Santo vs. Frankenstein’s Daughter (1972)

Original title: Santo vs. la hija de Frankestein

Dr Freda Frankenstein (Gina Romand), the daughter of the original “It’s alive!” Frankenstein, has gone into the family business as a mad scientist. She has a lot going for her: a swanky – if somewhat cold – looking lair in the countryside, a trusted partner in Dr Yanco (Roberto Cañedo), and a bunch of goons in matching outfits to rob graves, kidnap women and whatever else needs doing around the home. Mad scientific success, however, isn’t guaranteed.

Her attempt to inject one of her minions with gorilla blood to achieve, um, who knows what, has turned him into Truxon, a guy in a gorilla mask (Gerardo Zepeda) she has to keep locked up and can only control with her considerable powers of hypnotism. Repeating the experiments of her father has proven somewhat more successful, and she is just on the cusp of creating her own Monster, whom she’ll dub Ursus (also Gerardo Zepeda, but in a different mask of dubious quality).

Frankenstein has also managed to develop a serum that not only stops aging but has a rejuvenating effect as well. This hasn’t just kept her and Yanco ship-shape, but is also a useful tool to recruit old losers into her goon squad and soften them up as victims for her love for controlling sadism and domination. Unfortunately, the serum is beginning to lose its power for the good doctor, and instead of the three months typically going between injections, she has now weeks at best – and the effects decrease ever quicker.

Our mad scientist has a plan, however. She just needs the blood of a very special person to create a more potent formula. Yes, of course it is the blood of Santo (Santo!), idol of the masses, friend of children, and so on and so forth. Santo’s blood, Frankenstein has found out, contains a much higher concentration of whatever stops aging, keeping him youthful, fit, and an all-around perfect physical specimen.

Just asking Santo for some of his blood wouldn’t probably not be kinky enough, and kidnapping him would prove difficult and inconvenient, so instead, Frankenstein sends her minions to kidnap Norma (Anel), Santo’s girlfriend. This, and a helpful blackmail letter, should bring the luchador right to her doorstep, which indeed it does, accompanied not by Blue Demon or Mil Mascaras, but by Norma’s sister Elsa (Sonia Fuentes). Various games of catch and release, monster mashes against Truxon and Ursus, and other shenanigans ensue. Also appearing: Chekhov's lair self-destruct lever.

At this stage of Santo’s film career, budgets were clearly pretty low, but there’s a willingness to make much out of comparably little and a pop cinema energy to Miguel M. Delgado’s Santo vs. Frankenstein’s Daughter the great man’s cinematic outings would increasingly lose. This is even one of those Santo movies where somebody even seems to have been committed to actual production design, so there’s a sense of visual coherence you don’t always get in lucha cinema. That the very early 70s fashion and colours pop very nicely on the print I watched adds to the pleasure here.

The film is comparatively focussed as well – there’s no odious comic relief, no musical numbers, the two ring fights are short and sweet – and the second one takes place only after the plot has been resolved. In fact, there’s no filler in the movie at all.

Instead, Delgado fills those parts of the movie that don’t concern Santo doing Santo stuff, vigorously, to really draw us into the world of our female mad scientist. There’s much fun to be had with her gleefully sadistic way of controlling her minions – which Romand hams up wonderfully – and many a silly-awesome background detail to enjoy. Why, some of the minions even have character traits, and if you look closely, there are even traces of actual relationships between these pulpy characters mostly here to get beaten up by a masked wrestler.

Because these are the early Seventies, the film is on the bloodier side of the Santo cycle – Ursus near fatal wound on a big cross in the graveyard next to Frankenstein’s lair comes to mind, or the moment when Santo repeatedly strikes an already beaten Truxon with a chain – and the fantasy in Fernando Osés’s script turns toward the macabre. There’s a scene in which a grumpy, rejected-by-Santo Frankenstein hypnotizes – yes, of course a colour wheel is involved – Norma into trying to cut out Santo’s eyes, for example. Of course, this isn’t a Fulci film, so the power of love protects, while the minions meant to watch Santo during this are so squicked out by the whole thing, they have to leave the room.

Yes, the film is making a joke here, and it’s actually funny. Which, come to think of it, happens in a couple of scenes, as if, freed from the yoke of the comic relief character, humour can suddenly work and add more to a lucha movie than annoyance.

In “things we never knew about Santo”: both Norma and Frankenstein agree that an unmasked Santo has the hottest male face ever to grace our planet. Obviously, we have to take their words for it.

Thus, this particular adventure of Santo is recommended even to those among my imaginary readers who don’t go for the idol of the masses as much as Norma, Dr Freda Frankenstein or this writer do. There’s cheap but awesome production design! Two monsters – well guys in bad masks – played by a single actor! Sadomasochist subtext! Mad science! A woman who screams whenever she sees someone with a wrinkled face! What more can one ask of any movie?

Santo vs. the Vampire Women (1962)

Original title: Santo vs. las mujeres vampiro

A couple of centuries after they have been beaten by one of those naughty warriors of light, a coven of female vampires decide that now, in these dark times of 1962, it is time for female vampiredom to rise again, and get rid of those oatmeal faces they seem to have acquired while waiting for better/darker times in their coffins.

For that rising to properly work, the vampiresses need to find a woman to replace their current Queen Zorina (Lorena Velázquez), for some occult reasons I never understood, because Zorina seems perfectly well and happy, or rather, happily evil. Vampire priestess Tundra (Ofelia Montesco), who will be the brains as well as the face of this particular operation for the film’s first two acts, already has an eye on a replacement queen. Diana Orlof (María Duval), her candidate, may be the descendant of their last would-be replacement queen. That last time, things did not work out, leading to those centuries of waiting and becoming food-faced, but there are prophecies going around that suggest evil will win out this time. So it’s only a question of waking up three male vampires who are built suspiciously like wrestlers (and one of whom is of course played by the great Fernando Osés) for the strongman parts of the job, and take the win for Evil.

However, Diana’s father, Professor Orlof (Augusto Benedico), is close enough an associate of El Santo (Santo!) to possess his own Santo videophone, so when he finds his daughter threatened by malignant forces, he calls in his famous, ultra-capable and all-around perfect friend. Who will proceed to lurk around the side-lines of the movie for its first half, because this still belongs to that phase of Santo’s movie career when studios didn’t trust him to carry a film on his own. Thus, he shares the male lead duties with the Professor, Diana’s boyfriend and a police Inspector (Jaime Fernández).

Which really is the least fun thing about Alfonso Corona Blake’s Santo vs. the Vampire Women, for less Santo is never a good thing, even if the film at hand does attempt to cast his frequent absence as part of his mystique as a masked luchador and force for Good. This does of course also mean we lose out on scenes of a masked Santo in loungewear, cosy pyjamas, or romancing the ladies.

