Night of the Bloody Apes (1969): or, My Heart Belongs to Bonzo

In 1960s Mexico, female luchador Lucy Ossorio (Norma Lazareno) is an athlete at the top of her game. Resplendent in her Red Devil mask and form-fitting crimson jumpsuit, every night she wrestles to a packed house of adoring, sweaty male fans, tossing her hapless opponents around the ring like lumpy bags of week-old laundry. She's young(ish), sexy, strong and beautiful, and on top of that, she's dating Lt. Arturo Martinez (Armando Silvestre), a hotshot homicide cop with the brains of Hercule Poirot and the good looks and charm of a young Tony Orlando. Sure, it's a rough game, but this is one luchadora who really has the world by the tail.

But into the Happy Picnic of Life, the Swarming Ants of Tragedy are likely to crawl, determined to carry away the Pie of Contentment on their evil little chitinous backs. This is exactly what happens one evening when, drunk on her own in-ring indominatability, La Demonita Roja tosses her opponent, the unfortunate Gata Negra ( Noelia Noel) through the ropes and into the crowd. The girl takes a bad hop and lands on her noggin, pushing a splinter of bone into her brain and inducing immediate coma. Guilt-stricken, Lucy drops a couple of matches and then decides it's time to hang up the boots for good.

"Venir a mí, bro!"

Meanwhile, local brain surgeon and organ-transplant specialist Dr. Krallman (José Elías Moreno) has a problem. His angel-faced son Julio (Agustín Martínez Solares) is bed-ridden with terminal leukemia, and all the specialists at his hospital have given the boy up for dead. But like any devoted father, the good doctor is not about to take that lying down. In an astonishing feat of scientific reasoning, Krallman deduces that the blood of a more powerful creature--say, a gorilla, for example--might be able to fight off the cancer where puny human blood has failed. But since gorilla-juice is clearly too potent for the human circulatory system, he figures he'll need to swap out Julio's heart for an organ of the simian persuasion. Then bang! Roberto es su tío! 

It's true what they say: sometimes the simplest answer is the best.

With the assistance of his slavishly devoted manservant Goyo (Carlos López Moctezuma), the doctor sets about putting his plan into action. Sneaking into the Federal District's most un-security-conscious zoo, the two old men easily purloin a primate and plop its pumper into Papa's poor pestilential progeny, post-haste. In a few hours, the boy is on the mend, the doctor's hypothesis is proved, and the overcrowded monkey house at the zoo has some much-needed extra space. Everybody wins!

Well, almost everybody.

Of course near-death experiences are almost always transformative. People come back from the brink with a newfound desire to live life to the fullest, to help their fellow man, or to cash in and go on a book tour with John Edward. In Julio's case, however, the transformation is less spiritual--instead, his new ticker turns him into a rampaging half-ape monstrosity! (Actually, more like 1/8-ape...he only seems affected from the jawline up.) I guess everybody copes in his own way.

Soon the Bloody Ape (singular, despite the film's title) is out on the town, leaving a trail of mauled, broken bodies in his wake. Realizing his mistake, Dr. Krallman reasons that putting a human heart back in his boy's chest is the best way to correct things, and thanks to Lucy's earlier reasonless brutality, he has just the perfect subject in his hospital. Goya and the doctor remove the girl back to his basement lab (again with astonishing ease), and after recapturing Julio, perform the second transplant in as many days, again leaving Julio none the worse for wear.

"I can haz nanner puddin?"

The missing girl and the string of brutal murders finally alert the police to something amiss, and Arturo gets on the case. Most are blaming the "escaped" gorilla for the crimes, but when Arturo sees the fingerprints and notices they are "half-ape, and also half-human!" (Ed. note: Whaaaa?), he knows they're dealing with something a bit more sinister. Worse, Julio's condition isn't cured by his new ticker, and soon he's ripped Goya's head from his body and gone out to wreak yet more bloody havoc. Can Arturo stop him before he kills half the nubile women in the city? Can Dr. Krallman save his son from his own scientific hubris? Will Lucy ever wrestle again?

Night of the Bloody Apes (1969) is not a movie that pulls out all the stops--it's a movie that doesn't even acknowledge there are stops to be pulled. The ape-man's attacks are surprisingly gory, ina late-60s tempera-paint way: we have scalps being pulled off, throats being torn open, eyes being gouged out, and multiple vicious maulings, often perpetrated upon the unclad torsos of energetically screaming senoritas. In addition, director René Cardona also treats us to actual footage of real open-heart surgery--a circumstance that landed this film on the famous British "Video Nasties" list, and kept it unseen in that country for years.

