Hellish Spiders (1968)

Original title: Arañas infernales

The planet Arachnea appears to be suffering from something of a food shortage, particular when it comes to the proper feeding of its Supreme Ruler, a queen who just happens to be a giant spider with the voice of an old woman. Fortunately, the Arachneans’ intrepid explorers have found a nice space pantry - a planet its supposedly sentient population likes to call Earth.

Turns out the inhabitants of that insignificant little planet have exactly the kind of food the Arachneans need: human brains. By now, Earth, or rather, its cultural centre, Mexico, has been secretly invaded by the aliens, walking around in human form and making a list of the most nutritious human, to be kidnapped and eaten shortly, without even checking twice.

Fortunately for brains in Mexico and the rest of the world, wrestler and all-around champion of justice and not-eating-brains Blue Demon (Blue Demon) begins thwarting the spider aliens’ plans. He’s such a superior example of humanity, the spider queen even forbids her people to kill him with their death ray – he’s just too good to waste. Thus, the usual tricks of lucha villainy – paralysation rays, the kidnapping of sidekicks, smuggling the Arachnean champion Arak (of course Fernando Osés) into the lucha ring to fight Blue – have to suffice.

This, directed by the sometimes inspired, sometimes not, Federico Curiel, is the pure stuff, a great example of the joys of lucha cinema, and proof that Blue Demon is just as glorious as El Santo.

This doesn’t just have everything you may want from a lucha movie, but also very little of those things you’d rather avoid: there’s no comic relief character! Only mildly boring ring fights! And musical numbers are kept over there where El Santo sleeps!

Which leaves much space in the film for the good stuff: Blue giving a scientific explanation for the phenomenon of Spontaneous Human Combustion (“when there’s a neutrino imbalance, the thing or individual involved is ignited and it’s all over”) to his completely befuddled sidekick; Blue thwarting many an attack or kidnapping attack by wrestlers, I mean aliens, in pretty dynamic fight scenes; Blue casually solving cases for the police (as he regularly does, of course) in between wrestling matches; flying saucer effects that care not about your stupid tasty-brained human believability; curiously abstract alien base interiors that sometimes suggest you’re watching a really peculiar art film and not lucha pulp SF horror cinema; lots of brain eating; and a dude whose hand turns into a spider he then attempts to shove into Blue Demon’s face (which would be an illegal move in any wrestling match, if the referee hadn’t fled screaming).

If that’s not enough to make any friend of the adventures of heroic luchadores happy, let it also be said that Curiel may not have had much of a budget but a really good week when shooting this, so the film is actually well-paced, makes as much sense as this sort of thing needs to, and turns some sets – like that strange, strange spider alien base – into abstract-expressionist dreamscapes. It’s a genuinely impressive effort.

Also impressive, and pretty uncommon for the genre, is how much of the dialogue hits my personal sweet spot for the kind of pulp dialogue that nearly becomes a sort of unschooled poetry – there’s quite a bit of talk about humanity’s insignificance in the cosmos, and a lot of high-toned speechifying among the Arachneans who may not want to explain their plans to us humans, but surely have a great love for gloriously pompous announcements among each other. And who’d ever forget Blue Demon’s science lectures?

The Shadow of the Bat (1968)

Original title: La sombra del murciélago

Retired wrestler The Bat – El murcielago – (Fernando Osés) has quite the interesting life. Disgraced and crazed after a ring accident that left him disfigured, always wearing his bat-like ring mask, he’s dwelling in an old, dilapidated mansion that rather looks a lot like…some kind of…bat…cave with his main henchman Gerardo (Gerardo Zepeda) and a couple of hench-hangers-on. Despite being lit by torches, the place does at least have a TV though. Also, the Well of Rats and the Room of Bats. Still, a mad wrestler does tend to get bored from time to time, so the Bat regularly sends out Gerardo to catch him a beefy guy to wrestle with. Alas, Gerardo’s not very good at choosing victims, so nobody seems to even cause the Bat to break into a sweat; Gerardo also has the habit of murdering the wrestler’s involuntary sparring partners instead of just dumping their unconscious bodies in the city as he is usually ordered. Excuses like “I accidentally dropped him, now he’s dead, oopsie” seem to be a regular occurrence, making the Bat rather angry but never so angry as to convince him that all that kidnapping is a bit of bad idea, nor of suggesting the idea of replacing Gerardo with someone ever so slightly less murderous.

While hanging out in front of his damp cave TV set, the Bat watches a performance – certainly not the last one we will see in full during the course of the movie - of torch singer Marta (Marta Romero). She’s obviously the love of his life, so he decides to meet her and invite her to a nice dinner. No, wait, that would be insane! Obviously, he sends out his henchpeople to kidnap her.

