Santo Combate os Marcianos

i would put this Santo film as among the best with SANTO VS. LAS LOBAS & SANTO Y BLUE DEMON VS Dracula Y EL HOMBRE LOBO. there is a lot of action here in SANTO VS LA INVASION DE LOS MARCIANOS and Santo looks as though he is really going at it with wrestlers in the ring and the villains who are aliens from another world vaporizing citizens of Mexico with a 'third eye' on their hoods. you can hear Santo's grunts in the fight scenes. i saw this on DVD and the black and white here is beautifully clear and great direction by alfredo d. crevenna. the DVD cover is misleading since santo doesn't brandish a gun nor head to another planet. he does enter the martians' spaceship to whack off the aliens. and santo does some brilliant planning here.

1)before a match with a masked wrestler (who is the head martian that knocked out the original masked opponent in his dressing room), santo suspects that an alien (real life wrestler ham lee) is hiding in his dressing room. the alien vanishes, santo soon knows trouble is coming. since the match is decided by the loser's mask ripped off, santo dons a mask within his mask. santo meets his match in the ring, and sees his opponent with a large silver transporter belt meaning it is the martian. santo's 1st mask is ripped and then he pummels the villain until he disappears using his belt.

2)santo stages a wonderful plot of staging a match in a ring but no spectators. this is to lure the martians in and santo goes at it with 3-4 aliens at once and it is a terrific sequence. and this whole actioner is santo's best work despite the silly plot and what the aliens, male and female are wearing. i had a good time. if you raise the TV volume, the sounds of the bodyslams, the grunts and the martians' pinging are pretty loud.

Three-eyed, fit bodied Martian socialists want to the world to disarm their nuclear weapons, stop war, have the Earthling start a universal language, and everyone to love one another...or DIE. They decide to teach the world a lesson by conquering Mexico. They capture universal TV airwaves to voice their intentions, but thinking it's a new TV show, everyone laugh. But ElSanto, the masked wrestling superhero is listening as well and plan to out wrestle these commies..um.. i mean space aliens. They choose to send one alien to a soccer game to show the power of their disintegrating third eye. But Santo happens to be there teaching prepubescent boys how to wrestle each other for the benefit of defending the weak. When El Santo sees the alien, it's wrestling time. To tell you anymore would be a great disservice. Suffice it to say you HAVE to experience this camp classic for yourself in ALL it's glory. You WILL be wanting to search out each and every one of El Santo's other 57 films after you finish seeing this one. TRUST ME!! It's just that awesome.

My Grade:A

DVD Extras: 33 and a half minute interview with El Hijo del Santo (Son of Santo); 6 & a half minute retrospective on Santo; Biographies on El Santo & Wolf Ruvinskis; Santo Filmography; Theatrical Trailer, and trailers for "In Raw Flesh", "One's as Good as the other", and "Coming of Age"

Over the course of his long career, the masked Mexican wrestler hero Santo the Silver Mask (Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta) appeared in dozens of movies, including this one. A group of scantily clad human-looking Martians is planning to teach us Earthlings to live peacefully without nuclear weapons and if a verbal warning is not enough, they are prepared to disintegrate mankind completely. Besides their primary mission, they also intend to kidnap some elite individuals for research purposes, among them the righteous muscle hero Santo and a brilliant scientist named Ordorica (Manuel Zozaya). However, Santo is not easily fooled by the Martians' schemes: the strong alien men and their seductive women, who all go by names taken from Ancient Greek mythology, must work hard to achieve their goals.

The movie is clearly all about the heroism of Santo; the goofy plot is secondary to the numerous and endlessly long fight scenes where Santo gets to show off his wrestling moves while everyone else just stands still watching their friends getting beaten. Some of the wrestling is pretty fun though and the seductress-Martians' hypnotic dance number is worth seeing, so even if the acting couldn't possibly be any more wooden, there's plenty to like in the movie: the futuristic but crude spaceship set and the Martians' tight outfits and wigs look rather amusing indeed. I don't think it was ever supposed to be a serious sci-fi thriller in the first place, but seeing it now, it's pure comedy and recommended to any wrestling fan and cult movie aficionado.

This time round Santo has to battle with Peace loving Aliens, who descend onto the earth which a monstrous plan...world peace thru force(how sickening is that!).

Their objective is to make the planet speak under one tongue and destroy all national boarders and traditions, and if the earth does not succumb, then it will be destroyed. Charming. First thou they must chose a nation to make an example of, so they chose Mexico, which is a bad move on their part as they have never heard of Santo, the silver masked Hero of the Mexican Nation.

Santo has his first encounter with Argos (the lead alien) at a Baseball Park, where the evil Argos vaporizes stands of people and some children, he and Santo do battle , but he cheats our silver masked hero and vanishes into thin air.

The aliens are stunned by Santos strength and decide that the only way to kill him, is to cheat. After using some mind control techniques on two of Santos peers at the training gym they realise that getting rid of the masked Hero is not as cut and dried and they first believed.

Santo knows that these evil aliens must be stopped for the fabric of Mexico and indeed the world now sits on his shoulders to defend, but can he save the day?

The ridiculousness of this film is very funny, what automatically makes it less bad than other awful movies.

Though, even when you make a film with bizarre costumes, a silly story, and bad acting, at least one expects it to have internal logical consistency.

This Mexican superhero film, though, contradicts itself too much seriously (for example, just a touch is enough to teletransport a human, but the Martians who wrestle against Santo cannot do it with him; besides that, the first alien to fight Santo has a disintegration ray but does not try to use it against him, although having the hero as a powerful opponent, and only uses it against people who do not offer any risk to them).

Even the (excessively long) fight scenes are very bad (asslock, headbutt on the sphincter and other ridiculous attacks, with no visually impressive jump) and boring.