"This really brings out your eyes."

There's an awful lot of nudity too. Lucy--who seems to gain about 30 pounds every time she steps into the ring, only to drop the weight when the mask comes off--thinks nothing of chatting on the telephone in the altogether, fortunately for us. Also, in keeping with the long-standing cinematic tradition of "rapey half-mans-half-monkeys" (further reading here), Julio frequently rips the clothing from his female prey before proceeding to rip at their flesh. Even the comatose Noel shows all pre-surgery, in the interest of medical accuracy, no doubt.


The film is badly paced--there are many, many scenes of a character walking slowly from one end of the set to the other, that could have been profitably trimmed--and most of the acting is expectedly terrible. The lone exception is Moreno as Krallman, who imbues his laughable lines with a certain genuine gravitas, and manages to be emotionally effecting as a father desperate to save his son. It should also be mentioned that this wouldn't be the last time the hunky Solares (Julio) portrayed a man-beast: he also appeared as the lycantrhopic Rufus Rex in the brilliant luchador epic Santo y Blue Demon vs Drácula y el Hombre Lobo (1973, reviewed on MMMMMovies here).

With nothing to do but lie in bed all day, Julio had time to make some interesting personal discoveries.

This film is deservedly one of the more popular subjects of the MST3K crew's derision, but in my opinion you don't need Joel (or Mike?) and the Bots to facilitate your viewing enjoyment. You can watch it for the xenotransplantation and pseudoscience, or for the hard-hitting wrasslin' action, for the blood or the boobs or the rather ridiculous beast. You can count the flubs--for instance, Cardona conveniently ignores the discrepancy between the number of medical personnel in Krallman's lab (two) and the number of hands working in the chest cavity (six); also, while Julio wrestles with a particularly spirited victim in a local park, her thrashing limbs displace the grass clippings standing in for a meadow, revealing the bare concrete beneath! Or you can just sit back and let the madness wash over you in waves. That's my suggestion.

2.25 thumbs

A few more images from Night of the Bloody Apes (1969):

"And you should see what I gave him from the elephant! Woohoo!"

"What are these fuckin' iguanas doing on my coffee table?!"

Waste of a Perfectly Good Monkey Suit

Splendor in the Grass...Clippings

Separated at birth? (reference)

"Now that I've got my framed portrait of the Duke of DVD, I really do have it all!"

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

El Santo y La Tigresa (1973): or, the Mystery of the Giant Hobo

The more lucha libre movies I watch, the more I wonder how these guys ever found time to, you know, wrestle. There was just so much else going on! I bet El Santo and Blue Demon couldn't drive their shiny shiny sports cars down the street without running over a couple of alien invaders bent on world domination, or a just-resurrected werewolf and vampire plotting to complete a plan of vengeance 400 years in the making. Add to that the mad scientists, serial killers, and gangsters running rampant in the District Federale all throughout the 70s, and it's amazing they ever got the chance even to launder their turtlenecks and sports jackets, let alone lace up the boots and go bouncing around el círculo cuadrado.

As arguably the greatest, but certainly the most famous, of the masked heroes of Mexican wrestling, El Santo (aka "El Enmascarado de Plata") was a very, very busy man. Even visits to old friends were crap shoots, as likely to end up in the underground lair of some crazed supervillain as in front of the television doing tequila shots while watching the night's fútbol match. That's not quite what happens in El Santo y La Tigresa (aka Santo y el aguila real, or Santo and the Royal Eagle, 1973), but it's almost as wild.

"No, BD, I can't. I'm with someone. And didn't I ask you never to call me here?"

In this one, Irma Morales (played by Irma Serrano, about whom more in a moment), the daughter of one of Santo's deceased friends, calls the luchador to her palatial ranch to seek his help with some problems she's having. It seems there are strange goings on around the hacienda--her older brother was killed when his horse inexplicably tumbled down a cliff, and there have been two separate attempts on Irma's life, one involving a cut brake line and another an unseen sniper. Convinced that her neighboring land barons want to split up her ranch between them, she's called in El Santo (rather than the local police) to get the evidence she needs to confront them.