Marta’s not that easy to catch, though, for her boyfriend Daniel (Jaime Fernández) is perfectly capable of fending off a less dangerous party of mooks. And when the next attempt at catching the Bat a singer looks as if it were to actually work, who just happens to drive by but everyone’s third-favourite crime-fighting luchador, Blue Demon (Blue Demon)!

Driving off the bad guys in his inimitable fashion, Blue then decides to involve himself in the case, helping to protect Marta as well as lending the police a hand in solving all the Bat-caused mayhem. And yes, there will be scenes of masked, be-caped, bare-chested investigative work before the climactic face-off between Blue and the Bat.

In a good week, Federico Curiel was able to direct a very fun and silly genre movie, and Shadow of the Bat must have happened in a very good week indeed, for this is a particularly fun lucha movie, the sort of thing that’ll leave people who love this kind of thing like me pretty breathless with enthusiasm about how enjoyably Curiel builds up this corner of the lucha-verse. It is, as you might know and/or expect, not just a place where masked wrestlers tend to be the police’s best friends, and the greatest heroes imaginable (cue half of the characters telling us how admirable Blue is, as if we wouldn’t see), but are also the best at pretty much everything else (except for remembering encounters with strange plants), and usually doing it shirtless, and often wearing a cape. In fact, I don’t think Blue’s ever not bare-chested in this one. But I digress.

As a director, Curiel is a particularly good hand at filming villains’ lairs, here having a lot of fun with the Bat’s icky, shadow-drenched cabinet of weird wonders, where a shaft full of rats for the punishment of crime-fighting luchadores or incompetent henchmen makes total sense. But the action seems to be of a better level than in most other lucha movies, too, with rather more dynamic staging as well as more creative choreography than can be the case in these movies. For once, there’s little ring-side action in a lucha film (hurray) – instead the film keeps the wrestling quota up with the Bat’s wrestling hobby, which integrates the lucha side of business a lot better into the actual plot than is usually the case, and even gives these scenes a bit of dramatic heft.

Another of the film’s strength’s is how fully it buys into the comic-book-like nature of the film’s oversized characters like Blue and the Bat (hopefully somebody’s new band name), and leaves reality in the most delightful way, while keeping to a logic of its own. So, for example, when Blue needs information about a peculiar plant connected to the crimes of the Bat, he’s not going to a botanist for his clues, but steps into Gothic horror land for a scene to visit a witch (Enriqueta Reza), which provides the film the opportunity to go through a whole awesome spiel of silly witch tropes.

The film is full of details like this. Another favourite is when Marta – who does of course eventually end up kidnapped despite Daniel’s and Blue’s best efforts – withstands a long and hilariously toxic masculinity 101 monologue from the Bat, who decides to punish her for not falling for his “your female softness will make me less crazy, love me or I’ll kill you, ain’t I a catch” shtick by imprisoning her in his very own lock-up for loves of his life. Of which there seem to be at least half a dozen at this time.

Osés, an important guy in the genre, and a bit of an expert in playing lucha villains as well as a regular scripter for these films, plays up the Bat’s particular brand of craziness rather wonderfully, making the guy bathetic, pathetic and physically impressive in a way that makes his somewhat peculiar lifestyle feel perfectly logical for him. Blue is, of course, Blue.

Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and the Wolf Man (1973)

Original title: Santo y Blue Demon vs Dracula y el Hombre Lobo

Four centuries ago, a wizard named Cristaldi thwarted the combined efforts of Dracula (Aldo Monti) and the Wolf Man (Agustín Martínez Solares) to conquer the world. Of course, there’s a prophecy saying the terrible duo will return from the dead (un-undead?) to take up their old world domination project and take their vengeance on the descendants of Cristaldi. Now (well, in the early 70s), a hunchbacked criminal and occultist named Eric (Wally Barrón) revives the vampire and the werewolf hoping for monetary dispensation (though he’s shrewd enough not to bring the topic up with the the two).

First, the undead and the hairy one want their vengeance, though, and make their plans for the most sadistic way to ambush and murder the contemporary Cristaldi patriarch (Jorge Mondragón), a professor of SCIENCE, his daughter, and little granddaughter, as well as his niece Lina (Nubia Martí). However, Lina just happens to be the (very, very young) girlfriend of the hero of the masses, international man of mystery and adventure, lucha champion, inventor of the radio watch, and all-around fighter for justice, El Santo (Santo). So it’s easy enough for Cristaldi to ask a competent monster fighter for help. For once in a Santo movie, some of his earlier movie adventures seem to have happened in the film’s world, and our hero doesn’t poopoo the Professor’s explanations about the supernatural threat. He is, in fact, all in on protecting the attractive young women of the family against evil.

