Argos alla riscossa

In the late 50's and early 60's Mexican wrestling was flowing with renewed popularity. El Santo, The Man in the Silver Mask, was the most popular wrestler at the time, a true idol of the masses.

So somebody at some point decided to make "wrestling movies" transforming popular wrestlers into superheros (after all, they are masked and caped, aren't they?) and pitted them against criminal mobsters, evil scientists and in one occasion, a martian invasion.

Of course these movies are on par with the best (and worst) of B movies of the time, but this particular movie is considered an icon, receiving awards in Europe and Asia.

Today this movie would only inspire chuckles and outright laughs, but its a nice history lesson of the time when caped and masked men were in the imaginations of millions of Mexican kids.

You haven't seen fun camp and delightful cheese until you've seen an El Santo movie, and his match with a bunch of beautiful vampire ladies is probably his best.

Since Lucha Libre (Wrestling) is very popular south of the border, El Santo (or Samson, or The Silver Masked Wrestler etc) was the master of caped comic book heroes in Mexico back in the 60's. This movie boasts not only the typical Santo plot: a wrestling match at the beginning, a pretty girl being menaced by bad guys, a professor who knows how to stop the bad guys, a second wrestling match with a concealed bad guy masquerading as a wrestler trying to kill Santo in the ring etc., but it also has some cool old-school Gothic style undead evil mistresses. And some beauties they are too: Lorena Velasquez (a look-alike to a young Liz Taylor, except prettier) is the effectively sinister vampire queen who is looking for a successor.

It's a lot of late night horror movie fun, the kind the "live monster" hosts like Elvira and Vampira used to show. You can't help but love the stilted, translated dialog done in laughably out-of-synch dubbing, endless fighting scenes (the kind where people fall down even when a punch misses them by ten feet), a slowly unravelling master plot, and cheap special effects. This is a "must see" for fans of campy horror films.

A simple question...

How do you make a B- vampire movie more interesting than other B- vampire movies?

Answer...

YOU THROW IN A MEXICAN WRESTLER!!! Woo hoo!

To the creators of 'Samson vs. The Vampire Women', my hat goes off to you. Few people could turn a bad movie into a down-right deliciously horrible one so effortlessly. That is a talent in of itself.

The acting, dialogue, and storyline are recognizably trite from scene one, but the premise is still fairly easy to follow. Vampires + reincarnated vampire sacrifice + spooky castle = a vampire movie. Then... suddenly out of nowhere... a mysterious masked wrestler pops up halfway through the film. Why, you ask?

To stop the vampires, of course!

This is Samson the wrestler, and it's his destiny to conquer evil. He wears a mask, sports a shiny cape with leotards, and drives around in a convertible! "But why a Mexican wrestler for the hero?" Well... because it's never been done before! That's why!

I must admit, these laughably bad B- movies are really a guilty pleasure with me. You really learn to appreciate their sheer stupididty... so long as you don't take them seriously. In any case, I'd recommend this movie to anybody. You have to see it at least once to believe it.

It begs the question, "Who felt that this story needed to be told?"

1.3 out of 10!!!

In a dark mansion deep in the woods, a clan of vampire women awakes of a 200 year slumber to complete a cycle. Thorina (Lorena Velazquez), queen of the vampire women, must find her successor before returning to hell, so she sends Tundra (Ofelia Montesco) to kidnap Diana Orlof (Maria Duval), since she has the mark of the chosen one. Diana's father, the revered Professor Orlof (Augusto Benedico) has been waiting for this moment, and with the aid of his friend, the mysterious Santo (wrestler Santo himself), they will try to stop Thorina's plan.

This is the plot of the film considered as the best in the infamous Mexican wrestler sub-genre. "Santo Contra las Mujeres Vampiro" was the forth in Santo's career as an actor, and it sets the basis for his future films as his movies started to move away from the action genre and got closer to the realm of fantasy, horror and science fiction.

The wrestling sub-genre was a mixture of action films & superhero comics taking as main characters the famous wrestlers of the time. Santo was without a doubt the most popular of them, so he starred on a long series of films as a mysterious man devoted to justice. While in his earlier films he battled crime lords, soon he started fighting the supernatural creatures (mainly because horror started to be popular), and this film is the perfect example of that.

While this movie contains the typical flaws of the early Mexican b-movies (low-budget & cheap effects), it excels in other aspects such as the acting, and specially, in the beautiful Bava-influenced cinematography. The Gothic surreal look the movie has owes a lot to the Universal films of the 30s and the school of Mario Bava ("La Maschera del Demonio" comes to mind). The film has a visual composition that no other Mexican movie could surpass on a very long time.

The acting is very good for a movie of its kind, and the script, while very campy, tells a very entertaining story. Ofelia Montesco steals the show, not only with her stunning beauty but also with her powerful presence on screen; a presence only beaten by Santo himself, who with only a few lines but a lot of action demonstrates why he was the best. A word of advice, DO NOT get the dubbed version, since the awful dubbing makes the film a lot cheesier than what it already is.

Of course, as I wrote above, the movie's biggest flaw is the poor budget, resulting in very cheap SFX; also, the action scenes are a bit too long. On the top of that, it has dated badly and now it looks very kitsch. However, Santo's charm remains untainted and makes the film a jewel of entertainment.

With this film, Santo the wrestler/actor was transformed into Santo, the iconic cult figure; and his film persona grew to mythical proportions. While this is not an award-winning film, it makes an enjoyable experience and the best way to experience the Mexican wrestler sub-genre. 7/10

I mean the above as a good thing. Used for the last season six episode of MST3K, this Mexican wrestler film has good cinematography, an interesting plot, cool vampires... okay, so the girl's father has a goofy, dubbed voice and the wrestling scenes (one with a buff vampire!) might be tedious for some (like me). This movie has turned me on to Mexican horror of the 50's and 60's -- is that wrong?