On the plus side, there’s everything else. The film begins as a lovely pulp gothic concoction with a dramatically lit vampire priestess expositing in a lair full of spectacularly fake cobwebs, upright coffins and improbable shadows, adds rubber bats and the much beloved (by me) vampire cape walk, and never looks back from there. What follows are some pleasantly zippily shot scenes of overcomplicated vampire plots, close-ups of “hypnotic” staring committed by pretty women, and rather more chases than you’d usually get in a Santo movie. The cops and a suddenly appearing caped Santo chase cape-running, woman-stealing vampires, Santo chases vampires, vampires chase Santo, Santo in his sports car chases a lone vampire towards a cross. I get all chased-out just talking about it.

There’s also the time-honoured sequence of a vampire (using deadly karate chops, Santo informs us) pretending to be one of Santo’s ringside foes to kill the great man and a resolution that hinges not on our hero fighting off the vampires, but on him fighting them long enough for the sun to shine through the unfortunate hole in their underground crypt-temple-thingie. Afterwards, our hero sets torches to the coffins, vampiresses screeching in horror, because this is not a film for the faint of heart, even if it is as deeply, infectiously silly as a proper lucha movie is supposed to be.

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.

The Vengeance of the Vampire Women (1970)

Original title: El Santo en La venganza de las mujeres vampiro

Dangerous times in Mexico city. Mad scientist Doctor Igor Brancov (Victor Junco) and his henchmen have discovered the coffin of former vampire queen/high priestess Countess Mayra (Gina Romand). Brancov wants to revive her so she can donate some of her precious vampire blood to him, with which he could finally finish his project of creating a perfect man. Apart from removing a stake, all it needs to turn Marya from her current state of an unmoving prune-like corpse is the blood of young women. And those are easily kidnapped.

Indeed, Marya is back on her feet again sooner than you’d believe, ready to start creating as many new vampires as possible to eventually rule the world. She is thankful to Brancov, but before she’s going to help him, she has just a tiny favour to ask of him: she really needs a hand in killing the descendant of the man responsible for her staking before she’s willing to do much else. Of course, said descendant is no other than El Santo (El Santo), everybody’s favourite luchador, monster hunter, and crime buster. He is rather difficult to kill too, and perhaps not the ideal man to disclose one’s existence to when you’re a mad scientist or a vampire. Plus, Santo says he’s bored with all those normal crime cases, so he is all too willing to team up with Inspector Robles (Aldo Monti) of the police and Robles’s spunky yet kidnapping-prone reporter girlfriend Paty (Norma Lazareno) to do something against Mexico City’s newly arising bloodsucker and mad science problems.

Despite regularly showing its budget, this entry into the manifold adventures of dear Santo is a particularly fun one, really leaning into being a proper pulpy horror movie of the kind Paul Naschy would have made in Europe, just featuring a masked luchador. The latter element does of course make everything even better than it already is, always.

Directed by Alfredo Curiel, this shows little of the more annoying flaws lucha cinema could be cursed with: there’s very little filler, the plot moves merrily along and the comic relief is next to non-existent. Why, even the mandatory ring-side wrestling sequences are part of the plot and are rather more dynamically edited together from the usual wrestling audience set, and an actual match, lending them rather more of an air of excitement than is typical for these parts of lucha movies. Curiel – in a move really uncommon in these films – shoots the wrestling matches rather dynamically too, with a lot of handheld camera to add to the feeling of being very close to Santo.

In fact, Curiel seems to have been rather enamoured of handheld shots throughout the film, using them in the tiny but properly gothic vampire lair with its symmetrically placed coffins, grubby backlot streets and Brancov’s mad science lair, making the most out of what must be rather cramped sets by getting really close to the action more often than not.

And while these sets do show their budgetary limitations, they are also full of those tiny details that turn a cheap set into pure joy. Brancov’s lab with its mysterious multi-coloured fluids, for example, is further enhanced by early 70s pulp technological wonders of the bleeping and blooping kind, as they all should be. This sort of thing is sure to make one’s inner twelve year old rejoice. As do scenes of vampire women flapping their see-through (but with underwear underneath, this still being a Mexican movie for an all-ages audience) gowns before jumping into their coffins, or ineffectually flapping around our heroes during a fight, the Countess hypnotising Santo’s adversaries in the ring into trying to kill our hero, as well as trying to mind-whammy said hero into losing. And who doesn’t want to see a proper montage of vampires creating more vampires?

The film also seems to particularly delight in showing Santo as a very early 70s kind of badass, lounging around in mask and swimming trunks and complaining that all he ever encounters these days are boring, common criminals like a very strange version of Sherlock Holmes, or remarking that something’s not right when a beautiful woman sneaks into his bedroom at night to murder instead of seduce him. It’s self-conscious about the silliness of the lucha movie genre without going the camp route. Speaking of Santo’s bedroom, the place does look very 70s bachelor, and also includes a big painting of Santo’s masked face on one of its walls, as well it, and every other bedroom, should.

Santo & Blue Demon vs. Doctor Frankenstein (1974)

Original title: Santo y Blue Demon contra el doctor Frankenstein

There’s trouble in Mexico City! A mysterious madman kidnaps women, who are never seen again. That is, until he decides it’s better to let the corpses of his victims return as radio-controlled zombies who then proceed to kill their families. The police are clueless what this is all about, but the audience is quickly introduced to the bad guy, one Irving Frankenstein (Jorge Russek), owner of a pretty impressive beard, and the grandson of the original Doctor Frankenstein.

Apart from striking terror into the hearts of men, he’s kidnapping these poor women to perfect his brain transplantation technique. Sacrifices (preferably those of other people) need to be made for science, and for…love. For Frankenstein has the frozen body of his beloved tucked away in one of the many chambers of his silver corridor-heavy (okay, it’s one silver corridor filmed as if it were a labyrinth of corridors, but hey) lair, keeping her fresh so she doesn’t die from the brain cancer she has been diagnosed with. Once his brain transplantation technique is perfected, he’ll just pop the brain of another woman into his beloved’s body and…honestly, I have no idea how that’s going to help, but Frankenstein must. He’s the mad scientist after all.

Anyway, up until now, his only successful brain transplant has been moving the brain of a “South African giant” into the body of a very buff black gentleman - or, “a black giant from Africa”, as the totally not racist Frankenstein as a character in a film with not at all awkward racial politics calls him – whom he now controls via brain radio and who is his secret weapon when it comes to evil-doing, seeing as he’s super strong, impervious to bullets when Frankenstein tells him he’s wearing a bulletproof vest (he isn’t), and about as fast as a snail.

That’s not enough to fulfil the good doctor’s second goal, though, taking over the world with an army of brain radio controlled brain transplanted supermen. He has another super body lined up looking for a new brain, tentatively dubbed “Mortis” (which will turn out to be one of Frankenstein’s favourite names), and he has called dibs on a brain that would add enormous skill, intelligence and experience to the Mortis body. Of course, right now, that brain is still safely tucked away in the body of the idol of the masses, the great, the heroic, the singular Santo (Santo). And you don’t just go and try and steal El Santo’s brain directly.