Despite Santo’s presence, the Professor is taken off the board to only return as a zombie in the last act; the wolfman goes undercover as a man named Rufus Rex (I would have called myself Lon Chaney, Jr.) to woo the Cristaldi daughter, and danger threatens from all sides. It’s the sort of situation where even Santo needs help, so he calls in the redoubtable Blue Demon (Blue Demon, if you must ask), who also makes a good chess partner, as we will learn. Together, they just might manage to keep at least someone named Cristaldi alive.

In the world of Santo movies, Miguel M. Delgado’s S&BDvsD&tWM takes up an upper middle position, quality-wise. It’s not what people who aren’t at least semi-regularly watching lucha cinema like this would call a good movie; on the other hand, the film, for the most part, lacks the cornucopia of filler business that make up the greatest parts of the truly bad entries into the Santo canon. So there are no musical numbers, zero painful hours of comic relief, and most scenes actually fulfil a function in the narrative. Admittedly, there are three short wrestling sequences that have nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of what’s going on, but that sort of thing does come with the territory of lucha cinema and would be bizarre if it weren’t included. Even better, in a weird but useful decision, the final wrestling match takes place after the actual narrative of the film has ended, so the easily bored can simply skip it and will miss nothing whatsoever.

Before that, there would be rather a lot to miss, though, for there is a lot of enjoyment to be had. As always, there are wonderful sequences of our masked heroes going about their masked daily lives, resting their weary bones and brains with a bit of chess, all the while wearing most excellent casual 70s outfits – Santo’s are bit more man about town, Blue’s tend to the more sporty – like all the best superhero dreams come true. The villains’ plans are needlessly complicated, too, and the film knows it. When Eric asks the undercover Wolf Man why the hell they are going through the whole rigmarole of seducing the Cristaldi daughter before kidnapping her when a more straightforward kidnapping and murder would be much easier, the dog-faced one simply explains that this would be too simple. Which sums up the ethos of horror pulp villainy beautifully, and enables quite a few fun scenes of Santo and Blue punching minion wolf persons and a couple of gangsters, so I’m all for it.

The production design, apart from Santo’s wardrobe, is rather on the impoverished side, with wolf man make-up that looks more like dog-faced boy make-up, and not exactly the most convincing vampire fangs, and sets that – apart from the Cristaldi home – do tend to the empty. However, someone involved the production clearly decided that there needs to be some fun, mildly macabre, or strange detail in each scene, so the nearly empty cave set with Dracula’s and Wolfie’s coffins also has a fire breathing bat and wolf head, vampire women are dressed in red full-body veils (okay, probably just red lingerie), and wolf people apparently practice a variation on the Holmgang on wolf persons who run away when beaten by Santo as well as their enemies. There’s also a magic dagger that is apparently a moral philosopher. Consequently, there’s nary a scene that doesn’t provide at least some moment of delightful entertainment.

I also particularly enjoyed Dracula’s portrayal as a right prick with an inflated ego, the kind of guy who delegates killing his enemies to his underlings even when it’s clear it’s not going to work (after attempt number three or so), and a guy you can absolutely believe will watch his last underlings get beaten up by masked wrestlers instead of attacking with them.

In a surprise move for a Santo movie, this year’s girlfriend Lina is actually doing useful things beyond getting kidnapped, even saving our heroes’ bacon at least one and a half times, all the while comporting herself like someone with certain signs of an actual personality. Hell, there’s even a moment or two here where I can actually believe she and the big S are close, which isn’t anything I’ve ever encountered in any lucha movie before.

So, it’s all very good fun, at least if you can be seduced into Mexican monster mash movies with masked wrestlers.

Santo & Blue Demon vs. Doctor Frankenstein (1974)

Original title: Santo y Blue Demon contra el doctor Frankenstein

There’s trouble in Mexico City! A mysterious madman kidnaps women, who are never seen again. That is, until he decides it’s better to let the corpses of his victims return as radio-controlled zombies who then proceed to kill their families. The police are clueless what this is all about, but the audience is quickly introduced to the bad guy, one Irving Frankenstein (Jorge Russek), owner of a pretty impressive beard, and the grandson of the original Doctor Frankenstein.