But things aren't usually what they seem in cases like this. Santo finds some odd strands of hair at the scenes of the assasination attempts, and sends them to a friend in the city for analysis. As romance blooms between the luchador and the lady of the house, Santo must also fight off a murderously jealous suitor of Irma's who may or may not be the true culprit. A mysterious locked room at the hacienda, ordered closed forever upon Señor Morales's death, thickens the plot, and attacks by the rival ranchers' throw suspicion back their way. Then things go completely pear-shaped when the Man in the Silver Mask is attacked by a giant, tatter-clothed hobo with the strength of ten men and just barely manages to escape with his life!

"All right, all right! ONE autograph!"

It was interesting for me to see Santo removed from his monster-fighting superhero mode and instead cast in the role of a Holmesian (or at least Scooby-Dooby Dooosian) amateur detective. Of course his horseback-riding dalliances with Señorita Morales would never pass muster with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle--but hey, that ain't the only Holmes Santo shares some moves with, if you know what I'm sayin'. Unfortunately Santo's esteemed cinematic partner Blue Demon is not on hand to play the Dr. Watson role; instead he has as his foil Carlito (frequent Santo co-star Carlos Suárez), a cowardly, bald-headed sidekick who serves as extremely broad comic relief.

But the luchador has a more-than-able fighting partner in the person of Irma Morales herself, played with downright Tura Satana-style ferocity by Irma "La Tigresa" Serrano. Boastful, proud, and unwilling to suffer the slightest disrespect from anyone, Irma is a dominatrix dynamo. Always accompanied by her faithful pet La Serrana--a FUCKING FALCON--she is an excellent markswoman (as evidenced when she shoots a cigarette from the mouth of a terrified girl to "save" her from her drunken beau's attempt to do the same) and extremely handy with the short riding whip she always wears around her wrist! She also knows how to rock the leather pants and knee-high boots, which can only be counted in her favor.

(Nota bene: Morales is never called "La Tigresa" in the movie--that is Serrano's real-world nickname. A well-known singer and actress, she was infamous for many political and sexual scandals, including a rumored short-lived affair with President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz of Mexico. Judging from her brief but entertaining Wikipedia entry, she's more or less playing herself here.)

"Wanna 'rassle?"

One thing that surprised me about this movie was how intricate the plot is compared to other Santo flicks I've seen, which tend more toward the episodic. (There are episodic tangents--such as a long segment at the county fair that's actually quite interesting in a National Geographic "traditional celebrations" kinda way--but the whodunnit through-story is a lot more solid.) The mystery is really pretty well-constructed, with many red herrings and shocking revelations. In fact the story is so convoluted that the in-ring action--a staple of the Lucha film--is limited to a single match rather than the usual two or three. Which is not to say the film skimps on the grappling: Santo gets to practice his knee-lifts and forearm smashes on some of the evil ranchers' thugs (with La Tigresa fighting right alongside him, clocking their jaws and whipping them silly with her leather lash!), and later rescues Carlitos from a lynching for horse-thievery by flattening a half-dozen ranch-hands.

The centerpiece battles, though, are his two fights with the mysterious, primitive-seeming Giant (Domingo Bazán)--both of which have rather startling conclusions. The first takes place in an abandoned bullfighting ring, and Santo gets to perform his patented frog splash off an adobe wall, from a rather dangerous-looking height. However, the caveman-cum-hobo is (amazingly) too strong for Santo, and leaves him unconscious in the sand! Later they have a rematch in the cobweb-covered catacombs beneath the hacienda (what, you thought things wouldn't get all Gothic up in here?), and Santo seems to get the upper hand before being waylaid by a shorter caveman/hobo who seems to be the Giant's keeper, left unconscious and presumed dead! Two battles, two losses--unheard of in Santo Cinema!

El Enmascarado Volidor

Of course he's not dead, but the final confrontation in Irma's room, where secrets are revealed and motives explicated, is notable for its pointed LACK of Santo's presence. He comes in after the dust is already settling, shaking off his concussion and in need of a change of shirt. Who's the hero here, anyway? This makes me believe the producers saw this not so much as a Santo vehicle, but a Serrano one--kind of a Brigitte Nielsen/Red Sonja situation, with Santo along in the Arnold Schwarzenegger role. (In one memorable exchange, Irma claims "never to have tasted fear," while Santo admits that he has--his courage is not bravado, but perseverance even in the face of fear.)

