Santo el enmascarado de plata y Blue Demon contra los monstruos

In this story, our hero Santo, called "Sampson" in English, must wrestle against an array of monsters:

(1) Frankenstein's Monster, complete with neck bolts (2) The Wolfman (3) Dracula, escorted by fanged female helpers (4) The Creature from the Black Lagoon (5) The Mummy

The monsters are controlled by a mad scientist (what else?), whose laboratory is located in an old castle. As expected, the scientist is rotten to the core and has all kinds of evil schemes in the works. The monsters and laboratory look great - all classic horror movie stuff!

Poor Santo is way outnumbered. Fortunately, the monsters can only come out at night (even though it often looks like daytime, at least to this viewer).

How can Santo defeat the monsters and stop the scientist?? You will have to watch the movie to find out!

Great fun.

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.

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 blissfully bonkers, far from formulaic Santo Luchador adventure erupts luridly across the shock- scintillated screen like some phantasmagorical psychotronic fever dream brought to hyperbolic life! The creature feature to end ALL creature features has the indomitable silver masked champion of the underdog dangerously embroiled in one of his most monstrously bizarre mysteries!

After the dead professor, Halder (Carlos Ancira) returns to life via technologies Satanic, he proceeds to maniacally perpetrate a singularly strange reign of monster-infested terror that almost proves too much for, Santo and his loyal criminal crushing compatriot, Blue Demon to handle! Like a lurid horror comic brought to screaming life,'Santo el enmascarado de plata y Blue Demon contra los monstruos' boisterously delivers all the slam bang entertainment one expects, along with an electrifying surge of high-voltaged monster mashing mayhem! The garish sets, eye-boggling make-up, exquisite implausibility, and the dynamic drop-kicking do-gooders rowdy fighting prowess excitingly guarantees another cinematic squall of exemplary Blue Demon & Santo B-movie entertainment!

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!).