Fortunately, Frankenstein has a plan for that too. He’s just going to kidnap young bacteriologist Alicia (Sasha Montenegro), and wait for Santo to come to him. Alicia, it turns out, isn’t just another younger woman Santo has a bit of an undisclosed romance with, she is a kind of non-legal ward to Santo and his fellow luchador, buddy and partner Blue Demon (Blue Demon), who apparently promised their mentor/her father to take care of her (not that kind of care, Santo!).

So once Frankenstein’s henchmen do indeed kidnap Alicia, he has two very motivated luchadores on his trail. Who, as it turns out, make better archenemies than brain donors.

In 1974, the movie adventures of Santo and his fellow luchadores weren’t exactly at their prime anymore. The budgets, never terribly impressive, had clearly sunken into the deepest depths, and quite a few of the lucha movies of this era seem to consist of more filler than movie. Veteran director (ending his career with 140 movies in his filmography!) Miguel M. Delgado’s vs Frankenstein is certainly no exception to the budget troubles (it is a Calderón production, after all), but Delgado does not torture his audience with days of comedy – there’s only some unfunny business about the doddering professor who is Alicia’s boss – nor are horrifying musical numbers rearing their ugly heads. There are two overlong, rather boringly staged in-ring wrestling sequences to get through, but that’s the sort of thing every movie about a luchador needs to include, so complaining about it would be churlish.

It’s not that the film does not include filler, mind you, it’s just that someone involved in the production must have realized that an audience going into a movie about Santo and Blue Demon fighting Doctor Frankenstein (and the good doctor is indeed fit enough to get beaten up by Blue Demon) will be more interested in spending some macabre good times with Frankenstein going about his day, seducing brain surgeons into working for him by giving them his de-aging elixir, letting his computer (with lots of blinking lights, so it must be excellent) compute the right cutting patterns for his brain surgeries, and ranting. These rants are presented by Russek with great gusto, quivering facial hair, and the air of crazy delight every good mad scientist in a very pulpy horror movie needs.

Of course, as is genre standard, we also get a couple of scenes of Santo and Blue going about their day, charming ladies, be it wards or – and I quote – “beautiful police women”, having a nice ride in Santo’s sports car and so on, when they are not hitting henchpeople and radio controlled African Americans in the face.


So really, as a late-ish period lucha movie, Santo & Blue Demon vs. Doctor Frankenstein is as good as you can reasonably expect, pitting our heroes against a proper madman and his crazy science experiments, presenting enough extra standard lucha horror tropes to keep anyone happy, and generally going about its business with a sense of delight not exactly typical of this phase of lucha cinema. And if you’ve seen enough of these films, you might just get an extra kick out of Blue saving Santo’s bacon for once this time around.

Past Misdeeds: Santo Vs. Las Lobas (1976)

aka Santo vs the She-Wolfs

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.


Santo's (El Santo!) sweet life of wrestling fools in the ring and getting kissed by the White Wolf Queen of the lycanthropes  (something that will not be important later on) is rudely interrupted by a sleazy private eye who tells our hero some random stuff about lycanthropy and hands him an envelope containing place and time for a meeting with a certain Cesar Harker (Rodolfo de Anda), werewolf hunter. Santo, after having fought every supernatural creature you'd care to name, and some others too, is still the great sceptic at heart, poo-pooing the whole lycanthropy idea and shrugging that strange visit off. One imagines Santo gets visits like that so often he has learned to be choosy whom to believe.

His opinion changes when our sceptical hero is repeatedly attacked by a pack of dogs with the awesome abilities to a) make the great El Santo very very afraid, and b) to disappear into thin air. Clearly, something supernatural is going on here, so the luchador decides that meeting up with Cesar will be just the thing to do.

At their very leisurely meeting (it's still the 70s) Cesar explains to Santo that the Harkers have a long tradition of werewolf hunting, helped by their freakish immunity to the curse of lycanthropy; quite unlike Santo, who will - thanks to his "dog" bites - have to do something against the lycanthropy problem or turn into a lycanthrope himself before the next Great Red Moon (whatever that is) rises. Fortunately, there's an old prophecy foretelling either the end of the world through a lycanthropocalypse or the end to the hairy menace by the hand of a legend or symbol of silver. That latter symbol, Cesar is pretty sure, would be Santo.

Practically, Cesar knows the lycanthropes are based quite close to the small village (still with its own doctor and chief of police) he and his family are living in, so he invites Santo to his home. After dispatching one of the incredibly ineffective lycanthrope assassins who seem to hound Cesar's every step (a random flashback shows he can't even play a relaxing round of golf without being attacked), Santo agrees. But being the responsible chap that he is, the luchador is first going to fulfil his contractual obligations and have a wrestling match; he'll be with Cesar a bit later. After all, possibly turning into a wolf person in the near future is no reason for the idol of the masses to not show up to a fight. My protestant work ethic is ecstatic.

The situation will be quite changed once Santo arrives in Cesar's home village, though. The werewolf hunter and the White Queen have killed each other off, leaving behind some very angry lycanthropes in need of a new queen, Cesar's twin brother Eric (Rodolfo de Anda without glasses), and various women and children who will soon enough be in peril. I'm sure there's nothing untoward in the crate that arrives from Transylvania the same night Santo does, like, for example, the King of Lycanthropes Licar.

The whole affair could become too much even for a hero like Santo, but Eric, a bare-chested, waxed, vest-wearer named Gitano (Carlos Suárez looking like a man who has a lot of fun here), and various armed villagers (when they're not trying to kill Santo for no reason I managed to discern) are there to pinch in.

One of the real joys of lucha cinema is the adaptability of the genre. As long as he stays a hero, a lucha movie doesn't need to interpret its central character as a standard masked crimefighter alone, unlike - for example - US superhero films do, leaving the door wide open for genre hopping of a kind that makes lucha movies surprisingly adaptable.

As is so often the case in the genre, the movies of the great El Santo are a prime example of this. Santo starred in Universal-inspired classic horror films, 60s spy movies, adventure films, unfunny comedies, pulp-y crime films, rancheros and inexplicably weird stuff. Basically, Santo dipped his toes in every genre except romantic comedies (unless you're a fan of the Santo/Blue theory) and melodrama (though there are of course lucha melodramas without Santo), turning every other genre into sub-genres of the great equalizer that is lucha cinema.

