Las luchadoras contra el médico asesino

After 30 years of masked wrestlers and just a few feature films starring the renowned Santo, somebody had the bright idea to duplicate those rasslin' moves with gorgeous gals instead of masked marauders in a short lived series of six films, kicking off with 1962's "Las Luchadoras Contra el Medico Asesino," better known in its initial dubbed US form as "Doctor of Doom," more recently granted the title "Sex Monster" perhaps in a nod to its 1968 remake "Night of the Bloody Apes" (Rhino's redubbed take from the 80s was called "Rock 'n' Roll Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Ape"). Like Santo, Lorena Velasquez as Gloria Venus and Elizabeth Campbell as the Golden Rubi are essentially two fisted action heroines right out of an old movie serial, the costumed and hooded villain conveniently identified as 'The Mad Doctor' having transplanted the brain of a gorilla into a human being, the final ape-like result Gomar (Gerardo Zepeda) kept locked in a cage for periodic feeding, and quite a meat eater. From there the MD decides that low IQ females should be his next targets for brain experimentation but they lack the stamina to survive the operations, guess who he figures will be next to be kidnapped? For the unenlightened the wrestling scenes that are so integral to the genre merely grind the picture to a halt, Gomar goes out on the hunt on just two occasions, the last dressed in an impregnable outfit impervious to bullets, finally disposed of when his brain is encased in the skull of a wrestling rival known as Vendetta, born to beat the tar out of Gloria Venus. The final reveal of 'The Mad Doctor' wouldn't surprise a 5 year old, who might at least find it amazing how much action gets crammed into an 80 minute running time, the most hilarious death trap a spiked wall that tries to crush its victims before Gomar can get them first. It's a novelty to see helpless males rescued by fist fighting femme fatales, lacking only the 'BAM!' 'POW!' later popularized by BATMAN, with one direct sequel for the same two leads, "The Wrestling Women vs the Aztec Mummy."