romance is all that important. The obsessive nature of the main character is a substitute for romance. The couple ends up happy, I guess, but one gets the feeling that Moctezuma struggles to separate his own desperate obsessions from actual love. Remember that this is a dude who was so obsessed with a woman that he forgot pro-wrestling is fake and got his ass kicked by a pissed off luchadore for real style (apparently the footage of this infamous fight has been discovered!).
One bat >()< but from multiple dimensions.
- Curtis Dye
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​What's special about this film is that (so the story goes) Moctezuma used clips from the movies he projected at Cine Ópera, shot some of his own footage then compiled it all together to tell a new story. Reconstructing this film is difficult because it could include any clips from any movie that screened at Cine Ópera before 1960.
-Alaric Rocha
Una mujer sin precio/A Pricless Woman (1961)
Sort of a bait and switch on this film. I was all psyched up for another dumb luchador film with some guy in a scorpion mask* fighting the Bride of Frankenstein or something, but clearly the director had other things in mind. It does open with the obligatory lucha match with Mexican Sting wrestling some non-descript guy in white tights. It’s pretty clearly two different matches cut together because El Stingo doesn’t have scorpions on his mask for certain shots. Yay, Mexican film industry! The mystery of the missing scorpion** is never solved***. Which ends up not mattering as our masked man is only seen in one other scene as we cut to a “scenery chewing” scientist, Dr. Victor Junco, presenting his findings on life and death to some stock footage. Sting makes some comment about man not being god and our scientist loses his funding. Luchadores be hating the spirit of academic inquiry. Anyhow, our hero doesn’t care as he has a hot wife. They go to dinner and she gets hit by a car. Dr. Junco does some great over-the-top campy mugging when he hears the off screen accident****. What follows is a pretty great take on the Frankenstein story, as Dr. Junco uses his SCIENCE to rebuild his wife and bring her back to ‘life.’ He quickly realizes that if there is something he doesn’t like about his wife he can simply reprogram her, and suddenly this movie has become, "The Stepford Bride of Frankenstein" and I am fascinated. Much like the Stepford wives this film is a great commentary on control and gender roles as Junco keeps trying to perfect his wife. Things just keep getting more and more creepy until he finally decides to totally rebuild her into a ridiculous centerfold, and at that point you have to wonder if she’s even his wife anymore. No, no she is not. Even robo-wife seems to realize that her “perfection” has removed her from any obligations to her creator as she drives off into the sunset with a little dog. Then we have another El Stingo match (vs. “La Serpiente” Joaquin Roberto, no doubt). The End. Highly recommended.
Full four bats (with robot eyes) here./\==/\ /\==/\ /\==/\ /\==/\
*Who is this guy? The VHS tape doesn’t really say. Is he some distant Mexican relative of Sting?
**That would be a great name for a movie.
***I’m guessing Rick Rude was involved.
****Let’s talk about ‘camp.’ I find camp really hard to pull off, as the exaggerations often seem to be the result of bad acting and direction rather than an artistic choice. Moctezuma, thought. This guy gets it. At first glance this movie looks like it might just be more of the same crap, but Moctezuma is really in control of the aesthetic. It somehow serves to highlight the science fiction story rather than detract from it. The best Twilight Zone and Star Trek episodes pull this same trick off.
- Curtis Dye
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This was Moctezuma's first studio film, and yes he bait and switched everyone, not just the audiences, but the studios and El Scorpion himself (no relation to Sting). Moctezuma promised to make a lucha film. The belief is Scorpion and Moctezuma's starlet, Lisa de la Luna were flirtatious on set. Moctezuma became jealous and Scorpion out of the movie. Moctezuma's jealousy only hurt him. Breaking so many promises and angering so many people damaged Moctezuma's career.