By the time Santo shot Santo vs. Los Lobas, the lucha genre had lost much of its popularity, leaving the tenacious wrestler pretty much in the cinematic dregs, seeing him work for producers churning out very silly, often surprisingly boring movies, on budgets that could probably not always buy shoe-strings for everyone involved. So it comes as a bit of a surprise - even more of it when you add Santo's generally family-oriented image - that Las Lobas is a lucha entry into the genre of somewhat bleak, very dream-like 70s horror that does actually set out to be a real movie instead of random reels of Santo, musical numbers, and travelogue footage. Las Lobas also turns out to be one of the weirdest entries in Santo's filmography not produced by Vergara.

What's probably even more surprising is how well this attempt works, with directors Rubén Galindo (last seen here letting Santo fight against garbage bags) and Jaime Jiménez Pons creating an often nightmarish, always illogical, mood out of cramped looking shots taking turns with strange, yet strangely compelling compositions, a gritty looking aesthetic that's always rubbing against the weirdness of the plot and ideas, effectively dim lighting, and editing whose rawness emphasises the strangeness of it all by roughing up the film's flow. I'm not sure Galindo and Pons were planning to make their film quite as strange as it feels, and that its technical peculiarities weren't just based on a mix of budgetary troubles and ineptness on their side, but it's the results that count, and the results are, as my American brethren like to say, awesome.

Among the things about Las Lobas that may be clever or may be just accidents is the film's tendency to portray Santo as a bit more human and fallible than he often is: he's fleeing from his early dog attackers in a very undignified way (what is it with Galindo and letting Santo high-tail it?), actually needs the help of others, and even loses fights without being tricked into losing them. One might think this time around our hero's actually in danger, which is - of course - a pretty clever thing to find in a horror movie.


But really, it's the mood of the film that makes it as special as it is. It's one of those films where the strangeness of the visuals - lycanthropes who look like bearded ladies in fur bikinis carrying torches standing in a circle around their queen, the White Queen laughing a threatening laugh from the roof of a building, a party with circle dancing turning into a minor lycanthrope massacre - and the peculiarities of the script - a main character dying only to be replaced by a twin who is exactly like he was, the character who is built up as the Big Bad dying quite early leaving plot threads and an ancient prophecy dangling, the rules of lycanthropy changing with every second scene, connections between characters never really getting explained - really come together to form something like a fever dream through which the audience drifts; it's just that this fever dream has a masked wrestler in it, too. And, as a wise man once said, everything's better with a masked wrestler.

Past Misdeeds: Santo contra los asesinos de otros mundos (1971? 1973?)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts without any re-writes or improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.


A horrible monstrosity that looks a lot like a bunch of people crawling around under a tarp or inside of garbage bags kills important leaders of Mexico's industry. It's so very very sad. The tarpster serves a certain Malkosh (Carlos Agosti) who uses his awesome ability to appear on a television in police chief O'Connor's (Marco Antonio Campos) meeting room to try and blackmail Mexico into paying him a lot of money, or else, more "important" people will die.

Fortunately, the police has a not-so-secret weapon: El Santo (El Santo!), the idol of the masses, greatest man on Earth, Blue Demon's secret nemesis (etc.) is on the case before you can even cry out in excitement. One might doubt the great man's technique - getting himself overrun by Malkosh's car after he has already gotten rid of the bad guy's henchmen, and then caught - but his results are great.

So, after winning a little gladiatorial bout against a Roman-style guy with small shield and short sword, then another Roman-style guy with trident and net, and then a not terribly Roman-style guy with a flame thrower, our hero guns down Malkosh and his men with a machine gun. Malkosh's a good loser and informs Santo, while dying very politely, of the origin of the monster. Basically, moon cooties. Malkosh also tells Santo that his former henchman Licur (Juan Gallardo) is planning to use the moon cootie monster to rule the world. I imagine Licur's plan looking something like "1. Control moon cootie monster 2. ???? 3. RULER OF THE WORLD!!!".

Licur seems to need the help of "space scientist" Dr. Bernstein (as played in one of his regular guest appearances by Santo's real-life manager Carlos Suarez) for some parts of that plan, and has already kidnapped him. For some reason, Licur has forgotten to kidnap Bernstein's daughter Karen (Sasha Montenegro) too, but Santo is sure that his new enemy will try to sooner or later, so it's a simple job of protecting the girl, saving the scientist, wrestling Licur and his henchmen into submission and somehow getting rid of the moon cootie monster for our hero.

A meagre plot description like this can hardly do justice to Rubén Galindo's Asesinos De Otros Mundos. Sure, the whole thing might sound goofy, even for a film in a genre about the heroic exploits of masked, evil-smiting wrestlers, but the special beauty of this one lies in its love for loopy details. Galindo has no time for filler scenes (in fact, there isn't even a single one of the obligatory ring fights to bring the film up to length in it), because he has to include not one, but two evil masterminds, one or more (the script doesn't seem to be able to decide how many monsters there actually are - the characters usually speak in singular about it, but if it's only one, it's better at teleporting than a killer in a slasher movie; also, stealth) tarp monsters, and quite a few scenes of Santo heroically running away from said tarp monster(s).

The loopy details Galindo seems to love so well are often of the kind that can only lead to awesome or uncomfortable questions. I mean, why exactly does O'Connor have a replica of Santo's head in a cupboard in his office? Is it like the Bat Signal, but really, really weird? How does Malkosh's TV telephone work? How many monsters are there, exactly? And while I'm asking questions, two gladiators and then a guy with a flame thrower, Malkosh? There's also a lovely moment when Santo realizes that Karen hasn't been kidnapped yet and automatically assumes that Licur will try any moment now; because that's what the daughter of a scientist is for, right?

I have to admit that I'm in love with the randomness of Asesinos's script. Its wild and illogical leaps of imagination may not work as "good writing", but delight my inner child with their sheer comic book/pulp recklessness, and their willingness to just go for badly prepared ideas like the two masterminds business the second of whom is never even hinted at until half of the film is over, or the surprising - to say the least - "Santo turns into the Spider (Master of Men) and shoots everyone" scene. (And yes, I know this is not the only case of Santo using lethal force against an enemy, but he doesn't usually leave behind this many corpses). The only thing that's missing for complete lucha nirvana is a scene with our hero in mask and pyjamas, but he's wearing a very red cape throughout the whole of the film to make up for that lack.

Equally random as the script is Galindo's direction: it's an improbable mixture of the usual point and shoot style of early 70s lucha cinema  and sudden bursts of arty scene framing and camera angles. "Why not pretend it's a film noir for a minute" seems to be Galindo's motto here, and certainly, why not?

I'll probably hardly need to mention it, but the film's already pretty fantastic weirdness is further strengthened by the random jazz soundtrack (supposedly by the excellently named Chucho Zarzosa, but probably a random assemblage of records that were lying around during editing) that jumps from jazz funk, to easy listening, to some awesome atonal stuff, without a single moment where music and action on screen have anything to do with one another.

