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: 357 Magnum (1979)

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.

(Don't be like an IMDB reviewer and confuse this with any of the other movies of this or a slightly different name!)

The members of the improbably named "Brigade 357 Magnum" of the police are disturbing the work of a syndicate of weapons and drug dealers only known as The Organization with a half successful raid on an arms deal with a Communist revolutionary group from a Central American country (whose boss, as we'll later see, goes for classic Castro chic). The Organization is not pleased at all, so the whole gang - boss, favourite moll and all - stuff themselves into two cars and shoot Tony Murillo, the leading cop of the operation, his wife and his little daughter.

The Brigade's boss Heller decides to invite Tony's brothers (Mario & Fernando Almada), who were once working for him, to resume their duties as cops and hunt down their brother's killers. The Murillo's agree and begin - quite to the surprise and dismay of the obviously not very bright Heller - to torture and kill their way through the lower echelons of the Organization.

Unfortunately, dead men don't tell you who exactly murdered your brother, so the Murillos decide they need to do some actual investigating for once. Nope, sorry, I was only joking - brother Danny Murillo convinces his girlfriend Barbara (Ursula Prats) to charm the Organization’s boss and go undercover for him. Barbara makes for quite a successful spy, as it turns out. The first thing she does once she's won the bad guy's heart by talking about golf balls with him is to deliver a list with the names of all of Tony's killers to the brothers as a vigilante to-do list. This is not the last good tip Barbara has for our cold-blooded murderers, I mean "heroes", but the action movie genre of course demands that her spying luck will run out sooner or later and the Murillos will have to rescue her between their killing sprees.

As far as cheap and stupid late 70s action movies from Mexico go, Ruben Galindo's 357 Magnum is a winner. Quite unlike the general tone and style of bored disinterest in themselves or the people putting down money to see them Mexican genre movies usually took on at this point in time, this one seems out to actually entertain its audience instead of emptying a production company's library of random filler material. There's not a single musical number nor a dancing sequence - with or without importance for the plot - in sight, and the film goes along at a somewhat sprightly pace. Galindo's direction might be a bit stiff (pretty much like the Almadas are), but at least he realizes that people go into a film called 357 Magnum looking for people shooting each other, and provides what his audience wants. Plus an Almada brother spitting in a goon's eyes and then hitting the blinded man (I imagine an Almada spits acid) in the stomach. That's all I could ever ask of a movie in this genre. Well, that and the inclusion of awesome library prog jazz funk on the soundtrack. Again, Galindo's film provides, unless in those scenes dominated by random, decidedly less awesome easy listening (that's what's playing in the villain's lair, ironically) or the library orchestra.

I'm really quite impressed by 357 Magnum's sporting spirit: where other ultra-cheap action movies are proud to show off the helicopter they can afford for a scene or three, this one only gets as far as featuring a very short guest appearance of an excavator and renting a golf cart for a day when it comes to the inclusion of vehicles more exciting than beat-up looking cars and boats. But by Gawd, a golf cart is a wonderful vehicle, and it's going to be used to full effect, and then used again! I'm only a little disappointed there's not a golf cart chase in the film. Now that I think about it, Galindo seems to have a bit of a thing for golf; that's at least my explanation for a film that includes hot golf cart action and sexual innuendo circling around golf balls. And believe me, sexy golf ball talk is still more erotic than the scenes of a track-suited Almada having the Hot Sexy Times with his decidedly younger, bikini-clad, hip-grinding girlfriend.

For the uninitiated (aka people who have seen less low budget movies from Mexico than I have, and therefore don't know the preferred hero type of the country at this point in time), the Almada Brothers are the most unlikely of action heroes: two short, physically unassuming, moustachioed guys at the end of their respective middle age; usually stuffed into grey partner-look suits here, they remind me of nothing so much as of a couple of used car dealers who have seen better days and on whose success in a fight I wouldn't want to bet. Thankfully, movie magic (just look at those punches never hitting anyone yet still knocking people out!), .357 magnums and dramatic staring into the camera are the big equalizers of action cinema.


Usually, this would be the point where I bitch and moan about the film's love of vigilantism and hatred of civil rights, but to do that I'd have to take it a lot more seriously than I'm able to. This is after all a film in which the Almada Brothers are unconquerable action heroes not unlike a combination of Stallone and Schwarzenegger, but in suits and way too cool to sweat and grunt like the Americans do. The film's so deep in the realm of ridiculous fantasy that it's quite impossible for me to want to analyse or criticize its politics. It's not as if Galindo seems interested in that aspect of his movie anyway; like the melodramatic scenes, the "boo-boo we poor cops have to respect the law" screeds are short and perfunctory and probably only in there at all because the genre demands it and there was no money for more than one golf cart in the budget.

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.

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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

On WTF: 357 Magnum (1979)

If there's one thing the world needs more of, it's middle-aged-car-salesman-look-alike-action films. It was 1979, and director Rubén Galindo agreed completely with that sentiment, so he grabbed exploitation veteran actor duo the Almada Brothers, and made a vigilante cop movie with them.

If that sounds like your cup of tea, take a look at my weekly write-up on WTF-Film.

 

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