Santo el enmascarado de plata y Blue Demon contra los monstruos

Loyal hunchbacked dwarf assistant Waldo (Santanón) brings his recently deceased master, scientist Bruno Halder (Carlos Ancira), back from the dead. Halder proceeds to build an army of monsters so that he can take revenge on his brother Otto (Ivan J. Rado) and pretty niece Gloria (Hedi Blue), girlfriend of luchador Santo.

After Santo's best pal Blue Demon (Alejandro Moreno) is captured and cloned by the mad professor, and several attempts are made to kidnap Gloria, Santo steps in to thwart Halder's dastardly plans.

This film opens with a wrestling match, and is pretty much wall-to-wall fighting, either in the ring, or outside the arena against Halder's monsters: Frankenstein, Cyclops, The Vampire, The Wolf Man, The Mummy, the Vampire Woman, and assorted zombie henchmen. The creatures are an amusing bunch of monstrosities (especially Cyclops), but once the novelty of the many shonky monsters wears off, the film will hold little appeal for anyone but avid lucha libre fans.

4/10, plus a generous bonus point for the hilarious dance scene that looks to have been lifted from an entirely different film, and for the fact that Frankenstein had an electric vibrator stuck in his neck (that's what the subtitles said!).

The following review is an extract from the book "Santo, the Wrestler with the Silver Mask: A guide to all his films", which is now available on Amazon.

"In this part of the Saint we have condensed in just over 80 minutes the classic monsters of the cinema, all in a single film. Here, these beings are automatons without their own will, which at all times follow the orders of the usual mad scientist - an archetypal character of science fiction B movies in general and of Santo´s films in particular. The vampire and the mummy correspond to the usual aesthetics, and so does the "Franquestain" (whose name is written like this during the presentation in the credits), with its markedly "Karloffian" aspect. The werewolf, on the other hand, looks more like a bearded vampire, while the "cyclops" is powerfully reminiscent of the "creature of the black lagoon"; it is a scaly, amphibious beast with a single phosphorescent eye. We also have zombies (if the professor's greenish lackeys can be considered as such). One of them is characterized by wrestler "Caveman" Galindo. Another monster also appears in the laboratory, which although it has a secondary role, is striking: It resembles the aliens in Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks", a film that would not be made until 26 years later.

(...) It is curious the confusion between day and night in certain sequences. For example, during the car chase, one moment you see the daylight and the next moment it is suddenly night (!). Or when the entourage of henchmen of the mad scientist arrives at the castle with his corpse to revive it, they go in a carriage carrying torches... when it is clearly visible that it is daytime...

If up to now Santo used to be enraptured by an aura of mystery, by a certain intangibility, now there are shown moments of his private life: Like his courtship with Gloria (whom he kisses with the mask on!)"

This is probably the lamest installment in the "Santo" series, but that doesn't mean it isn't fun! Once again, the good and noble Santo must battle mad scientists, monsters and evil masterminds before their terrible plans to take over the world come to fruition! There's a mummy, a werewolf, a vampire and his seductive assistant, a hunchbacked midget, a really stupid looking cyclops and a pretty blond girlfriend for our hero to save from them all. There's even an evil clone of the Blue Demon! It's almost sacrilege to watch these two loyal buddies kick the crap out of each other!!! The plot is threadbare, the make-up effects are AWFUL, but who cares? It's all about Santo giving the smackdown to some bad guys, both in and out of the wrestling ring. There's no gore, no nudity or sex, just lots and lots of silly butt-kicking fun. In my opinion, there's no such thing as a BAD Santo movie. There's just cheesy, cheesier and cheesiest. This is the cheesiest, but that's what makes it great. Santo fans should NOT miss this one.

I have been meaning to give an El Santo movie a watch for a long time and now that I have finally done so I'm regretting not having done it sooner, this movie was awesome.

Any true lover of professional wrestling knows some history of Lucha Libre (Mexican wrestling) and the super-stardom some wrestlers had that transcended the business into the real of film. El Santo and The Blue Demon were two of it's biggest stars.

These Luchadors were superheroes in their own right and in tradition of American superhero things like the Batman TV series this movie was as cheesy as hell, but the right kind of cheesy.

Any wrestling fan, or even fans of B movies or cheesy superhero stuff, should watch this and the many other titles to these guys names. For the rest of you, you have no idea what you are missing.

Investigating the abduction of his girlfriend, the popular wrestler finds a mad scientist creating clones of his friends and using criminal's brains to revive a slew of monstrous corpses, forcing him and the real Blue Demon to fight them off to save her.

This was an unbelievably cheesy and thoroughly enjoyable Mexican monster mash-up. What really works incredibly well here is how well this manages to echo the greatness of the old Universal monster mash-ups this was clearly inspired by, putting them all together in a single film that really lets them do what comes naturally to them which is run amuck and cause devastation. That really allows for a frenetic pace here, since unlike a lot of these efforts it's got very little downtime, moving from one scene and confrontation to another rapidly and providing plenty to love about those fights. From the opening wrestling matches showing not only the women fighting but also managing to include the rather fun Blue Demon tag- team match as well and plenty of great fighting elsewhere including several rousing and fun battles with the evil clone that's quite striking for the brutality inflicted upon each other, this one generates a great deal of positives with this high-energy action. That also includes a pretty entertaining kidnapping venture that provides some fun and excitement when it delves into a thrilling high-speed car chase through the countryside, a series of encounters with vampires in different caves as they try to continue on with their organization plans and the uproarious amounts of cheese featured in them being able to collect and reanimate the various monsters and then letting them loose in the world. Those scenes of the creatures getting released and rampaging throughout the countryside provide it's cheese quotient most of all, as each of the creatures has a scene of them out and causing mayhem which are just so cheesy and fun they're enjoyable on any level and sets up the film's greatest part, a high-energy finale in the mad scientist's lair. It's undoubtedly the highlight here that's got all sorts of action not only from the rush on their hideout that has plenty of fighting, but also manages to go for finally bringing him out of hiding to join in on the rather cheesy brawling which really gives this a wholly enjoyable sequence. Coupled with the extreme, over- the-top levels of cheese not only with the monsters and the costumes but the simplistic storyline and special effects here that manages to make this one so enjoyable as there's not a whole lot really wrong here. Some of the monsters may look too much like a silly variation of what they're more commonly known for which really becomes distracting at times here. They look quite cheesy and not really all that threatening, much like the remaining special effects with the monsters' lab and the filming itself. The comedy as well may not work for everyone, but this is still immensely entertaining.

Rated Unrated/PG: Violence.