And then there's the monster. Moon cootie monster is one of those horrible creatures that move so slowly they can only devour their victims when these victims crash their cars, or don't know how to run, or never look around, or dislocate their ankles, but it's also as adorable as three to ten people crawling around under what might be a bunch of garbage bags stitched together can be. I posit that someone who doesn't at least smile when the thing starts crawling around, "threatening" people must be dead inside.


Basically, Asesinos De Otros Mundos is the dream of every twelve year old lucha fan (there are still twelve year old lucha fans, right?), scripted by someone who is writing like a twelve year old himself. In other words, it's lucha perfection, and exactly the sort of film that makes questions of "good" or "bad" absolutely irrelevant. Asesinos De Otros Mundos just is.

Past Misdeeds: Mision Suicida (1973)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts without any re-writes or improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.

Mexico City, during the Cold War. A Soviet spy ring - as we later learn under the leadership of Nazis with fitting names like Otto and Elke - kidnaps the Nazi war criminal and expert in brainwashing techniques Doctor Müller (Juan Gallardo). They need him to prepare the unsuspecting women populating their secret spy training camp in Santo Domingo for their real work. These women, you see, think they are just training (for who knows what?) at a very special gym that just happens to have a lot of swastikas in some of its rooms. In truth, they are meant to be the Soviet Unions new elite spies who are supposed to start an awesome series of sabotage missions in the USA in the near future. They just need to be convinced, and that's where Müller will fit in.

Alas, he really shouldn't be seen in public with his face, so the Nazi Soviets first need to kidnap the daughter (Elsa Cardenas) of famous cosmetic surgeon Dr. Thomas. This act will in turn provide them with the opportunity to press the good doctor into their services. Surely, there are no cosmetic surgeons in need of money anywhere to be found.

The bad guys' kidnapping spree doesn't escape the attention of that most spyhunting of all international police organizations, Interpol. Interpol's big shot Topaz (Cesar Del Campo) decides that this difficult Nazi Soviet/Soviet Nazi problem can only be solved by the premiere example of manliness we worship as El Santo (El Santo!).

Together with Interpol agent/nightclub singer Ana Silva (Lorena Velazquez), Santo puts his incredible physique and utterly brilliant intellect to work against the fiendish plan of destroying the Free World through a lot of girls in bikinis. But where to start? Oh, right, probably with one of the masses of henchmen piling onto Ana and Santo wherever they go.

Mision Suicida is one of the finer movies that the idol of the masses did during the 70s. It's not always a good sign in a Santo movie when our hero has no supernatural threat to wrestle with, but a combination effort of Soviets and Nazis (which seem to be just about the same in the confused mind of scriptwriter Fernando Oses)is nearly as effective an attack on all the is good and decent (or a night club) as a team-up of Dracula and the Wolfman. That the the weirdly stylish Santo of the early 70s is an excellent hero for a cheap-skate spy movie in the Eurospy vein is self-evident.

At this point in his career, Santo's films had already begun to sprout carcinogenic growths of filler as if they were characters in a body horror film, and were therefore always at risk of being buried by nightclub sequences, painful comic relief and random archival footage - at times even all three things at the same time - so it comes as something of a surprise that I can report Mision Suicida contains only two nightclub sequences, no comic relief and barely a hint of archival footage. The nightclub sequences themselves are also some of the less painful found in Santo films. Although the music in them certainly isn't great shakes, the pain is somewhat alleviated by ye olde "shake some (clothed) tits into the camera" gambit; it's not high-brow, but it is a lot less painful than a horde of moustached guys wearing large sombreros, or whatever that thing during the Mummies of Guanajuato was.

There's just no time for filler here, because what Mision Suicida lacks in budget it tries to make up for with lots and lots of action scenes, especially brawls in a classic serial style, two or three car chases (mildly paced), an explosion, and Santo kinda-sorta wrestling a shark in one of the lesser shark wrestling scenes of the sort of cinema which features shark wrestling scenes. The film's break with the often stately tempo of lucha cinema in this period at times reminds of Turkish pop and pulp cinema. Mision Suicida and something like Deathless Devil are obvious brethren in spirit, both films going for a not necessarily artful yet breathless style of narrative that replaces actual plot through one damn, hopefully exciting, thing after the other and tries to drive the audience into a state of excitement by their sheer determination to entertain with the little they have in their possession.

Lucha director veteran Federico Curiel (director of some of my best loved and of my worst loved Mexican genre movies) seems to put a lot of energy into the brawls, ramping up the excitement level through use of (often quite shaky) handheld camera work to replace the more typical static shots used for fights in a lucha film. Curiel's gamble of risking something slightly new pays off quite well and the fights are some of the more exciting ones to be found in the genre.

It's also nice to have a Santo movie in which the female lead is shown to be vaguely competent too, and though Velaquez (who every right-minded person loves for her part in the Wrestling Women/Las Luchadoras films) isn't allowed to get all Emma Peel on Santo, she is doing a bit more than just filling out her clothes. Which, by the way, are often of that matter-of-course 70s bizarreness that alone can make films of the time worth visiting.

The whole string of minor nightclubbing, major fighting and evil moustache-twirling of the moustacheless is held together by a soundtrack that is the tackier little brother of spy movie funk. For once, a lucha movie of this era and its soundtrack have something to do with each other. Well, if you ignore the women judoing to a bit of easy listening, that is.

Apart from all this, Mision Suicida is of course also full of the little bits and pieces of weirdness every lucha film needs to contain. And yeah, a masked wrestler working for Interpol just isn't enough of the "weird" for a film like this. Honestly, if Santo can build a time machine, he can also work for Interpol,  so scenes like the utterly puzzling (that is, filmed so that you don't have the slightest clue what's going on) shark wrestling sequence between Santo and something that might be rubber or a dead shark in a swimming pool or the over-complicated plans of our bad guys (who seem to have quite enough ready agents without needing the brain-washing at all) are absolutely needed to truly put the movie into lucha land, where it will forevermore proudly cavort among the other adventures of sharply dressed wearers of masks.

On WTF: Hairy Beasts! Santo Vs. Las Lobas (1976)

The month of hairy beasts continues when I encounter what may be the best film ever made: Santo vs. Los Lobas. It's not just a duel of the ages, but also a seriously strange, and very serious horror movie as they were only made during the 70s. The inclusion of Santo is icing on an already incredibly tasty cake.

My column on WTF-Film continues with the appropriate gushing, so you know what to do.

Technorati-Markierungen: mexican movies,lucha,horror,reviews,el santo,ruben galindo,rodolfo de anda,gloria mayo,carlos suarez,other places,hairy beasts

In short: Santo Contra La Magia Negra (1972/3)

In his part-time job as an agent of Interpol, most heroic masked wrestler El Santo (El Santo!) is given the mission to travel to Haiti and protect a certain Professor Jordan (Guillermo Galvez) and his new-found formula to transform uranium into something "worse than an H-bomb" from The Enemy.

