Santo y Blue Demon contra el doctor Frankenstein

Lately, I've been watching a lot of Mexican luchador movies, as I've discovered quite a few with English subtitles on YouTube. You might wonder 'what are luchador movies?'. Well, luchadores are wrestlers...and for decades Mexico has been gaga for pro wrestling. So gaga, that they made many (perhaps a couple hundred, perhaps more) films featuring these masked brawlers as heroes fighting all sort of bizarro baddies. After all, Dracula, mummies, aliens and more are regularly seen in the films. And, of the many luchadores who made these films, Santo and Blue Demon were probably the most popular and they made tons of them in the 1960s-80s...and still make them today! Santo made 52 and Blue Demon made 26...but there were other famous wrestlers who also made many films, such as Mil Máscaras, Blue Angel as well as El Hijo del Santo (the Son of Santo).

These films certainly are strange and the production values are always suspect. And, they are all pretty bad when it comes to the technical aspects of the story....scripts, acting, direction and, especially, make-up. But there also is something charming and silly about them that make them fun to watch....if you don't mind watching such nonsense.

In "Santo y Blue Demon Contra el Doctor Frankentein", the duo fight the doctor...but not the original but the mad doctor's mad grandson, Irving! But Irving isn't trying to create monsters like his famous granddaddy. Instead, he's been kidnapping women and performing brain experiments on them...hoping to perform the first successful brain transplants on his long-dead wife! He also is intent on using his dubious skills to terrorize mankind because, well, it's a lot of fun! Can Santo and Blue Demon stop this jerk?

This film has a lot to it. In addition to the above plot, the doctor has created a man who is supposedly 20x stronger than normal and he also wants to transplant a docile drone's brain into Santo's! There's also the kidnapped girlfriend, the obligatory wrestling matches and fights galore with Blue Demon and Santo taking on the doc's minions.

So is it any good? Nah....but the production values of this one are a bit better than normal for a luchador film. Plus, it's funny throughout...though I doubt if the movie makers intended this! Fun and stupid all rolled into one!

* Considering how dopey this film is, I think Irving should have FIRST tried transplanting the writers' brains! At least then it couldn't have hurt!

Innocent women are being kidnapped and used as guinea pigs for a brain transplant experiment in SANTO AND BLUE DEMON VS. DR. FRANKENSTEIN. The diabolical Dr. Frankenstein continues his quest to perfect the brain transplant operation to bring back his deceased wife at any cost - even if it means paying with the lives of others.

El Santo and Blue Demon are called in to help when their friend, Alicia, becomes Dr. Frankenstein's next target. It'll take both heroes to go up against the dastardly doctor and go "mano y mano" with his super strong zombie, Golem.

The is a nice mexican movie with two masked wrestler as heroes. Very cool underground entertainment, like anything you ever seen in the genre. It is a curiosity worth watching!

After a series of disappearances, Santo and Blue Demon are called in to investigate and find that a deranged scientist has been kidnapping victims and using them in his anti-aging experiments, and after seeing their skills decides to upgrade the brains of his henchmen with those of the fighters.

Overall, this one was quite fun with a lot to like about it. The main aspect to like here is how this one manages to work the story together to feature a connection between everything. The idea between the scientist looking for the perfect female specimens and the need for bringing the luchadores into the storyline is a rather enjoyable one with the strange murders being committed by the girls and tying that back into the scientists'studies. His looking for the right ingredients to complete the super-soldiers for his world domination plans which leads him to the girlfriend might be seen as a lame coincidence due to her also being a scientist like him but that this causes the introduction of the two into a more personal stake in the storyline. With this storyline setup, the film's inclusion of luchador action and more traditional horror aspects comes off rather nicely. The opening attacks by the failed brain transplant victims is a great shocking scene, while the switchover into the first of two stellar tag-team wrestling matches immediately after is a fine switch into the more traditional elements of the genre. The hard-hitting brawls with the henchmen spread throughout the film or the police encounter with the indestructible henchman give this some more action scenes, setting up the outright fun to be had in the finale. With the attempted brain transplant and their escape requiring a mad dash through the stylish underground lair leading into the fixed wrestling match that ends this one, there's quite a lot to like with this entry. There are some big problems with this one. The main issue here is the rather bland storyline that keeps this one feeling dull more than anything. Most of this is due to the preference of focusing on the exploits of the mad doctor in his laboratory who's bellowing orders to his henchmen and explaining what his plans are. This is all handled very slowly and holds the tempo of this one back at the beginning with the lack of interest at what's going on, and that stands out even more with the laughable main plan that is expected to be carried out here. The prospect of asking the audience to buy the idea of what's happening with the anti-aging blood-serum and brain transplants is underwhelming and holds this one back significantly. The lower budget is apparent here at times as well, making for the film's few flaws.

Rated Unrated/PG-13: Violence.

'Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dr. Frankenstein' is one of the most enjoyable entries in the utterly bizarre Santo series. For those who don't know Santo is a Mexican silver masked wrestler cum crime fighter. He and his long time pal Blue Demon (Alejandro Cruz) are recruited by the local police to help in a perplexing investigation into a series of unusual murders. The evil genius behind them is none other than Dr. Frankenstein's grandson Irwin (Jorge Russek). The cigar chewing Irwin is experimenting with brain transplants and plans on creating a private army of radio controlled zombies and barks things like "We're beginning to lack fluid. Raise the charge of the transistors in the cerebellum to the max" and "They are wondering what I want to accomplish? If they knew they would pee their pants!". Santo and Blue Demon's bacteriologist lady friend Alicia (Sasha Montenegro) is kidnapped by Frankenstein's cronies in an attempt to resurrect his dead wife... or something like that. Believe me, it all makes some kind of sense when you're watching it. As usual in Santo movies there are a few wrestling matches, one of which is against Golem, an African zombie giant enslaved by Frankenstein who fights under the secret identity Mortis (with a mask - naturally!). My favourite bit in the movie apart from the Golem/Mortis scenes is a flash of a newspaper headline - "FOUR POLICEMEN TORN TO PIECES BY A STRANGE INDIVIDUAL. ONE OF THEM LIVED LONG ENOUGH TO EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENED". The Santo movies are pure entertainment, and if you haven't seen any, you're really missing out on something special!