El Vampiro Y El Sexo (1969)

aka Santo in the Treasure of Dracula

aka Santo en El tesoro de Drácula

This is based on the version of the movie with added nudity and sleaze that was long thought lost, but recovered some years ago by some heroes of our times.

Santo (El Santo), idol of the masses, the man with the silver mask, and so on, and so forth, has taken a time-out from fighting crime and smiting evil – as well as from his wrestling career, one supposes – to follow his muse as a genius scientist. Like Doctor Doom before him, Santo has developed a method for time travel. Apparently, you only need to bombard a person with radiation in just the right way to physically throw them back into the life of a historical ancestor. Which does sound quite reasonable, of course. Curiously enough, Santo is still looking for a human test subject. He knows it would be best to use a woman there, for, Santo informs us, women’s resistance against radioactivity is four times that of men; the female sex can also cope much better with the mental strains of time travel, so suck it, incels. As luck will have it, our hero’s need for radioactive material has led to him living as a house guest in the home of nuclear physicist Dr Sepúlveda (Carlos Agostí) for a time, where Santo’s immense charm and personality have hit Luisa (Noelia Noel), the daughter of the house, so hard, the two are now engaged, to be married once Santo has the science bug worked out of his system.

Of course, Luisa volunteers to become Santo’s guinea pig. After a bit of hemming and hawing, the great man agrees to her suggestion, and irradiates her, until she dies a horrible…No, wait, until she does indeed travel back in time. For reasons of science, Santo, Luisa’s dad and unspeakable comic relief Perico (Alberto Rojas) can now watch Luisa’s adventures on a little TV screen.

Turns out Luisa’s ancestor was a renamed Mina Harker in a compacted version of Dracula. This version of the Count (Aldo Monti), likes eye-liner, female nudity and very large breasts, apparently, so the film now tells us a sleazy, shortened vampire tale that ends with Luisa’s ancestor’s and Dracula’s death, and the revelation of the existence of Dracula’s treasure.

Because we’re now just at the half-way mark of our movie, Santo has forgotten to invent the video tape while he was at it, and is now in desperate need of physical evidence for the things he and the gang saw happening in the past. Clearly, finding the treasure of Dracula should do the trick. Because all of this isn’t far-fetched and complicated enough, an evil mastermind going be the moniker of Black Hood has gotten wind of the whole affair by judiciously spying on the greatest crime fighter in Mexico, and now puts various evil plans into play to acquire the treasure for himself. That Dracula is eventually going to be revived as well hardly needs mentioning.

Santo’s stint as – somewhat mad, if you ask me – scientist certainly isn’t one of the most straightforward lucha movies, seeing as it contains the narrative of at least two normal lucha movies as well as a mini vampire movie in its perfectly reasonable run time. Structurally, this of course turns it into a total mess, but it’s the sort of very fun mess that keeps boredom away with the power of Santo’s mighty fists, lots of sleazy vampire business, and so much pulp energy and nonsense, there’s even only space for a single ring fight in the movie left – and that one follows the old trope of Santo honourably fighting things out against a villain to become an actual part of the plot.

The sleaze and nudity our family-friendly hero usually doesn’t encounter are kept at arm’s length from him – most probably inserted without his knowledge after the fact – and completely belong to Dracula. So expect a small army of vampire women who have exchanged the traditional flimsy nightgowns for breast-free robes, and biting scenes that contain nearly as much moaning and sexual writhing as those in a non-pornographic Jess Franco movie. All of the sexual subtext of vampirism is turned obvious and clear text in a manner that makes this version of Dracula look like even more of a creep than usual. His love for branding his brides with a little bat tattoo doesn’t improve his case there.

Because much of this is so clearly inserted into the more stodgy vampire business and the lucha adventures, there are some lovely disconnects between the sexy (well) bits and the rest of the movie. The best – and most telling moment – is after we watch Luisa in the body of her ancestress (who of course looks exactly like her) having very moan-y sex with Dracula that clearly ends with an orgasm (subtle, the film ain’t). The cut back to Santo basically has the guy shrugging his shoulders and going “huh, so vampires are real”.

Which is a lot funnier than the movie’s actual comic relief. One has to congratulate Perico for dressing as if he time-travelled into the future and learned about the Daisy Age before being thrown back to his own time by an angry mob, but otherwise, his “I’m such a comical coward” bit gets old very fast indeed. Ironically, his supposed friend Santo does seem to think so as well, and so bullies and berates him incessantly. It’s as if the film itself were agreeing about Perico’s unfunniness, but instead of getting rid of him decides to use him to make its hero look like an asshole, too.

Otherwise, the film is high lucha fun, with some very spirited vampire acting by Monti and the mysterious Black Hood, more rubber bats than you ever wanted to see, embarrassing amounts of nudity, pulpy scenarios and fights that are on the varied side for a single lucha film, and a narrative that may not make a lick of sense but certainly shows forward momentum that is for once not stopped for musical numbers and pointless wrestling. And because director René Cardona had a very good week while shooting this, it even looks pretty good. If that doesn’t recommend El Vampiro Y El Sexo (or its sleaze-free version), I don’t know what does.

Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and the Wolf Man (1973)

Original title: Santo y Blue Demon vs Dracula y el Hombre Lobo

Four centuries ago, a wizard named Cristaldi thwarted the combined efforts of Dracula (Aldo Monti) and the Wolf Man (Agustín Martínez Solares) to conquer the world. Of course, there’s a prophecy saying the terrible duo will return from the dead (un-undead?) to take up their old world domination project and take their vengeance on the descendants of Cristaldi. Now (well, in the early 70s), a hunchbacked criminal and occultist named Eric (Wally Barrón) revives the vampire and the werewolf hoping for monetary dispensation (though he’s shrewd enough not to bring the topic up with the the two).

First, the undead and the hairy one want their vengeance, though, and make their plans for the most sadistic way to ambush and murder the contemporary Cristaldi patriarch (Jorge Mondragón), a professor of SCIENCE, his daughter, and little granddaughter, as well as his niece Lina (Nubia Martí). However, Lina just happens to be the (very, very young) girlfriend of the hero of the masses, international man of mystery and adventure, lucha champion, inventor of the radio watch, and all-around fighter for justice, El Santo (Santo). So it’s easy enough for Cristaldi to ask a competent monster fighter for help. For once in a Santo movie, some of his earlier movie adventures seem to have happened in the film’s world, and our hero doesn’t poopoo the Professor’s explanations about the supernatural threat. He is, in fact, all in on protecting the attractive young women of the family against evil.

Despite Santo’s presence, the Professor is taken off the board to only return as a zombie in the last act; the wolfman goes undercover as a man named Rufus Rex (I would have called myself Lon Chaney, Jr.) to woo the Cristaldi daughter, and danger threatens from all sides. It’s the sort of situation where even Santo needs help, so he calls in the redoubtable Blue Demon (Blue Demon, if you must ask), who also makes a good chess partner, as we will learn. Together, they just might manage to keep at least someone named Cristaldi alive.

In the world of Santo movies, Miguel M. Delgado’s S&BDvsD&tWM takes up an upper middle position, quality-wise. It’s not what people who aren’t at least semi-regularly watching lucha cinema like this would call a good movie; on the other hand, the film, for the most part, lacks the cornucopia of filler business that make up the greatest parts of the truly bad entries into the Santo canon. So there are no musical numbers, zero painful hours of comic relief, and most scenes actually fulfil a function in the narrative. Admittedly, there are three short wrestling sequences that have nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of what’s going on, but that sort of thing does come with the territory of lucha cinema and would be bizarre if it weren’t included. Even better, in a weird but useful decision, the final wrestling match takes place after the actual narrative of the film has ended, so the easily bored can simply skip it and will miss nothing whatsoever.

Before that, there would be rather a lot to miss, though, for there is a lot of enjoyment to be had. As always, there are wonderful sequences of our masked heroes going about their masked daily lives, resting their weary bones and brains with a bit of chess, all the while wearing most excellent casual 70s outfits – Santo’s are bit more man about town, Blue’s tend to the more sporty – like all the best superhero dreams come true. The villains’ plans are needlessly complicated, too, and the film knows it. When Eric asks the undercover Wolf Man why the hell they are going through the whole rigmarole of seducing the Cristaldi daughter before kidnapping her when a more straightforward kidnapping and murder would be much easier, the dog-faced one simply explains that this would be too simple. Which sums up the ethos of horror pulp villainy beautifully, and enables quite a few fun scenes of Santo and Blue punching minion wolf persons and a couple of gangsters, so I’m all for it.

The production design, apart from Santo’s wardrobe, is rather on the impoverished side, with wolf man make-up that looks more like dog-faced boy make-up, and not exactly the most convincing vampire fangs, and sets that – apart from the Cristaldi home – do tend to the empty. However, someone involved the production clearly decided that there needs to be some fun, mildly macabre, or strange detail in each scene, so the nearly empty cave set with Dracula’s and Wolfie’s coffins also has a fire breathing bat and wolf head, vampire women are dressed in red full-body veils (okay, probably just red lingerie), and wolf people apparently practice a variation on the Holmgang on wolf persons who run away when beaten by Santo as well as their enemies. There’s also a magic dagger that is apparently a moral philosopher. Consequently, there’s nary a scene that doesn’t provide at least some moment of delightful entertainment.

I also particularly enjoyed Dracula’s portrayal as a right prick with an inflated ego, the kind of guy who delegates killing his enemies to his underlings even when it’s clear it’s not going to work (after attempt number three or so), and a guy you can absolutely believe will watch his last underlings get beaten up by masked wrestlers instead of attacking with them.

In a surprise move for a Santo movie, this year’s girlfriend Lina is actually doing useful things beyond getting kidnapped, even saving our heroes’ bacon at least one and a half times, all the while comporting herself like someone with certain signs of an actual personality. Hell, there’s even a moment or two here where I can actually believe she and the big S are close, which isn’t anything I’ve ever encountered in any lucha movie before.

So, it’s all very good fun, at least if you can be seduced into Mexican monster mash movies with masked wrestlers.