- Alaric Rocha
Las fieras/The Beasts (1969)
The Tlateloclo massacre was some serious shit, guys. In America, I sometimes feel we live a bit of a charmed life. Sure, things got a bit crazy during the Vietnam era here, but nothing approaches some of the governmental malfeasance from other countries. We sing about “four dead in Ohio” and the people of Tlateloclo, Gwanju, and Tiananmen Square are like “bitches, please.” Long story short, the Mexican government slaughtered 300 people in the run up to the 1968 Olympics, and Juan Moctezuma made a film about it. The opening scrawl of the remaining footage of The Beasts 1969 tells us that this film was brutally censored by the Authorities. It’s not hard to see why. Zombie/apes wearing soldier uniforms rise from their graves and start in on eating the students at a nearby university. Our heroine, Alcira, is chased into a public bathroom where she locks the door and waits out the attack over the course of two weeks.This is a truly weird little movie. The zombie stuff, what with the gore and the face eating and all, is weird enough, but the voyeuristic
camera in the bathroom is what really puts this one over the top. I mean voyeurism is pretty much the theme of this flick. Which is a pretty odd direction to take a zombie film. First off, there are repeated shot of our young woman heroine as she sits on and uses the toilet. Followed by repeated shots of the toilet from different angles (above, below, close-up, etc.). Moctezuma clearly has some sort of women-on-the-toilet fetish he’s working through in this film.* Also, when she flushes the toilet the noise draws the zombies, all of which creates this intense feeling of paranoia as Alcira is terrified of being observed at her most vulnerable. There are occasional shots of Alcira looking out through a crack in the window and becomes the voyeur as she watches other students get eaten by zombies. So the audience is made voyeur watching someone use the bathroom and the subject is a voyeur watching people get eaten all presented as some sort of anti-government statement. I’m not sure Moctezuma was totally successful in his message, but heck, at least he made something weird and thought provoking. I wish more directors would try for weird and fucked-up ideas in their pulp films. Too often we’re left with meaningless action sandwiched between meaningless exposition. A pity the whole film doesn’t appear to exist anymore. Hard to rate as it’s only a few remaining fragments, but I’ll give it three bats.
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*There’s also a strange foot-fetish sequence where Alcira slowly takes off her shoes to go barefoot into a puddle of blood. It’s all very sensual, and I don’t really know what the fuck to make of it except that it adds the uniquely creepy atmosphere.
-Curtis Dye
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Moctezuma struggled for many years to make another film after burning so many bridges with "Una mujer". It was the indie/do it yourself attitude of Alejandro Jodorowsky that inspired Moctezuma to make this film under the radar. Shot on location at UNAM University in Mexico City. Alcira was a real person, trapped in an UNAM bathroom during a police take over of the campus in Sept 1968, about a month before the massacre itself.
Demonoid (1971)
I first want to say that as awesome as a name Demonoid 1971 is, really they should’ve gone with “Obsidian Butterfly” or what ever the fuck that translates to in Spanish. Mariposa de… uh… Obsidiano? Whatever. I would totally go see a band called “Obsidian Butterfly". They’d play some kind of spaced out guitar rock. They could open for a Hawkwind reunion tour. Where was I? Oh, yeah, this movie. This movie is great. If Montezuma could be said to have a masterpiece, this would be it.* From the opening shot with some goofy shirtless dude thinking he’s all cool, to the final blood bath the whole movie has a unintentionally surreal quality that I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe I’m being unfair calling it “unintentional.” I mean, lots of these bad movies are so poorly shot and edited that they take on a sort of surreal element as the incompetence piles up (see the works of Al Adamson for my favorite examples), but this movie… this fucking movie… maybe Montezuma was trying for more. Like he ate a bunch of funky cactus with Alejandro Jodorowsky the night before filming this because you can really see some freaked out fingerprints all over Demonoid 1971. Lots of crazy shots and camera angles…. Anyhow. A bunch of hot people (lead by cool shirtless guy) go on an excursion (as you do when you are young) and end up summoning some sex demon called the Obsidian Butterfly. Demons are fun. Summoning circles and chicken sacrifice.** Not enough bad movies use demons. You’d think there’d be tons, but really Death and bloodshed ensue for the amusement of the unsuspecting drive-in audience down Mexico way. The weird thing is that the message is almost sex positive. Or at least not as blatantly sex negative as most films in the slasher genre. Again, makes me think the director had some sort of plan beyond putting out schlock.