Apart from striking terror into the hearts of men, he’s kidnapping these poor women to perfect his brain transplantation technique. Sacrifices (preferably those of other people) need to be made for science, and for…love. For Frankenstein has the frozen body of his beloved tucked away in one of the many chambers of his silver corridor-heavy (okay, it’s one silver corridor filmed as if it were a labyrinth of corridors, but hey) lair, keeping her fresh so she doesn’t die from the brain cancer she has been diagnosed with. Once his brain transplantation technique is perfected, he’ll just pop the brain of another woman into his beloved’s body and…honestly, I have no idea how that’s going to help, but Frankenstein must. He’s the mad scientist after all.

Anyway, up until now, his only successful brain transplant has been moving the brain of a “South African giant” into the body of a very buff black gentleman - or, “a black giant from Africa”, as the totally not racist Frankenstein as a character in a film with not at all awkward racial politics calls him – whom he now controls via brain radio and who is his secret weapon when it comes to evil-doing, seeing as he’s super strong, impervious to bullets when Frankenstein tells him he’s wearing a bulletproof vest (he isn’t), and about as fast as a snail.

That’s not enough to fulfil the good doctor’s second goal, though, taking over the world with an army of brain radio controlled brain transplanted supermen. He has another super body lined up looking for a new brain, tentatively dubbed “Mortis” (which will turn out to be one of Frankenstein’s favourite names), and he has called dibs on a brain that would add enormous skill, intelligence and experience to the Mortis body. Of course, right now, that brain is still safely tucked away in the body of the idol of the masses, the great, the heroic, the singular Santo (Santo). And you don’t just go and try and steal El Santo’s brain directly.

Fortunately, Frankenstein has a plan for that too. He’s just going to kidnap young bacteriologist Alicia (Sasha Montenegro), and wait for Santo to come to him. Alicia, it turns out, isn’t just another younger woman Santo has a bit of an undisclosed romance with, she is a kind of non-legal ward to Santo and his fellow luchador, buddy and partner Blue Demon (Blue Demon), who apparently promised their mentor/her father to take care of her (not that kind of care, Santo!).

So once Frankenstein’s henchmen do indeed kidnap Alicia, he has two very motivated luchadores on his trail. Who, as it turns out, make better archenemies than brain donors.

In 1974, the movie adventures of Santo and his fellow luchadores weren’t exactly at their prime anymore. The budgets, never terribly impressive, had clearly sunken into the deepest depths, and quite a few of the lucha movies of this era seem to consist of more filler than movie. Veteran director (ending his career with 140 movies in his filmography!) Miguel M. Delgado’s vs Frankenstein is certainly no exception to the budget troubles (it is a Calderón production, after all), but Delgado does not torture his audience with days of comedy – there’s only some unfunny business about the doddering professor who is Alicia’s boss – nor are horrifying musical numbers rearing their ugly heads. There are two overlong, rather boringly staged in-ring wrestling sequences to get through, but that’s the sort of thing every movie about a luchador needs to include, so complaining about it would be churlish.

It’s not that the film does not include filler, mind you, it’s just that someone involved in the production must have realized that an audience going into a movie about Santo and Blue Demon fighting Doctor Frankenstein (and the good doctor is indeed fit enough to get beaten up by Blue Demon) will be more interested in spending some macabre good times with Frankenstein going about his day, seducing brain surgeons into working for him by giving them his de-aging elixir, letting his computer (with lots of blinking lights, so it must be excellent) compute the right cutting patterns for his brain surgeries, and ranting. These rants are presented by Russek with great gusto, quivering facial hair, and the air of crazy delight every good mad scientist in a very pulpy horror movie needs.

Of course, as is genre standard, we also get a couple of scenes of Santo and Blue going about their day, charming ladies, be it wards or – and I quote – “beautiful police women”, having a nice ride in Santo’s sports car and so on, when they are not hitting henchpeople and radio controlled African Americans in the face.


So really, as a late-ish period lucha movie, Santo & Blue Demon vs. Doctor Frankenstein is as good as you can reasonably expect, pitting our heroes against a proper madman and his crazy science experiments, presenting enough extra standard lucha horror tropes to keep anyone happy, and generally going about its business with a sense of delight not exactly typical of this phase of lucha cinema. And if you’ve seen enough of these films, you might just get an extra kick out of Blue saving Santo’s bacon for once this time around.

Past Misdeeds: La Mansion de las 7 Momias (1977)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts without any re-writes or improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.

Sophia de la Garza (Maria Cardinal) is having a bad week. Not only has her father just died, but she has inherited quite a bizarre problem. Sophia's father, you see, was the reincarnation of an earlier de la Garza, who was governor of the town of Antigua Guatemala. 17th century de la Garza had made a pact with the devil that not only gave the horned one possession of his own soul but also those of the people he governed (which does not sound like non-heretic Catholic theology to me). Fortunately for them, the governor later repented, and managed to find some sort of loophole in his contract with Satan that leads to him being reincarnated in his male descendants and somehow being able to protect the souls in his care from his former master.