As soon as Santo arrives, he is attacked by zombies. The local evil secret voodoo priestess Dejanira (Sasha Montenegro) - for inexplicable reasons called Bellamira in the subtitles - has thrown in her lot with foreign agents (as played by good old Fernando Osés and good old Carlos Suárez) and now tries her damndest to get rid of Santo, acquire the professor's formula, and dig up a lot of uranium.

Did I mention the Professor has a daughter played by good old Elsa Cárdenas? Well, you know what will happen to her in the end, though Dejanira does not use her to blackmail the scientist - she prefers her scientists zombified. Turns out dead people can do science pretty well.

In theory, the idea of El Santo, the idol of the masses, travelling to Haiti and fighting against zombies, an evil white voodoo priestess - there's a also good black(!) voodoo priestess -, and agents of what the dubious subtitles call "the orient", is one to let my heart beat a little faster with joy.

Alas, veteran director Alfredo B. Crevenna's film isn't the awesome pop cinema concoction I dreamt of. Rather, it's one of those movies where the film crew seems to have taken the opportunity of an international co-production to get in some choice vacation time - producing a film seems to have been a mere secondary affair. Expect a bunch of shots of Haiti, then another bunch of shots of Haiti, then a scene of Santo looking tired and bored, then a scene of a mock-documentary styled voodoo ceremony with a real animal killing (classy), then a minute of sped-up action, then Osés and Suárez being very relaxed, and then some more hot voodoo ceremony action, and so on, and so on.

I'm all for shooting a film like this on location and giving it a certain amount of authenticity and local colour, a sense of place, but Crevenna overshoots that goal with way too many scenes of dancing and the carnival in Haiti, until "look at this awesome place!" turns into more of a "let's take a long, long look at my vacation pictures!" situation.

It sure doesn't help that most of the actual action of the film is so pedestrian. Fights between a masked luchador and zombies just shouldn't look so damn disinterested.

On the positive side, there's some damn frightening 70s fashion worn by Montenegro and the horribly underused (yeah, I know, it's her vacation) Cárdenas, some Mexican-Haitian funk on the soundtrack (for once just possibly not library music), and at least half a dozen scenes that have the pleasant goofiness that is all I demand from my lucha movies - I'm especially fond of the zombie professor. It's just unfortunate that these joyful elements are buried under the nastiness of the unnecessary cruelty to a goat, and Crevenna's holiday videos.

 

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On WTF: Asesinos de Otros Mundos (1971)

What's better than a movie featuring El Santo? A movie featuring El Santo, two evil masterminds, and one or more very adorable monsters made of…but you'll see.

Asesinos de Otros Mundos has all that, and so much more. Read me definitely not containing my excitement in my write-up on WTF-Film.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: mexican movies,reviews,ruben galindo,el santo,juan gallardo,sasha montenegro,carlos agosti,lucha,horror,sf,other places

In short: Santo Contra Los Cazadores De Cabezas (1971)

An enemy of heroic Santo (El Santo) talks the chief of a large tribe of Amazon Indians into declaring a war of vengeance on the White Man (the heads of certain people will probably explode when they realize that the film's white men are all from Mexico). But before the chief can begin his war, he'll first have to sacrifice a very special victim to his gods. The chosen one is Mariana de Grijalva (Nadia Milton), a descendant of the conquistadores who nearly extinguished the Incans a few centuries ago. She's easily kidnapped by an Indian sleeper agent who has been working for her father for a decade now, and slowly, very slowly transported to the place of her sacrifice.

Fortunately for Mariana, her dad's best friend knows the glorious El Santo's secret radio frequency, and so the wrestler, Mariana's dad, her boyfriend and various redshirts and traitors are soon on their own way traipsing through the jungle (technically, it's probably supposed to be the Rain Forest - or not, but obviously, it isn't) to rescue her. Various dangers are to be conquered and a lot of walking ensues.

This is probably the most walking-oriented of all Santo films, keeping very much in the tradition of jungle "adventure" movies throughout the history of insomnia cures by being terminally boring. Director veteran Rene Cardona (senior!) really puts out all the stops when it comes to the walking. It makes up about sixty percent of the movie (boy, do I wish I were exaggerating). Even the traditional scenes of people pointing at library footage of animals are mostly replaced by it.

And because that's not enough walking, Cardona has additionally developed a very clever plan to get even more mileage out of it: the unlucky viewer is treated with scenes of both parties - the bad guys and the good guys - walking separately through the same patches of jungle. So the film goes something like this: first, the bad guys walk and walk and walk, then they exposit about the dangers that will threaten their pursuers. Then there's the walking, walking and walking of Santo's band through the same area, followed by about thirty seconds of Santo conquering the respective danger, and Santo and friends talking for three minutes about said danger. Then it's back to the walking bad guys again and so on, and so forth.

It would all be a bit easier to take if the film would at least spend a little time on the actual action, but Cardona films the scenes of Santo fighting a drugged caiman, a helpless leopard, invisible piranhas, invisible vampire bats, invisible electric eels and Indian ambushes in such a short and blandly perfunctory manner that it's impossible to derive any fun from them. It's as if the director is absolutely convinced that all this walking and talking about action that isn't happening is much more entertaining than anything else he could show us. I can't even excuse it with the usual lack of funds, because really - would Santo punching a group of mooks for five minutes instead of five seconds be that more expensive than Santo walking?

After fifty minutes, the film became so painful I even began to wish for some of the musical numbers and stage fight repeats most lucha movies use to fill up their running time. Hell, even Blue Demon reading from his books about UFOs would have been a delightful diversion from THAT DAMNABLE WALKING.

 

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On WTF: Mision Suicida (1973)

What's better than El Santo (yay!) fighting against Nazis? Why, it's Santo fighting against bikini-clad Soviet Nazi spies!

All this and more is featured in my write-up of the rather wonderful Mision Suicida on WTF-Film.

 

Technorati-Tags: mexican movies,reviews,el santo,spies,lucha,lorena velazquez,federico curiel,other places

El Baron Brakola (1965; rel. 1967)

Beloved hero El Santo (El Santo!), idol of the masses, is attacked by the manly wrasslin' vampire Baron Brakola (Fernando Oses) - please not to be confused with other vampires of similar names.

Santo just manages to fight the angry bloodsucker off, but he doesn't know what sort of problem the undead has with him (except understandable jealousy of the great man's awesomeness). Fortunately, the local wrestling ring's night-watchman Don Luis (Manuel Arvide) turns out to be an undercover night-watchman who took the job only to be able to a) protect his daughter and b) exposit to Santo when necessary. Don Luis explains that he and his daughter Silvia (Mercedes Carreno) share Santo's vampire problem.