Serrano is a powerful screen presence, however, and in addition to the fight scenes gets to shine in a couple of musical numbers--notably when she takes Santo and Carlitos to a cock fight where her prized rooster is set to do battle, and trades musical boasts with the rival ranchers. (These are sadly untranslated on the disc I have--I can only assume it's a Beowulf-style taunting before the poultry-centric main event.) She also gets to show off her voluptuous figure in that excellent leather pants/boots ensemble, and a couple of groovy negligees. No complaints from me.

Santo came back from his tour of Japan with some...interesting ideas for the bedroom.

About that cockfight--I admit I found it a little rough to watch the animals being set upon one another for sport, and one of them actually killed by the other on camera. Yes, I know, it's a different time, a different culture from my own, and nothing most people in Mexico in 1973 would have batted an eye at. But still, it's real animal death, really onscreen, and modern viewers may well be taken aback. And that's not the only instance of animal snuff in the film. Later we also see Santo and Irma hunting, and she shoots a rabbit; we get to see the effects in detail, as the running bunny is hit and tumbles feet-over-destroyed-cranium. Finally, there is a flashback to Irma's brother's death, wherein a human-shaped dummy is sent down the cliff on the back of an ACTUAL horse. I rather hope the nag was dead before they rolled her down the cliff, but I can by no means be certain. (Also, a kitten is used to test a poisoned dish of soup, and fails the test, though one hopes the cat was not actually poisoned.) Animal lovers, be warned.

(Irma's falcon La Serrana fares slightly better than the other animals--in fact, the hawk even flies to Santo's rescue during his first fight with the giant, and then saves her owner from a poisonous snake in her bed! The cavemen don't take kindly to this, and later stuff the bird in a canvas bag and smack it against a wall several times; however, since the falcon appears safe and sound in the final scenes, hopefully this was merely cinema magic.)

"That wasn't *quite* what I was asking for, Maria, but thanks all the same."

Also of note is some rather salty language--lots of "assholes" and "bitches" bandied about, at least in translation--which together with the animal snuff and Carlitos's "comedic" lynching scene (to say nothing of the decidedly PG-13 Dark Family Secrets that hold the key to the mystery) give the film a much darker tone that I had grown to expect from a Santo film.

Still, it all really worked for me. I was involved in the story, amazed by the plot twists, excited by the dangers and thrilled by the fights. A more "adult" Santo perhaps, though it still manages to bring in the Gothic trappings and superhuman enemies required by such a larger-than-life hero. I give El Santo y La Tigresa 2.5 thumbs. It's available from Netflix on DVD, so check it out!

¡Viva el Santo!

A few more images from El Santo y La Tigresa (1973): 

So lifelike

Eyes Up, Santo

Now THAT'S comedy!

"Grovel before the awesome might of the muumuu, slave!"

FALCON KICK!

Knight in Shining Headgear

"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine..."

"Well, shucks, Irma, I never thought about it before...but yeah, I guess I could put it there..."

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

Santo y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos (1970): or, Now THAT'S a Main Event!

More and more these days--as Time's Winged Chariot drags me inexorably closer to the shadowy bourne of that Undiscovered Country, and the vistas of Future Possibility shrink and close around me like the heavy gray walls of an Inquisitor's tomb--I find myself wishing that I'd come into contact with certain things earlier in my life. For instance, I was fully fifteen years old before I first read Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a book that would have stood me in much better stead before I'd followed the philosophical dead ends of its protagonist Raskolnikov. (I ended up getting my watch back, though, so no lasting harm.) Similarly, I discovered the cinema of Paul Naschy as a slightly past middle-aged adult (if we calculate the middle as half the "threescore years and ten" of verse)--a fortunate discovery, but one, had I made it earlier, would have afforded me that many more years of grinning, face-beaming joy.

In recent years I've added another item to that "wish I'd met you earlier" list: Lucha Libre movies. One of the unique cultural contributions to Western society of the great nation of Mexico, the Lucha Libre subgenre grew out of the immense populatity of professional wrestling south of the U.S. border, and the colorful, larger-than-life characters that peopled its ring. Many (if not most) of the professional wrestlers in Mexico are traditionally "los enmascarados," or masked men. While many of the masked wrestlers in US wrestling tend to be "heels" or villains, in Lucha Libre they are more generally like superheroes, their glittering capes and colorful cowls symbols of their commitment to justice and fair play. In the comic books and films that these characters inspired this commitment is taken to the logical (?) extreme, as los enmascarados do battle against gangsters, aliens, mythological creatures, and yes, b-movie monsters.