Unfortunately, de la Garza cannot be reincarnated as a woman and has no children beside Sophia. Sophia's only way to keep her father's soul and those of everyone else safe is to take possession of the treasure of the conquistadores that is another part of her inheritance and giving it to the descendants of the former slaves of the town. But before she can actually take possession of the treasure, Sophia has to survive three increasingly strange tests (the best one of which is about catching a rotating and biting skull), somehow fight the seven mummies guarding the treasure, see through the intrigues of three immortal servants of Satan and find out that her boyfriend is a jerk.

Fortunately, Blue Demon (hooray!) and his friend Superzan (boo!) have been invited by said boyfriend jerk to beautiful (at least that's what the film tells us repeatedly) Antigua Guatemala for a vacation, and are in their function as luchadores only too willing and able to help a damsel in distress out by wrestling a few mummies and evil boyfriends. Sophia's case is further helped by a mysterious mute hunchback and the painful comic relief stylings of a creature named Manolino.

As it goes with lucha movies from the late 70s that carry the frightening name of "Agrasanchez" in their credits, I went into La Mansion without expecting much worth seeing. To my delight, the film turned out to be rather more fun than I had expected.

Sure, Superzan is his usual charismaless void, and Manolino an abomination even compared to other cases of odious comic relief characters, about on a level with Bollywood's Johnny Lever, but that's the worst I can say about the film.

Apart from Manolino, there's all plot and no filler - and you could argue that Manolino isn't as much "filler" as part of a conspiracy to drive the viewer insane. Not even the usually unavoidable twenty minutes of ring fighting take place, a truly wondrous thing in a sub-genre in which the same four scenes have lengthened the running time of about ten movies. And really, why would I want to watch Blue wrestle anonymous wrestler number one when I can watch him and Superzan using an evil boyfriend to ram down a bunch of mummies, or a scene in which these heroes very matter-of-factly discuss the business of selling their souls with that most evil servant of the devil - a lawyer?

The film's background story is rather complex and involved - even more than my plot synopsis lets on - piling on so many weird incidental details that it's difficult not to feel charmed by them. There's also an undercurrent of guilt for the genocidal tendencies (which are only explainable by having them working with Satan himself, it seems) of the conquistadores and their descendants that's very atypical for Mexican pulp cinema as I have experienced it.

The plot does of course only work because neither Sophia nor the wrestlers nor Satan himself are all that clever, but I've never confused Blue Demon with Sherlock Holmes, so that's not much of a problem.

Another positive surprise is Rafael Lanuza's direction. Lanuza is also responsible for Superzan y el nino del espacio, one of the worst movies I have ever seen, so I didn't expect him to do any actual directing here. Turns out I was wrong, and while Lanuza provides some of his trademark shoddiness ("high" points: a frigging hand on the camera during parts of a fight scene, and the total confusion between day scenes, night scenes and day-for-night scenes, as if the sun and the moon were randomly teleporting around the sky), he also provides a lot of very comic book looking shots that suggest he did actually think about what he was filming instead of just vaguely pointing the camera into the direction of the actors.

Lanuza also makes good use of the locations in (beautiful, I tell you, beautiful) Antigua Guatemala. Picturesque ruins, a very pretty graveyard and a neat little swamp are much preferable to that field (you probably know which one I mean) half of the Campeones Justicieros films seem to take place in. From time to time, the ruins and some judicious red lighting even manage to look a little creepy, which combined with the usual alright mummy make-up and cute little Satan with his cute little horns turns the film into something close to a comics code approved horror comic on celluloid, with all the good and bad that description entails.

This is also one of those films with Blue - or Senor Demon, as most people in the film call him - in which he is the wise, older luchador to whom young and stupid Superzan looks up to instead of El Santo's sorely tried, and frequently brainwashed or evil-betwinned, side kick. In La Mansion de las 7 Momias, Blue is as much the hero as in his solo films, with pesky Superzan deservedly listed behind the Cardinal, who manages to look rather awesome in some dubious outfits, in the credits. As it should always be.

On WTF: La Mansion de las 7 Momias (1977)

I had surprisingly much fun with this Blue Demon and (unfortunately) Superzan adventure, which pits our heroes not just against mummies, but Satan (and his lawyer) himself.

In this particular case, it certainly helps to actually understand what people are saying to appreciate the silly over-complicatedness of the films plot and its rather interesting approach to theology.