In 1765, the then not completely undead Brakola proposed to Don Luis' ancestress Rebeca (Susana Robles). Rebeca found her suitor to be of rather disgustingly low morals and declined his proposal. Brakola was not the kind of guy who could take "no" for an answer, and swore bloody vengeance on Rebeca and her family for the slight. The family decided to put their safety in the hands of Santo's ancestor, the Caballero Enmascarado de Plata (not El Santo!). The Caballero was of course better known for wearing an excellent hat than for being an effective fighter against evil, and thoroughly botched his hero job. Brakola turned a full vampire, kicked the Caballero's ass, turned Rebeca into a vampire and then proceeded to kick the Caballero's ass again. The talentless hero's only achievement was to stake poor Rebeca and then scratch ineffectually at the door to Brakola's sanctum, never to be able to enter. At least staking Rebeca put the vampire lord into a centuries-long sleep and made him the problem of a more heroic guy with a silver mask.

Contemporary Santo has his work cut out for him: he needs to protect Silvia and Don Luis from Brakola, find Brakola's lair and end what his ancestor was to lazy to finish.

El Baron Brakola was the last film everyone's favourite luchador hero Santo did for Vergara Productions. Most of Santo's Vergara films have a peculiar mood, wildly meandering between cheap but loveable Poverty Row pulp shenanigans and utter strangeness, and Baron Brakola is no exception. Much about the film screams "cheapness" and "shoddiness", but unlike in too many of the great man's films of later years and production houses, it is a cheapness and shoddiness produced with a certain care and love. The film's rubber bats, and artificial spider webs might be obvious fakes, possibly just leftovers from larger productions, yet they are used with flair and love, effectively producing a sort of backlot gothic (thanks to Kenneth Hite's and Robin D. Laws' Shadow over Filmland for reminding me of that term) that is very typical for Mexican pulp cinema of its time.

The film's director Jose Diaz Morales isn't one of the more flashy of his contemporaries, and I suspect him to be more influenced by Universal's horror films of the 40s than those of the 30s, unlike many of his Mexican colleagues of higher profile. I'm not too sure I'd put the responsibility for this on Morales shoulders alone, though. It seems to me a rather natural progression in the Santo films, from the slightly more costly and very much inspired by Universal in the 30s films of his Filmadora phase to the less reputable Vergara films, and to the horrors (and delights) that were still to come.

Apart from an amount of bad day-for-night-shots that reaches surrealist levels, Morales is also responsible for some pretty great/strange uses of weird camera angles. Morales has a real thing for low shots where they don't belong and very long shots in action sequences paired with sudden random close-ups that isn't exactly a replacement for the expressionistic use of light and shadow I like in my Mexican black and white cinema (although there are a few moments of that here too), but that is always interesting to watch.

For once, the action sequences in a lucha film are something to behold. Lead bad guy Fernando Oses (who wrote, action choreographed, and wrestled the good guys in more lucha films than most people would want to imagine), is in especially good form here. His fights against Santo and the guy who plays the gormless Caballero are as wild, brutal and energetic as anything you'll find in lucha cinema and work very well with Morales strange style of direction.

Brakola is an interesting bad guy when one is more used to the less physical (I don't want to say whimpish) vampires of today. Brakola is a very hands on sort of monster, the kind of guy who poses as his enemy lucha god's wrestling adversary himself, instead of using something undignified like a robot henchman to do his dirty work.

Where many lucha films tend to stop and smell the roses of filler, Baron Brakola prefers to throw another action scene in. One could get the idea that the film and its director aren't willing to use its cheap nature as an excuse to be boring.

 

Technorati-Tags: mexican movies,reviews,lucha,horror,el santo,jose diaz morales,fernando oses

On WTF: Los Momias De Guanajuato (1972)

On WTF! See me ramble! See me get excited about just about everything, starting with undignified luchadores! See me talk lovingly about the director of the first Superzan film! See me use the made up term "pop & pulp cinema"!

 

Technorati-Tags: mexican movies,reviews,lucha,other places,blue demon,mil mascaras,federico curiel,horror,el santo

Santo En La Venganza De La Momia (1971)

Professors Jimenez (Carlos Ancira) and Romero (Cesar del Campo) have finally located the tomb of the Opache prince Nanoc. Both are eager to start an expedition into the jungly depths of Central America at once. They don't shy away from progressive decisions, like taking more than the one woman with them that the law requires. Besides secretary Rosa (Alma Rojo) - whose job "is of course to take notes" - there's also room for semi-spunky Susana (Mary Montiel), photographer and future love interest who will have some interesting things to say about the manly manliness of the most important part of the expedition, the great El Santo himself. Santo is of course responsible for the expedition's security and shows his talent for the job by throwing big kittens around, letting most of the people around him die and punching a mummy very hard.

The good Prince Nanoc is still rightfully pissed about being buried alive for a minor transgression of religious taboos (out of love!) and answers to people who trample through his tomb like the antiquity-destroying archeologists here do in the only language that's really fun on film - shooting them in the back with a bow and arrow. He's not one of those old-fashioned Egyptian mummies, so he does not only use a weapon, but is also as stealthy as Solid Snake and rather sprightly for someone this dead. Even sprightly enough to wrestle the idol of the masses himself. After Santo, who has obviously been hit too hard on the head in the long, long wrestling match (featuring El Rebelde!) at the beginning of the movie, finally accepts the existence of things like the living dead, that is - it's not as if he had ever met vampires or zombies or martian invaders before.

 

La Venganza De La Momia lies somewhere in the qualitative middle of the Santo films. Directed by Rene Cardona (senior, I suppose) with his usual lack of flair, but with relative competence, the film looks as if it had quite a budget: the mummy looks fine (and what does not look fine about it is very nicely explained away), the location shots have been made in something amounting to a real jungle, Santo is wearing swanky safari clothes (I especially like the ensemble with the green neckerchief he's wearing in the first half of the film), the actors seem to be awake all of the time and there's a real neat organ on the soundtrack. As I have already mentioned, the production could even afford two actresses with speaking roles. Also two times the odious comic relief in form of one of the professors (he's nearly blind! he's nearly deaf! hilarious!) and a "comical cook". These two are quite painful to watch but if one has seen the comic relief in Purana Mandir, one does not even flinch anymore when confronted with minor annoyances like them. So this is what happens when you don't have to provide a muscle car for your star.

The "funny"people are the only real filler in the film - unless you count fifteen minutes of stage wrestling - leading to a dapper pace of the proceedings.

I haven't got much more to say about the movie. It's not a mandatory Santo, but one of those pulp-friendly serial-like outings of our hero which are quite a bit of fun for those with a taste for them.

We are additionally treated to some choice dialogue and the most entertaining romantic sub-plot I have seen in a Santo film until now. And, you know, Santo punches a mummy.

 

Darlings of the Day:

"Any woman would be happy if a man as manly as you would love her a little."

"Sergio, bring the mummy to my tent. Prepare another tent for the ladies."

