Wow. Um, OK. This is... or rather that is... Wow.
This was my first Mexican wrestler/monster movie. I've read about the genre and seen clips here and there, but this was my first chance to partake, and I must say I was truly not prepared. In strictly clinical terms, it's pretty whacked.
Santo, the Man in the Silver Mask, is one of Mexico's greatest wrestlers, and has starred in countless films, often alongside his fellow Luchador Blue Demon. In this adventure, Dr. Bruno Halder, a recently deceased scientist, is returned to the land of the living by
his hunchbacked midget assistant and a small army of green-faced zombies. The good doctor wants revenge against Santo and Blue Demon for some reason or other. To accomplish this he creates an evil duplicate of Blue Demon and revives a pantheon of classic movie monsters to do his bidding.
The monsters themselves are a wonder to behold. Frankenstein
(sic) sports the classic Universal Monsters look with a bad case of bed-head and facial hair presumably to add a Latin look to the creature. The vampire (not sure why they shied away from calling him Dracula) strongly resembles the John Carradine take on Stoker's character, despite a pair of ridiculously oversized bat ears. The mummy looks like an emaciated old dude who has had a tragic accident with a very large roll of gauze, while the wolf-man is little more than a befanged man with an overgrown beard. The Cyclops bears a slight resemblance to the Ray Harryhausen creation of the same name from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, but swap the awe-inspiring stop motion animation for a big guy in a foam rubber suit. There's also some little bug-eyed guy with an exposed brain running around Halder's lab.
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Article comments
1 - Viktor Kuprin
If you got a kick out of this Santo movie, you have to see Santo vs. Las Mujeres Vampiro (Samson vs. The Vampire Women), considered by many to be the best of them all. It's the one with the unforgettable wrestling scene where Santo rips the headgear off Black Mask, revealing that it's not a wrestler but a crazed werewolf/vampire ghoul sent by the sexy vampire babes to kill him. Remember the Three Stooges film where Curly goes berserk when he hears "Pop Goes The Weasel?" Perhaps this over-the-top Mexican movie got some inspiration from it. The wrestling ring is piled up with bodies before it's all over. It's a must-see! It's Santo at his best.
Viktor Kuprin