Doctor of Doom (1963)

Original title: Las luchadoras contra el médico asesino

Mexico City is in a panic: young women are kidnapped, only to be found dead days later with curious head injuries.

As we the audience learn early on, a masked and mysterious mad scientist and his helpers are responsible for the dastardly deeds. They’re not actually out to kill these women, but “only” need them as subjects for their brain transplant experiments. Alas, or so the mad scientist explains, normal human bodies are just too weak to withstand the awesome power of this kind of science, therefore the dead women. But unwilling sacrifices need to be made, right?

There only survivor (Gerardo Zepeda) of earlier experiments is slowly devolving into an ape-man, but is at least useful when it comes to fighting off the police. Not that those guys are of much use, mind you.

Somewhat fortunately, the villains’ latest victim is the sister of luchadora Gloria Venus (Lorena Velázquez), who, together with her new partner, US import Golden Rubi (Elizabeth Campbell), will involve herself in the investigation with rather more success than the cops.

For an early 60s lucha monster movie, René Cardona’s Doctor of Doom is rather surprisingly explicitly feminist in form and function, treating the female wrestlers as the same kind of hero you’d expect of their male colleagues, just having to present more glamorously while going about their business of fighting mad science and mad science’s products.

Though, again to my surprise, Cardona also portrays the kind of nonsense women have to go through El Santo never had to put up with, like having to romance mostly incompetent cops that talk as if they were solving the case while the luchadoras do all the work. There are some delightful reversions of lucha tropes here as well, like when romantic lead cop number one gifts one of those genre-typical radio watches to Gloria so she can call him when she needs help, only to be the one needing to use it to call her and Rubi to get him and his comic relief colleague out of a death trap. Also delightful is how sarcastically Campbell flirts with said comic relief colleague (while towering over him) – where the script might mean this as serious flirtation, the actress clearly doesn’t.

Apart from this inspiring and, again, delightful, feminist content, Doctor is the full load of everything awesome about lucha cinema, made at a time when the budgets where comparatively high, and really moody black and white photography was possible. Expect every joy of pop and pulp cinema you can imagine, treated with verve, a smile, and more than one good mad scientist rant, and delight as Velázquez and Campbell project a sense of fun not all of their masked brothers got, while also having much bigger hair.

The Brainiac (1962)

Original title: El barón del terror

1661. The Baron Vitelius d’Estera (Abel Salazar) is sentenced to death by the Mexican Inquisition, for crimes as varied as witchcraft, necromancy, seduction of married women and virgins and, ahem, dogmatism. Because the Inquisition is one to talk. The Baron’s ability to withstand torture while smiling mockingly doesn’t help his case, either. One Marcos Miranda (Rubén Rojo) comes forward to speak about the Baron’s character as a scientist (that one always goes over well with any inquisition) and a great guy, but all he’ll have to show for it are two hundred lashes and a still sentenced to death baron.

As is tradition, on the night of his burning, the Baron curses the judges who sentenced him, promising them that three hundred years hence, when the comet that just happens to appear in the skies right now returns, he too will come back and revenge himself on their descendants.

Mexico, three hundred years hence. The Baron does indeed return with the comet, though he has changed a bit. Now, he regularly transforms into an inexplicably bizarre and shoddy monster suit with a prehensile tongue to suck the brains of descendants and pretty women alike. The seduction part of his sentencing was apparently bang on, though his technique for seduction consists of staring creepily while an off-camera light blinks at his face. (“I feel scared when you stare at me like that. I want you to keep staring at me” are actual lines in the movie).

Given the baron’s predilections, is it any wonder he develops the monster hots for a female descendant of one of his judges? A woman who just happens to be the girlfriend of one Reynaldo Miranda (also Rubén Rojo, of course). Also involved are two terrible cops, but the less said about them, the better.

On a good day, Chano Urueta was able to make a movie like the brilliant The Witch’s Mirror; in an off-week, he made things like this bizarre gothic-influenced monster movie, a thing which recommends itself not by wonderful gothic atmosphere or a dreamlike mood, but rather its buffoonish bizarrerie, as well as its surprising number of bad hypnotized actor expressions, reaching from a bit sleepy to bug-eyed insane.

That is of course not a bad thing. I don’t think anyone who has any interest in classic low budget horror cinema from Mexico will rue watching this particular concoction. When you can’t gasp at the Baron’s toxically masculine bargain basement Lugosi shtick and every woman’s delight at being stared at creepily by this particular creep, you certainly will giggle and stare in disbelief at the monster costume, seen early, often, and repeatedly, looking like…something someone clearly has come up with for reasons inexplicable and potentially involving demonic possession, with its awkward tongue (that apparently function like a drill, though we neither see nor hear that) and its sweet tooth for brains.

Speaking of sweet tooth, the Baron tends to keep a luxurious looking bowl full of brains in his palatial living quarters at all times, typically in a chest or cupboard in a room he likes to invite the public into, so that every time he gets peckish and picks up his special long spoon to go for a bite without having to transform, he has to go through “suspense” contortions to get at the sweet, sweet brains. That this will be indeed be a plot point helping out our hero Miranda to understand that something's not right with the Baron goes without saying.