Las luchadoras contra el médico asesino

I recently (and reluctantly) posted a somewhat negative review of the Mexican classic BRAINIAC. Last night I watched DOCTOR OF DOOM and my faith has been restored! This is the kind of goofy fun I expect from old south of the border exploitation films. A mad scientist kidnaps women for brain transplant experiments! His henchman is a hulking guy with a gorilla brain in his skull! The detectives are trapped in one of those rooms with spiked walls that close in on you! Wrestling women who look like Laura Petrie on steroids save the day! Oh man, it doesn't get better than this. I especially liked the detective captain's sidekick, a little guy one of the women refers to as a "five foot lightning bolt." He's actually funny and engaging. At one point he faces nearly certain doom and radios his girl friend for help. If she doesn't hurry, he says, they'll never walk down the aisle together. "Don't talk like that, small hero!" she responds, "I'll be there like white lightning!" I felt like I'd been drinking white lightning while I watched this. Check it out!

Mexican horror movie about a mad doctor who's trying to transplant one womens brain into another womens head but with no success. The doctor did succeeded with having a gorilla's brain transplanted into his servants, Gomar, head turning him into a semi-human primate. But somehow when it came to women to women brain transplants in the four times that he tried it all the women died on the operating table.

Coming up with the bright idea that the women that he's using in his experiment's are of low intelligence the doctor has his hoods together with a bullet-proof clad Gomar kidnap laboratory aid Alice, after taking out four Mexican cops. Alice also dies during the doctors transplant operation which convinces the mad doctor that what he needs is a woman of very strong body as well as mind, a woman wrestler. And who better to experiment on then the Woman's Wrestling Champion of Mexico herself, who just happens to be the dead Alice's sister, Gloria Venus.

Lots of action with Gloria and her tag-team partner Golden Rubi taking on the mad doctor and his gang of thugs and having little trouble kicking their a**. In desperation the doctor, who after having his face burned with acid in a fight with the two girls, get the woman wrestler Vendatta and has Gomar's brain transplanted into her head! This hair brained idea on the doctors part gave Vendatta the strength of a bull-gorilla. Now the doctor will use her to get his revenge against both Gloria and Golden Rubi in the ring.

Not at first knowing who she's fighting with Gloria get's the hell beat out of her by the zombie-like Vendatta with the mad doctor disguised as her manager giving her instructions, via his power of mental telepathy, at ringside. Golden Rubi spots one of the mad doctors henchmen in the stands watching the wrestling match and realizes, after almost twisting his arm off, that it's the mad doctor who's behind Vendatta and want's his super-woman to end Gloria's career in the ring.

All hell breaks loose with both Golden Rubi and the ring referee joining in the fight with Vendatta as she and the disguised mad doctor make a run for it only to be trapped on a water tower where he and Vendatta have no where else to go but down and give themselves up to the awaiting police.

The wrestling scenes which make up almost half of the movie "Doctor of Doom" are about the only thing that makes the film watchable. The suspense of who the mad doctor really is is almost non-existent. Since even someone brain dead, like most of those in the movie, could figure that one out almost as soon as they saw the mad doctor, minus his KKK-like hood, make his both grand and uneventful appearance in the movie.

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."

Doctor of Doom (1963)

** (out of 4)

Very silly but entertaining Mexican horror film about a mad scientist who is putting the hearts of apes into the bodies of females. When all of the females keep dying the doctor decides to use a stronger body, that of a female wrestler, and by doing so he plans on using her to kill a couple other female wrestlers who blew up his laboratory. If you're wanting some sort of art picture then I'd recommend several films by Luis Bunuel because that's not what you're going to be getting out of this picture. DOCTOR OF DOOM makes very little sense, the special effects aren't that special and the performances rank just above a middle-school production but all of this just adds to the charm. I think what makes the film work so well is that the pacing is pretty fast and there's always something crazy going on. It's funny hearing dialogue early on talking about how women are "too weak" to be experimented on and yet the doctor just keeps using them. He blames women for not being strong enough to live through his operations but then he sends his men out to get another woman. We also have an accident of the doctors, which is a half man, half ape creation who does the majority of the dirty work. You can tell that didn't have too much money to fix him us as he's just got a few patches of hair scattered around his body. In the English dubbed version we get some hilarious heavy breathing from the creature, which makes him more charming than scary. Then, of course, you have the downright silly wrestling scenes that add nothing and I'm still trying to figure out why they were so important in the first place. Naturally these must have been very popular in the day but today it just comes off rather silly and childish. While there's no tension or drama, the director at least keeps the pace rather fast and it's funny seeing the various ways that the story changes for no reason or watching things happen, which couldn't have possibly happened. Just check out the highlight when a couple cops are about to be smashed to death in a secret room (think THE RAVEN torture trap) and the wall is just a foot or so away from them. They use their watches to call out for help and the female wrestlers, in a different location, have time to drive to them, walk around the house slowly and then finally track them down. Seeing this scene play out is a non-stop laugh and one of the reasons the film remains entertaining.

A mad doctor is running amok on the backlot of Azteca Studios. He has successfully transplanted the brain of a gorilla into the body a male human, who has developed an un-gorilla-like taste for raw meat and is sporting thick hunks of glued-on fur on his back and arms. Now the Mad Doctor seeks---for reasons naturally unexplained--to transplant a female human brain into the body of another female human. Along the way, the Mad Doc--accompanied by his evil henchmen and the ape-man--botches several transplant attempts, and earns the wrath of babe-a-licious luchadora champeen Gloria Venus (after he offs her chemist sister in a brain-swap-gone-bad) and her police detective boyfriend.

So why's the Doc goin' to all this trouble? Perhaps he wants a companion for Gorilla Boy? Heck, we don't know, but it's the setup for the rest of the picture, which is one of the most humorous and high-spirited of the Mexican Wrestling genre. As with most K. Gordon Murray Mexi-horror fare, the dubbing is always awkward, and often hilarious, though the actors seem to be enjoying themselves (especially Mad Doc, who gets to chew major scenery for the last half hour), and the direction by Rene Cardona the Elder gets progressively tighter as the film progresses--this is one of the few Mexi-Horror flicks that actually gets better the longer you watch it. There are at least two "trick" endings, a wild plot twist in the last 15 minutes (an evil lady wrestler with a gorilla's brain? Nah), and a predictably ludicrous ending. The only caveat to offer is the tampering with the soundtrack, presumably by Johnny Legend. For a couple of fight scenes---maybe 10 minutes in all--the delightfully cheesy original score is dubbed out in favor of some tepid late-'80s Rockabilly Twang music. It's not too distracting, but you have to wonder the anyone even bothered in the first place. But if you're an aficionado of Mexi-Horror or Wrestling Pictures, you will want to check out this film. It was the first of the "Wrestling Women" series, and one of the most successful. Forty years later, it's easy to see why