El Santo Rocks the Turtleneck

When I was a kid, I was heavy into both professional wrestling and the Universal horrors, so it's a damn shame I didn't discover this combination back then, this Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of awesomeness that combined the two great tastes I loved. But then I might have changed my life goals and tried to become a crime-fighting luchador instead of a priest of obsolete video formats, so maybe a greater Plan was at work, after all. Maybe it's best, in a way, that I'm only now seeing Santo y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos (1970, dir. Gilberto Martínez Solares) for the first time.

But I kinda doubt it.

The most famous of the film luchadores is without question El Santo, the Man in the Silver Mask. In a ring career that spanned five decades, Santo became the most famous and beloved luchador in the history of the sport, and between 1958 and 1982 starred in over 50 feature films. In many of these he was paired with his in-ring rival but filmic mejor amigo Blue Demon, and together they comprised the most dynamic crime- and monster-fighting duo Mexican cinema has ever seen. The films range from quickies that seem to have been shot in a single weekend between matches to well-lensed, respectable b-features, but all share a mix of grappling, intrigue, and contagious glee that's hard not to respect and enjoy. (The films are also pretty family-friendly as a rule, so if you've got a monster-loving kid who's sick of Godzilla movies, the genre is a good next step.)

Blue Demon: These Nipples Don't Run

Santo y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos begins with what amounts to a main-event introduction, as the music plays and the principals come out with their names plastered across the screen, a low-angle shot making them all look 10 feet tall and bulletproof. In this corner, El Santo, posing on a hill in a forest in full ring attire (like you do) and his tag-team partner, Blue Demon! And in the other corner, the cavalcade of monsters!

• La Momia! (The Mummy, looking more like an elderly burn victim than a resurrected pharoah!)
• El Ciclope! (The Cyclops, a hulking brute with a flashlight eye and a puppet head!)  
• Franquestain! (Frankenstein's Monster, Mexican version, complete with pencil-thin bandito moustache!)  

«El fuego es malo...¡MUY MALO!»

• El Hombre Lobo! (The Wolf Man, a barefoot homeless dude with fangs! Or as I like to call him, El Hobo Lobo!)  
• El Vampiro y La Mujer Vampiro! 
• And of course the Mad Doctor Bruno Hadler, the man responsible for all the carnage we're about to witness.

It's not a diss to say the plots of most of the lucha libre movies I've seen have a certain "childlike" quality, as if two movie-loving, hyperactive playground buddies were sitting behind the typewriter pounding out everything that entered their sugared cereal-addled brains. Symbol stands in for substance--there's no need to establish the wrestlers as heroes, since they're CLEARLY heroes, and likewise the monsters and mad doc as villains. These groups are in the same movie, so they're gonna fight, right? So what are we waiting for? Let's get ready to rumble!

El Fappo Grande

We open, as we almost always do in lucha films, with a good 5-10 minutes of in-ring action. In this case we watch a tag-team match between female mascaradas, which has some pretty priceless narration from the TV announcer on call. ("The physical strength is primitive to man...the elasticity of the movements and that feline agility in these beauties!") Santo watches from the backstage area, a scholar of the sport as well as a master. After the brawlin' beauties finish, Blue Demon and partner take on a couple of punching bags and make short work of them, establishing BD as one tough little hombre, and not a person upon whose Cerulean mask you'd be well-advised to tug.

Moving into the story proper, we find ourselves at the funeral of Bruno Hadler, a mad scientist of the first order who had successfully resurrected dead bodies by means of brain transplantation! (Why this was not a Nobel Prize-winning discovery I can only guess--perhaps he had yet to publish his findings in a peer-reviewed journal prior to his death.) Bruno's brother Otto is an upstanding member of the community, and also the father of Gloria, who happens to be la novia del Santo. Apparently Santo and Blue Demon had something to do with the mad doctor's misfortunes, since upon learning of his death Santo worries that he "made a promise before he died," one he might yet make good on.