 

Technorati-Tags: mexican movies,lucha,el santo,rene cardona,reviews,adventure,horror

Santo Y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos (1969)

This is the sad and tragic story of the epic struggle between brothers; the tale of how their division touches the life of others, nearly ruining those poor victims in the process.

Or, you know, it could be the daft yet lovable tale of El Santo and Blue Demon fighting a bunch of monsters.

Otto Halder (Jorge Rado) was a classic mad scientist with the usual nefarious plans concerning dead bodies, other people's brains and world domination. Alas his - surely benevolent in the long run - plans were thwarted through the combined forces of his brother Bruno (Carlos Ancira), the Idol of the Masses El Santo (El Santo!) and his chipper little side-kick Blue Demon. Now Otto is quite dead. All this and more must have happened in the imaginary prequel to ...Contra Los Monstruos - unfortunately we don't get to hear many details. Be that as it may, Otto's story does not end with his death.

His assistant really wants his master back! I suppose life as a hunchbacked dwarf (and what a glorious combination that is!) isn't easy without a cackling madman around. So the good, ahem, fiendishly evil man grabs himself a bunch of his master's green-faced mind-controlled zombie slaves (!bonus monsters) and steals Otto's dead body, which he'll have revived faster than you can say "Igor".

But fret not! Blue Demon is on the case and soon breaks through the gate of the evil doers' castle ruin (which has an interior that looks very much like a bad cave set, but oh well) and...gets caught by the zombie brigade.

This is quite a happy coincidence for Otto, who can finally try out his newest invention, the  evil-doppelganger-o-matic 2000. It turns out the machine works perfectly and Blue Demon has reached another chapter in the disconcerting saga of his being mind controlled, copied or hypnotized to do evil things like hitting poor Santo.

The mad Doctor Halder is of course not a big fan of Santo's or his own brother and takes the first step in his campaign to kill the luchador and kidnap and mistreat his brother and niece.

The innocent victim is all the while occupied with the other Doctor Halder's daughter Gloria (Hedy Blue) who seems to be more than willing to try out a few kinky escapades with a masked man. A snogging cruise in Santo's swell cabriolet is suddenly interrupted by Evil Blue Demon and the zombie cohort. The following hoedown does not end too well for the forces of evil. Santo is still alive and well. Furthermore Gloria stays very much not kidnapped.

While Santo and the good Doctor Halder puzzle over the reason for Blue Demon's sudden attack (the Doctor proposes it to be a natural consequence of their rivalry in the ring - Freud would be so proud), the evil Doctor Halder sends his minions out to capture him some reinforcements. After some searching and a few minutes in his mind-control-o-mat, Halder's Army of Evil has grown to new size and quality through the addition of: a mummy (Hollywood variant), a bearded guy with silly teeth everybody just calls The Wolfman, Franquestain (who should be Franquestain's monster, but oh well), the cyclops we last saw in the epic "sexually irresistible Mexican singing cowboy versus aliens" flick La Nave De Los Monstruos (the big brained guy from that movie is also inexplicably and unexplained part of this masterpiece, just standing around in the lab, obviously the brains of the operation; !bonus monster number two) and last but certainly not least the Vampire, a skinny dude with bat ears, usually wearing a cylinder that miraculously disappears from shot to shot, who'll mostly proceed to hang on walls and be unable to catch Gloria for the rest of the movie, as much as he will run around with opened cape or jump like the kangaroo version of a Chinese hopping vampire (I heard revered horror icon Christopher "Dracula" Lee wasn't amused).

This army of evil now starts to attack random people in the countryside, until Santo's masterly detective work (don't ask) leads him to a lagoon and a little punch-out with the Cyclops (from the Blue Lagoon), ending with Santo's famed finishing move, the stake-through-chest rumble. The Cyclops escapes anyway and survives thanks to his master's surgical talents.

A little later the monster army attacks the good Halder's mansion. Santo is able to defeat the whole bunch who also fails in kidnapping Gloria again, thanks to a cross-shaped gravestone that just stands there in the mansion's garden. Revered horror icon Christopher Lee again does not approve.

Besides fighting evil, Santo has of course another job to do. There is a new wrestling sensation in town who challenges Santo to a match. His name is El Vampiro. Might this be a cunning plan of Santo's enemies? I can't blame Santo for falling for the trick - the Vampire's wrestling double doesn't look at all like the spindly guy whose playing the silly bugger the rest of the time.

When it looks like Santo would get a few very unattractive new puncture marks, Gloria's deus ex machina necklace with crucifix medallion comes to the rescue. Revered horror icon Christopher Lee doesn't even know what to say anymore.

The Vampire has brought his monster friends, though, and we are treated to a too short moment of the other attending wrestlers jumping into the ring and helping Santo out.

The monsters escape again, but Santo and potential kidnap victim number one are still alive and well.

In his copious free time, the vampire has created two attractive female vampires. The next evening (if evening is a time when the sun is standing as high as if it were noon, but everyone says "good evening") one of them waits for Santo in his swank car. He does not look very surprised, and why should he? Things like that happen to him every day, and he knows exactly what to do - drive the half naked woman into the next patch of wood and proceed to kiss her maskedly. Gloria certainly won't mind. Queue the next monster attack that again ends with a very much alive Santo. Revered horror icon Christopher Lee for his part has left the building.

We have now reached the point where some readers may ask themselves if this will never stop. Don't be afraid! There is just one more scene of Santo, Gloria, and her father staring blankly at hilariously bad fitting stock footage of a painful dance number, another monster attack in which the monsters finally manage to abduct Gloria and her father and then the glorious finale. Santo has cunningly managed to attach a tracker to Franquestain's jacket, and while Doctor Halder rants evilly at Gloria and his brother, our hero defeats Evil Blue Demon in a decisive beat-down and revives the real Blue Demon.

Together, the two punch back the monster army, set the castle on fire and walk into the sunset with the rescued Halder family.

Santo Y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos is the kind of film that nearly defies belief. It was obviously made by a bunch of cackling twelve year old mad-men that just didn't care about stupid things like facts. I'm speaking of the fact that they really, absolutely didn't have the budget for even a single good monster costume. Or the fact that their budget wasn't high enough for sets or locations that weren't some of the ugliest I have seen in a film. Or the fact that their movie's script lets the films of my personal nemesis of boredom where none should exist, Paul Naschy, look like art (and positively intelligent).

And you know what? They were right about ignoring these facts (and logic...and good taste...and my ability to know the difference between day and night)! There is not much in this world that beats the combination of stupidity and inappropriate enthusiasm ...Contra Los Monstruos just bombards you with every single moment of its running time. I was giggling like a loon while watching it, screaming things like "You can't do that! That's absolutely idiotic!" at the screen (and here I am wondering why I suffer from Insomnia), feeling like the stupid kid I never really was again. It was glorious.

 

Technorati-Tags: mexican movies,el santo,lucha,horror,reviews,blue demon