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.

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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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."

 

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Dr. Zovek & Blue Demon en La Invasion De Los Muertos (1973)

A meteorite crashes down somewhere in Mexico! No! This isn't a meteorite! It's a spherical thingy from outer space that makes sizzling noises!

A father daughter/pair of not clearer defined scientists goes to investigate some old ruins in the mountains and/or the crashed thingy. Since this is a Mexican film, they'll need the help of an expert. Alas, no luchador is available, so they rope in Doctor (as the titles say) or Professor (as the dialogue and Internet sources say) Zovek, a famous escape artist who is also a proficient martial artist and expert in mystical prophecies. Also, he's really good at running away.

The last talent will be of invaluable help in the future, when the sphere turns the dead into zombies, who do kid-friendly (no gut-munching, sorry) zombie things, like shambling, shambling and wrestling with people who don't run away fast enough. They also have a weird proclivity towards the stealing of cars and helicopters.

Fortunately, conflict-averse Zovek isn't the only hero on the case. Blue Demon himself sits in a cellar/secret lab and analyzes the situation for people we've never seen before and will never see again. In his time with Santo, Blue has not only learned amazing facts about UFOs and the dissection of corpses, but also that it is much better to let someone else do the heavy lifting and just sweep down in the last few minutes to grab the glory. This would be a great plan, if not for Zovek's amazing abilities. Oh, Blue also has his own "comical" side kick now and I gotta say, this man knows how treat them! If Blue isn't just treating the man as if he wasn't there, he tells him to shut up or (even better) to shut up or Blue himself will shut him up. Thank you, Blue!

When his appearance on the scene of the action can't be avoided any longer, Blue wrestles a big black guy and a wolfman. No, I don't know where those guys come from. At the same time Zovek kills the alien sphere with a conveniently located utility pole. The end.

 

This might just be the case of a film with a much more interesting background story than the thing itself is.

Zovek was a real life escape artist and somewhat of a star in Mexico at the time. After our old friends, Senores Cardonas junior and senior, had made the first film of a projected series of Santo-esque proportions, they at once started out on the next film with their new superstar, his complete lack of talent or charisma notwithstanding. Unfortunately he died after completing about half of a film (and this is half of a film by standards of the not necessarily filler free films of the Cardonasses). Obviously, no good cheapskate producer could let this much material go to waste, so they did the best thing that was financial possible. They engaged beloved luchador Blue Demon for about two days of shooting, the first one consisting of Blue Demon boring us to tears by talking, talking and talking in his lab like a living encyclopedia of useless knowledge, while the second gifted the film with a fight scene having nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the film.

Or, let's be honest, what the regular watcher of late period lucha epics tends to call a film. See Zovek! See Zovek run! See Zovek climb! See Zovek look mystical (that is, rather constipated)! Also, see a few other people walk around! See zombies shamble!

Now I must admit I wasn't as bored as I make it sound. The casting of Blue Demon as scientific mastermind does have something and I must admit and one or two of the zombie scenes could be called atmospheric when you squint. Also, the film has zombies in it.

Highly recommended if you're like me and want some day be able to say: "I have seen all Mexican wrestler movies there are. Plus all Mexican escape artist movies, and the crossovers."

 

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Night of the Bloody Apes (1969)

Meet Lucy Ossorio (Norma Lazareno), female wrestler and her boyfriend Arturo (Armando Silvestre), manly cop. Lucy is having quite a bad day. During her last fight, she hurt her adversary and friend Elena (Noelia Noel) so bad, Elena has fallen into a coma from which she will most probably never awake. That is at least what Dr. Krallman (Jose Elias Moreno) says.

Krallman has troubles of his own, and while Lucy is fighting the mental block that prevents her from fighting with her full ability, the kindly doctor and his private assistant Goyo (Carlos Lopez Moctezuma) use the doctor's secret basement lab/operation room to find a cure for his terminally ill son Julio.

Julio needs a new heart and fast, so what is a father to do? Break into the next zoo, look at footage of an orangutan, shoot a man in an undefinable ape costume, call it a gorilla and kidnap it from the zoo of course. Then it's just a question of a little effort, some real world heart transplantation footage and the help of Goyo, who calls Krallman master and works as his trusty servant since the old man somehow saved his life, until Julio has a brand-new gorilla heart.

Julio is saved and all would be well if not for a small complication in the form of Julio's newly won tendency to turn into something I suppose is meant to be an apeman, escape his father's house and kill, mutilate and probably rape people.

Dr. Krallman seems not too surprised about this turn of events. He recaptures his wayward son and of course soon has a new plan - replace the gorilla heart with a healthy human heart and all should be well again. Elena is obviously the perfect donor, having no family and lying in a coma. So, faster than you can say "morally dubious", Elena is kidnapped, heartless and incinerated.

But Krallman's treatment is not as effective as he has hoped.

Night of the Bloody Apes (you know, I always thought "apes" means "more than one ape") would be a much better film if it wouldn't promise some things it isn't then willing to deliver. Wouldn't you think that a movie that spends a remarkable amount of time introducing us to a wrestler, showing us her fights and entertaining us with her traumata would then let the character do something plot relevant, like fighting the monster, perhaps? Think again. NotBA only uses her as filler material, nothing in the movie would have to change if she was a soap saleswoman. Nobody involved in the production understood how disappointing a decision that is and how badly it damages a movie that taken without the lucha angle could be a fine trashy monster movie.

Alas most of the film found me grumbling about its lack of monster wrestling action, barely able to appreciate the unnecessary and badly executed gore effects (produced for the American version of the film, believe it or not), the even more unnecessary authentic heart operation scenes, the weird dubbing or the total lack of sense the whole thing makes.

But one scene pierced the shroud of my indignation beautifully. When Elena disappears from her hospital room, a room full of doctors discusses, as if it was the most normal and obvious thing in the world, how best not to inform the authorities of their missing patient. The personnel is obviously easily dealt with, it's enough to tell them the coma patient was sleepwalking (as we all know sleepwalkers are wont to do).

The version I watched was the dubbed American version as found on the "Horror from South of the Border Volume 2" set, full framed and not to shabby looking with some really eye-popping reds in the color mix.

 

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