If you want to know more, my review on WTF-Film will accommodate you.

 

Technorati-Tags: mexican movies,lucha,horror,reviews,blue demon,superzan,maria cardinal,rafael lanuza,other places

On WTF: Los Momias De Guanajuato (1972)

On WTF! See me ramble! See me get excited about just about everything, starting with undignified luchadores! See me talk lovingly about the director of the first Superzan film! See me use the made up term "pop & pulp cinema"!

 

Technorati-Tags: mexican movies,reviews,lucha,other places,blue demon,mil mascaras,federico curiel,horror,el santo

Los Campeones Justicieros (1971)

El Mano Negra (David Silva), evil mastermind and mad scientist, returns! Years ago, a team-up of Blue Demon, Mil Mascaras, El Medico Asesino, Tinieblas and La Sombra Vengadora put an end to his evil plans. Now, freshly escaped from jail, the fiendish tea drinker sets out to take his revenge. He has everything one could need: a lab which looks a wee bit as if it was situated in his mother's cellar (which is perfectly fitting - the Miss Mexico gala seems to take place in her living room), three nameless and talentless wrestling goons, the named and talented wrestler Black Shadow, and an army of midgets dressed in some very fine (and also very red) cape ensembles. It's even better - El Mano Negra also has a plan: after his first attempts to kill his archenemies fail, he decides to kidnap the wrestlers' goddaughters (yes, each of them has one, and of course each of the goddaughters is a candidate for becoming Miss Mexico). This will provide him with a fine way to get his hands on our wrestling heroes and also with "volunteers" for his hibernation and mind control experiments.

 

People who are much more knowledgeable of the lucha film than me have not been kind to this film, so I approached it with a certain amount of trepidation. To my surprise, Los Campeones Justicieros turned out to possess some unexpected positive qualities that made it somewhat endearing (it is also possible that I made my green tea too strong again and was intoxicated while watching, but oh well):

• The budget of this film must have been absolutely lavish for an Agrasanchez production: 6 wrestlers (the goons don't count), 5 motorcycles, a boat, a plane, at least 3 or 4 cars (one stolen from James Bond's kid brother), plus a horde of midgets equals an immense budget. The poor Agrasanchez people didn't even have enough money left to put filler into the film (except for a long, long, long waterskiing sequence - but what would you do when you had A BOAT for your film?)!
  
• The action scenes are rather enthusiastic (especially when the lucha film you have seen before this one was the Dr. Zovek/Blue Demon team-up) - the Agrasanchez Little People ensemble was seldom this good at throwing themselves at masked wrestlers.
  
• There is some kind of plot that could even be said to move along at something amounting to a pace. Even more bizarre is the fact that the script contains one and a half surprises - which I won't spoil here, of course.
  
• And then there's the music - someone locked a mediocre hard bop ensemble up, promising not to let them out until they had produced a soundtrack for the mighty Los Campeones Justicieros. That worked out nicely. It's not only the first time something as good as mediocre can be found in an Agrasanchez film, the music itself is also a true test of one's love for the lucha genre. If you are willing to watch a film whose musical accompaniment has nothing whatsoever to do with the things you see on screen and seems to consist of more drum solos than the drum solo portion of a Grateful Dead show but with less jugglers and fire-eaters, just because said film features masked wrestlers, then you are one of the truly devoted.
  
• The film also answers one of the burning questions of our time: Does a luchador wear his mask in bed?
  
• Also, there are lots of midgets fighting against luchadores

Honestly, this is rather fun. Did I mention the midgets and the masked wrestlers!?

 

Technorati-Tags: mexican movies,lucha,reviews,blue demon,mil mascaras,tinieblas

Dr. Zovek & Blue Demon en La Invasion De Los Muertos (1973)

A meteorite crashes down somewhere in Mexico! No! This isn't a meteorite! It's a spherical thingy from outer space that makes sizzling noises!

A father daughter/pair of not clearer defined scientists goes to investigate some old ruins in the mountains and/or the crashed thingy. Since this is a Mexican film, they'll need the help of an expert. Alas, no luchador is available, so they rope in Doctor (as the titles say) or Professor (as the dialogue and Internet sources say) Zovek, a famous escape artist who is also a proficient martial artist and expert in mystical prophecies. Also, he's really good at running away.

The last talent will be of invaluable help in the future, when the sphere turns the dead into zombies, who do kid-friendly (no gut-munching, sorry) zombie things, like shambling, shambling and wrestling with people who don't run away fast enough. They also have a weird proclivity towards the stealing of cars and helicopters.

