Santo en el museo de cera

This was my first masked wrestler horror movie and it blew my mind. I'm giving it an extra star because I recognize quality even if it's bizarre to me.

Half of it looks like a gorgeous forties horror classic. Half of it is wrestling. Complete matches of wrestling. My mind is blown.

My first Santo movie but definitely not my last.

Another of the world's worst. This is a product from Mexico and the hero is a silver masked wrestler that also is a crime fighter. The evil Dr. Karol(Claudio Brook)is not happy with the subjects in his wax museum. This is so horrible, it is funny. Also in the cast are Norma Mora and Ruben Rojo.

SANTO IN THE WAX MUSEUM (1963) **1/2 (D: Alfonso Corona Blake, Manuel San Fernando) Not bad as far as Santo films go. The masked man goes up against a mad doctor who kidnaps people and turns them into wax figures for his museum. Decent story, although (as usual) there are needless wrestling matches padding it. Similar to HOUSE OF WAX.

A year after making the very successful "Santo Contra las Mujeres Vampiro", director Alfonso Corona Blake once again was reunited with most of that film's crew and directed this new adventure of the famed Mexican wrestler turned Superhero. "Santo en el Museo De Cera" would be the title of this story that would continue Santo's image as a fantastic warrior that uses his wrestling techniques to help the police and fight against evil and criminals. Obviously inspired by the 1953 horror classic "House of Wax" (starring Vincent Price), this Santo adventure repeated the formula of action, mystery and Gothic horror with very good results, and along "Santo Contra las Mujeres Vampiro" remains as one of the best Santo movies of his early career.

In this movie, a series of kidnappings begin to occur near a very popular Wax Museum. After a reporter of an important newspaper disappears while doing research for an article about the Museum, all the clues seem to point to the owner, Dr. Karol (Claudio Brook). However, to everyone's surprise, Karol asks crime-fighter Santo (himself) for protection as he fears someone wants to kill him. While Santo accepts to protect Dr. Karol, he begins his own investigation about the mysterious kidnappings, and soon he'll discover what's hidden in the Wax Museum.

Written by Corona Blake himself (adapting a story by Fernando Galiana and Julio Porter), this film once again makes Santo a superhero similar to Batman, that can be called to fight crime (most Santo films were adaptations of comic books, where Santo the real life wrestler became Santo the fantasy hero). While this makes for a poor development of Santo as character (this would change in future Santo films), it makes the adventure itself the focus of the story, making "El Museo De Cera" one of the most atmospheric and captivating of them, as well as the one that gave Santo one of his best villains in his career.

Like in "Santo Contra las Mujeres Vampiro", the direction by Corona Blake is subtle but effective. A very visual movie, the mix of action film with Gothic horror sounds unlikely but once again Corona and cinematographer José Ortiz Ramos (who would create some of the best Bava-influenced imagery in Mexican horror) craft something that feels both haunting and creepy. It's not really a movie meant to be scary, but a movie meant to be enjoyed as a fun action flick with horror and creepy atmosphere as a setting. Despite the low budget, Corona Blake manages to pull off a classy final product that at times reaches the level of his previous Santo film, setting the bar high for future adventures of the masked wrestler (sadly, few films came close to it).

In this film Santo has an greater role than in the previous ones, although here he is still the superhero called to do fight crime. While not really his best acting, the script is cleverly built to not let his lack of experience mess with the film, certainly Coronoa Blake knew that his star was not Oscar-material. The whole opposite is Claudio Brook, who like Lorena Velázquez in "Las Mujeres Vampiro", becomes the center of the film with a terrific performance as Dr. Karol. With more than a subtle nod to Vincent Price, Brook creates a complex ambiguous character that at times looks like a villain, while at others is really a sympathetic man. It is his ambiguous nature what drives the film for the most part, making Brook's performance the highlight of the movie.

Like in most (if not all) Mexican fantasy films, the serious problem the film has is its really low-budget. While Corona makes the best that he can do with what he's got, at times the cheap special effects and the bad make up truly take away the feeling of the film. Another small quibble is that the film loses a lot of steam by the ending, as it becomes another typical film by the moment of the final confrontation. Still, "Santo en el Museo De Cera" is one of the better Santo films, as it presents an atmospheric movie with beautiful Gothic cinematography. Watch the subtitled version as like in most Santo films, the dubbed one is truly awful and doesn't give justice to the film.

Along with "Santo Contra Las Mujeres Vampiro", "Santo in the Wax Museum" is a great addition to a Santo collection, and another of the best films with Mexican wrestlers as main characters. It may not be a classic horror film, but it's an entertaining film with a great performance by Claudio Brook. 7/10

The luchador (wrestler) movies of the 1960s to the present are an interesting genre...and to the casual observer they might easily be dismissed as campy or bad...especially since the often involve wrestlers saving the world from various monsters and megalomaniacs...as well as aliens! Well, they are campy and bad...but also very entertaining. There's a lot to be said about this...much like the American horror/sci-fi films of the 1950s. Most of these also were far from great pieces of art...but folks enjoyed them...much like Mexicans enjoyed these wrestling films.

"Samson In the Wax Museum" ("Santo en el Museo de Cera") is most unusual in that an American production company, American International, bought the rights to it and dubbed the film into English. In addition, they inexplicably renamed Santo....here he's Samson*. I can assume this happened because American International also dubbed some Italian Hercules or Maciste films and renamed the character Samson in these films as well.

In this installment, the most famous Mexican luchador, Santo/Samon, battles an evil man with a wax museum, as Dr. Carroll is kidnapping folks and turning them into his evil army. The plot is a bit like "Mystery of the House of Wax" and "House of Wax" because the museum owner is turning living people into his wax figures or using them to kill, that's original to this film.

The quality of this film is pretty much what you'd expect from a Santo film, though its make-up is a good bit better (for example, the Frankenstein actually looked like Frankenstein). The only gripe I have about the dubbing is Samson's voice...it seemed pretty weird and nothing like his original Mexican voice. Enjoyable and a bit better than usual.

*Listen carefully when the wrestling match begins at about 25 minutes into the film. The crowd is chanting "Santo, Santo, Santo" repeatedly despite him otherwise being dubbed as Samson.