I rate the entire movies three bats and some peyote out of four.***
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* Note: It can’t be said that Montezuma has a masterpiece. True.
** I sort of pity the actor who had to deal with the animal sacrifices in this one. I imagine the old guy, probably a legend of Mexican TV long forgotten, being told he needs to stab the fuck out of a rabbit (not chicken in this case) to get his meager paycheck. Blood everywhere. Standards lowered.
*** I used the bats with googly eyes because they are out of their bat-gourds on cactus juice. And tequila. And BLOOD!!!
-Curtis Dye
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Itzpapalotl, also known as the Obsidian Butterfly the Aztec demon goddess of change. I believe Sam Raimi has said this movie inspired "Evil Dead". Teens go camping and accidentally release a spirit? There are even vines that drag people away. Either way, this is the first movie I can think of to play with the teens get massacred by a demon genre. Lisa de la Luna DOES have a small part in the film, she plays the possessed Erika, while the unpossessed Erika is played by another actor, Gabi Mayorga (from "Las Fieras (1969)")
-Alaric Rocha
Moctezuma miscl crew jobs 1972-1977
Moctezuma moved to Los Angeles in 1972 to sell his film, "Demonoid (1971)" and shop around his script for his first feature Hollywood film, "The Legend of Hell House" which failed (see below) and then finally "1000 Paths of Death." However, to survive financially living in LA Moctezuma needed work. Being so knowledgeable, charismatic, and desperate Moctezuma took many different crew and post-production jobs on any project he could find. Mostly B-movie productions. We have been able to find a handful of the films he worked on here.
The Legend of Hell House (1973)
There are rumors that this 1973-haunted house film starring Roddy McDowall was actually written by Moctezuma II and stolen by the credited writer Richard Matheson. Matheson is a well-known horror and thriller writer responsible for the novel and screenplay of "I Am Legend" and "Omega Man". He's also written many Twilight Zone, and Outer Limits episodes. It is doubtful this prolific writer would have stolen from Moctezuma II. However there are many Moctezuma-esc themes in the film, for example, the sexuality, the evil spirits or the battle between faith and science. The law suite never went anywhere because of the timing of scripts as well a key difference. In Moctezuma II’s script the machine communicates with the dead. In Matheson’s novel/script the machine clears the house of spirits.
-Alaric Rocha
1000 Paths of Death
Man, another one of these. A short awesome clip that is all that remains of what was surely a masterpiece of cinema by Juan F. Moctezuma II. How do I know that it's a masterpiece? Well, a guy is trying to violate an ice zombie and gets his junk shot off in a brutal way. Straight out of the Fulci playbook. It's so nasty. I feel like I haven't sold you on this film. I don't know what to tell you. If gruesome cinematic mutilations aren't of interest to you then you are probably reading the wrong review and should go back to watching safe flicks for safe basic people like 'Cars 3' or 'Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.'
It's just a short scene where an ice zombie woman is tied up in a forest and a couple random bandits show up to have their way with her. They get brutally dispatched by a manly stranger who was hoping the ice zombie was his lost love. I'm not sure what the whole film would've been like, but this scene looks really clean and sets up a world that I would like to see more of. Why are there zombies? Why are they of the ice variety? I WANT TO KNOW MORE AND NEVER WILL. Sad face emoji.
As far as any greater meaning to this beyond "don't mix bullets with your balls" there is that old Moctezuma theme of obsession equated with love. Our hero is out there examining zombies and comparing them to an almost completely destroyed picture of his love. Once again, like all his flicks, it's clear that this is a dude who conflated the pursuit of love with love itself. Unhealthy, but makes for some good cinema. 10/5 ice zombies, because each one only has half a brain.
- Curtis Dye
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Dr. Nava lives in a post apocalyptic world that has been overrun by zombies who need cold to survive (this is way before GoT Nightwalkers!). Humanity lives safely in the few warm parts left in the world. Dr. Nava journeys into the "0-Zone" to seek out his missing wife (played by Lisa de la Luna! - now married and Lisa Scorpion). Feels like a strange continuation of "Demonoid (1971)". ​
-Alaric Rocha