Fortunately, conflict-averse Zovek isn't the only hero on the case. Blue Demon himself sits in a cellar/secret lab and analyzes the situation for people we've never seen before and will never see again. In his time with Santo, Blue has not only learned amazing facts about UFOs and the dissection of corpses, but also that it is much better to let someone else do the heavy lifting and just sweep down in the last few minutes to grab the glory. This would be a great plan, if not for Zovek's amazing abilities. Oh, Blue also has his own "comical" side kick now and I gotta say, this man knows how treat them! If Blue isn't just treating the man as if he wasn't there, he tells him to shut up or (even better) to shut up or Blue himself will shut him up. Thank you, Blue!

When his appearance on the scene of the action can't be avoided any longer, Blue wrestles a big black guy and a wolfman. No, I don't know where those guys come from. At the same time Zovek kills the alien sphere with a conveniently located utility pole. The end.

 

This might just be the case of a film with a much more interesting background story than the thing itself is.

Zovek was a real life escape artist and somewhat of a star in Mexico at the time. After our old friends, Senores Cardonas junior and senior, had made the first film of a projected series of Santo-esque proportions, they at once started out on the next film with their new superstar, his complete lack of talent or charisma notwithstanding. Unfortunately he died after completing about half of a film (and this is half of a film by standards of the not necessarily filler free films of the Cardonasses). Obviously, no good cheapskate producer could let this much material go to waste, so they did the best thing that was financial possible. They engaged beloved luchador Blue Demon for about two days of shooting, the first one consisting of Blue Demon boring us to tears by talking, talking and talking in his lab like a living encyclopedia of useless knowledge, while the second gifted the film with a fight scene having nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the film.

Or, let's be honest, what the regular watcher of late period lucha epics tends to call a film. See Zovek! See Zovek run! See Zovek climb! See Zovek look mystical (that is, rather constipated)! Also, see a few other people walk around! See zombies shamble!

Now I must admit I wasn't as bored as I make it sound. The casting of Blue Demon as scientific mastermind does have something and I must admit and one or two of the zombie scenes could be called atmospheric when you squint. Also, the film has zombies in it.

Highly recommended if you're like me and want some day be able to say: "I have seen all Mexican wrestler movies there are. Plus all Mexican escape artist movies, and the crossovers."

 

Technorati-Tags: mexican movies,blue demon,zombies,zovek,rene cardona,rene cardona junior,horror,lucha,reviews

Santo Y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos (1969)

This is the sad and tragic story of the epic struggle between brothers; the tale of how their division touches the life of others, nearly ruining those poor victims in the process.

Or, you know, it could be the daft yet lovable tale of El Santo and Blue Demon fighting a bunch of monsters.

Otto Halder (Jorge Rado) was a classic mad scientist with the usual nefarious plans concerning dead bodies, other people's brains and world domination. Alas his - surely benevolent in the long run - plans were thwarted through the combined forces of his brother Bruno (Carlos Ancira), the Idol of the Masses El Santo (El Santo!) and his chipper little side-kick Blue Demon. Now Otto is quite dead. All this and more must have happened in the imaginary prequel to ...Contra Los Monstruos - unfortunately we don't get to hear many details. Be that as it may, Otto's story does not end with his death.

His assistant really wants his master back! I suppose life as a hunchbacked dwarf (and what a glorious combination that is!) isn't easy without a cackling madman around. So the good, ahem, fiendishly evil man grabs himself a bunch of his master's green-faced mind-controlled zombie slaves (!bonus monsters) and steals Otto's dead body, which he'll have revived faster than you can say "Igor".

But fret not! Blue Demon is on the case and soon breaks through the gate of the evil doers' castle ruin (which has an interior that looks very much like a bad cave set, but oh well) and...gets caught by the zombie brigade.

This is quite a happy coincidence for Otto, who can finally try out his newest invention, the  evil-doppelganger-o-matic 2000. It turns out the machine works perfectly and Blue Demon has reached another chapter in the disconcerting saga of his being mind controlled, copied or hypnotized to do evil things like hitting poor Santo.

The mad Doctor Halder is of course not a big fan of Santo's or his own brother and takes the first step in his campaign to kill the luchador and kidnap and mistreat his brother and niece.

The innocent victim is all the while occupied with the other Doctor Halder's daughter Gloria (Hedy Blue) who seems to be more than willing to try out a few kinky escapades with a masked man. A snogging cruise in Santo's swell cabriolet is suddenly interrupted by Evil Blue Demon and the zombie cohort. The following hoedown does not end too well for the forces of evil. Santo is still alive and well. Furthermore Gloria stays very much not kidnapped.