He died as he lived: with a Cuisinart on his head

Of course he's right to worry, as the funeral is crashed by a gang of muscled-up thugs in badly applied green grease paint, obviously the doctor's zombie minions! They rush the shrouded corpse back to the lab, where Bruno's right-hand man Waldo--a scoleosis-stricken dwarf, naturally--fires up the ol' 12-volt and brings the doctor back to life! As a side note, along with Waldo and the zombies in the lab is this intriguing character:

Your guess is as good as mine

If you're waiting to find out what sort of monster he is, what his powers are, and how he's integral to the Mad Doctor's plan...well, don't. He just hangs out in the lab the whole movie and never does anything. Maybe he's a friend of the landlord's or something.

Thinking about what Santo said, Blue Demon decides to go on a little reconaissance mission, and of course drives directly to the huge Spanish castle/fort that the doctor is using for an inconspicuous hideout. BD batters down a drawbridge through sheer brute force and enters the subterranean dungeons (why? BECAUSE THAT'S WHERE THE MONSTERS ARE, of course!), and has a quick scrap with the zombies, who somehow manage to subdue him. Waldo wants to "experiment" on the luchador (ooer!), but Doc Hadler has bigger plans--he slaps BD into his tanning bed/human Xerox and runs off a perfect copy of Blue Demon, one that will follow his every command without question! THE FIEND!

It was at that moment--with a Hulk-beast to his left, a dwarf to his right, and an unconscious luchador right at crotch height, that Dr. Hadler finally understood what true happiness meant.

Out on a drive in the Silver Santomobile, Santo and Gloria are interrupted in the second chorus of "Besame Mucho" by the Doc's roving gang of zombies. This allows Santo to show off his fighting skills for the first time in the flick, tossing the zombies around and even executing a splash off the hood of his shaggin' wagon! It must be said that the choreography of the fights is a bit more realistic than in the kung-fu genre, which is to say it's less like a duel/showdown than a giant clusterfuck. Still, it feeds the need for ACTION--Gloria is kidnapped, Santo rescues her, and then we're able to move on.

In a sequence reminiscent of Assignment Terror, Blue Demon 2 and the zombies are dispatched on a nationwide monster hunt, and surprisingly make quite a haul. In a nondescript crypt somewhere or other they find the happiest Vampire in the World--a guy in evening clothes, cape, and London After Midnight-style top-hat who just cannot stop grinning. Thereafter they go to another crypt and find A FREAKIN' MUMMY--which I can only assume is of the Aztec variety, given the locale. Back at the lab Dr. Hadler has somehow acquired a block of ice containing The Cyclops, which he melts with a life-giving acetylene torch. Then they pull Franqestain and El Hobo Lobo out of their ASSES, because suddenly they're just there. A quick blast with the mind-controlling ECT machine, and Los Monstruos are ready to do the doctor's bidding!

"I'm a vild und krazee guy!"

The rest of the plot is basically a series of vignettes of three sorts. Monsters attacking people: El Ciclope takes out some fishermen, the Vampire acquires a couple of brides, Franquestain crushes an amorous couple under his metal boots, and El Hobo Lobo takes out an entire family. El Santo tracking the monsters: he can't find the castle BD1 drove straight to, for some reason, and has to hunt through the woods and lakes aimlessly. (A sequence in which he swims through a lagoon looking for the Cyclops--his mask still on, of course, as a luchador never unmasks, even while making out with muchachas--is wonderful not only for Santo swimming, but for the LITERAL FISHTANK effects to show the Cyclops underwater). And finally: Santo vs. the Monsters and BD2, which as I say are big clusters interspersed with shots of the Cyclops' puppet-head yowling. One thing just follows right after another, and while it's not exactly coherent, it never lets you get bored.

In the most incredible (and awesome) development in the story, El Vampiro decides to take on Santo on his own turf--he challenges the Man in the Silver Mask to an actual wrestling match, right there in the arena under the lights! Of course Santo accepts, and the crowd rolls in, completely unfazed that the opponent for the night is AN ACTUAL FUCKING MONSTER. Even better, El Vampiro dons a mask for his match, even though he's never worn one previously--doubtless to cover the stunt double. But still, how awesome is that? Could it be more so?

"Get ready for The Hurting, boys."

The answer is YES: el Vampiro gains the upper hand in the match, but then is put off his game by a glimpse of the gold cross around Gloria's neck. This leads to a staple of pro wrestling, the "Run In" match ending--only in this case, instead of the heels running in to thwart the babyface wrestler's triumph, THE GANG OF MONSTERS RUNS INTO THE RING FOR AN IMPROMPTU BATTLE ROYALE! Frankenstein's Monster, the Cyclops, the Mummy, all bouncing off the ropes, fighting Santo and his friends from the locker room! If I'd seen this at age 12, my head would have exploded with glee. In fact, it might yet.