While Santo and the good Doctor Halder puzzle over the reason for Blue Demon's sudden attack (the Doctor proposes it to be a natural consequence of their rivalry in the ring - Freud would be so proud), the evil Doctor Halder sends his minions out to capture him some reinforcements. After some searching and a few minutes in his mind-control-o-mat, Halder's Army of Evil has grown to new size and quality through the addition of: a mummy (Hollywood variant), a bearded guy with silly teeth everybody just calls The Wolfman, Franquestain (who should be Franquestain's monster, but oh well), the cyclops we last saw in the epic "sexually irresistible Mexican singing cowboy versus aliens" flick La Nave De Los Monstruos (the big brained guy from that movie is also inexplicably and unexplained part of this masterpiece, just standing around in the lab, obviously the brains of the operation; !bonus monster number two) and last but certainly not least the Vampire, a skinny dude with bat ears, usually wearing a cylinder that miraculously disappears from shot to shot, who'll mostly proceed to hang on walls and be unable to catch Gloria for the rest of the movie, as much as he will run around with opened cape or jump like the kangaroo version of a Chinese hopping vampire (I heard revered horror icon Christopher "Dracula" Lee wasn't amused).

This army of evil now starts to attack random people in the countryside, until Santo's masterly detective work (don't ask) leads him to a lagoon and a little punch-out with the Cyclops (from the Blue Lagoon), ending with Santo's famed finishing move, the stake-through-chest rumble. The Cyclops escapes anyway and survives thanks to his master's surgical talents.

A little later the monster army attacks the good Halder's mansion. Santo is able to defeat the whole bunch who also fails in kidnapping Gloria again, thanks to a cross-shaped gravestone that just stands there in the mansion's garden. Revered horror icon Christopher Lee again does not approve.

Besides fighting evil, Santo has of course another job to do. There is a new wrestling sensation in town who challenges Santo to a match. His name is El Vampiro. Might this be a cunning plan of Santo's enemies? I can't blame Santo for falling for the trick - the Vampire's wrestling double doesn't look at all like the spindly guy whose playing the silly bugger the rest of the time.

When it looks like Santo would get a few very unattractive new puncture marks, Gloria's deus ex machina necklace with crucifix medallion comes to the rescue. Revered horror icon Christopher Lee doesn't even know what to say anymore.

The Vampire has brought his monster friends, though, and we are treated to a too short moment of the other attending wrestlers jumping into the ring and helping Santo out.

The monsters escape again, but Santo and potential kidnap victim number one are still alive and well.

In his copious free time, the vampire has created two attractive female vampires. The next evening (if evening is a time when the sun is standing as high as if it were noon, but everyone says "good evening") one of them waits for Santo in his swank car. He does not look very surprised, and why should he? Things like that happen to him every day, and he knows exactly what to do - drive the half naked woman into the next patch of wood and proceed to kiss her maskedly. Gloria certainly won't mind. Queue the next monster attack that again ends with a very much alive Santo. Revered horror icon Christopher Lee for his part has left the building.

We have now reached the point where some readers may ask themselves if this will never stop. Don't be afraid! There is just one more scene of Santo, Gloria, and her father staring blankly at hilariously bad fitting stock footage of a painful dance number, another monster attack in which the monsters finally manage to abduct Gloria and her father and then the glorious finale. Santo has cunningly managed to attach a tracker to Franquestain's jacket, and while Doctor Halder rants evilly at Gloria and his brother, our hero defeats Evil Blue Demon in a decisive beat-down and revives the real Blue Demon.

Together, the two punch back the monster army, set the castle on fire and walk into the sunset with the rescued Halder family.

Santo Y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos is the kind of film that nearly defies belief. It was obviously made by a bunch of cackling twelve year old mad-men that just didn't care about stupid things like facts. I'm speaking of the fact that they really, absolutely didn't have the budget for even a single good monster costume. Or the fact that their budget wasn't high enough for sets or locations that weren't some of the ugliest I have seen in a film. Or the fact that their movie's script lets the films of my personal nemesis of boredom where none should exist, Paul Naschy, look like art (and positively intelligent).

And you know what? They were right about ignoring these facts (and logic...and good taste...and my ability to know the difference between day and night)! There is not much in this world that beats the combination of stupidity and inappropriate enthusiasm ...Contra Los Monstruos just bombards you with every single moment of its running time. I was giggling like a loon while watching it, screaming things like "You can't do that! That's absolutely idiotic!" at the screen (and here I am wondering why I suffer from Insomnia), feeling like the stupid kid I never really was again. It was glorious.

 

Technorati-Tags: mexican movies,el santo,lucha,horror,reviews,blue demon