(Nota bene: I have to say, this is exactly what I was hoping for with my previous lucha libre experience, Santo y Blue Demon contra Dracula y El Hombre Lobo, but in that flick the monsters never climbed into the ring. It was a much better movie in all other respects, but I'm glad this flick righted that glaring omission.)

Of course eventually, somehow, we end up back at the lab, Santo discovers that Blue Demon has not undergone a heel turn but has just been cloned, and BD and Santo have a final confrontation with the monsters (complete with Santo braining zombies with a rubber morning star and Blue Demon wielding aGUN and a dangerous torch) that leads to a fiery cataclysm and widescale destruction of scientific machinery and historical buildings. Good triumphs over evil, the Luchadores beat Los Monstruos, and all is right with the world until next week's main event.

El Hobo Lobo

All right, so the movie has its problems. There is an awful lot of day-for-night stuff, especially when El Vampiro is on the prowl, that is among the worst such effect I have ever seen; I guess we're just supposed to assume it's night by virtue of the fact that the vampire is not going up in flames. Costumes are pretty weak, with the lower end being the embarrassing Mummy costume and nearly non-existent werewolf makeup--a hobo beard, while awesome, does NOT a wolf man make. (Though I admit I liked the ambition of the Cyclops get-up.) The score is pretty annoying bleep-bleep-bleep semi-carnival music, though my reaction to that may be more cultural than critical. Also, there's an extended nightclub/dance sequence in the last third of the film that goes on way too long, even though it's sort of entertaining in a Gene Kelley/Cyd Charisse rip-off way. And as I noted earlier, the plot developments are on a level with the 3-paragraph short story you wrote for your 2nd grade Halloween essay contest, meaning it's heavy on the non sequitur ACTION and light on poetry and character-driven drama.

But this is a genre of movie in which those latter problems can hardly be considered flaws. As in a well-choreographed wrestling match, this flick has its marks to hit, its set-pieces to execute, and it does so with a breathless energy that's easy to get swept up in. If you can turn off the adult portion of your brain, go back to your childhood and imagine seeing this on a Saturday afternoon and then going out and reenacting it all with your like-minded friends, you'll agree the scrapes and bruises would be well worth the joy.

2-Man Mob

Acting-wise, the film is pretty difficult to critique. Santo and Blue Demon are wizened performers, though their performance style is informed by the larger-than-life acting style of the wrestling ring, and thus perhaps more akin to silent movie acting than more modern methods. Still, the two have charisma to burn, even if it's obscured a little by the expressionlessness of their masks. Carlos Ancira as Dr. Bruno Hadler chews the scenery the way a Mad Scientist should, and his brother Otto, portrayed by Jorge Rado, is a good counterpoint/voice of reason, if such can be said to exist in the world of the film. Hedi Blue as Gloria is attractive but given little to do, and the dancer who becomes a vampires bride adds some welcome soft PG sex-appeal. Also, Mexican trash movie fans should look out for Santanón as Waldo the hunchbacked dwarf--the actor also appeared in one of Boris Karloff's last movies, the embarrassing to some/entertaining to others voodoo flick Snake People (1971).

Santo y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos is not the best lucha movie I've seen--it's easily outdone by the dramatically and cinematically superior Santo y Blue Demon vs. Dracula and The Wolf Man--but I found it an endearingly naive and fun excursion into a world of wrestlers and monsters. 2.5 thumbs, and Vive El Santo!

"Hold me, Waldo...just hold me!"

Bonus Linkage: 

• Click here to read the Vicar's take on Santo & Blue Demon vs. Dracula & the Wolf Man, with Tag-Team Partner Tenebrous Kate!
• And click here to read Empress Kate's glee-filled essay on The Champions of Justice, in which Blue Demon leads a team of five luchadores agains a mad scientist and his army of midget wrestlers!

Still Yet More Images from Santo y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos (1970):

Monsters of Acne

"Wait, whut? you know OLAF?"

Besame Enmascarado

Scary, but not in the way they intended

Collect Them All

Squick!

He Only Dives from the Top Rope

Pecs of the Vampire

H.R. Puffnstuff: The Lost Episodes

Consider Yourself Pinned

"Vicar, NOOOOOOOOO!"

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