From the Lucha Diaries Vaults: La Invasion de los Muertos (Mexico, 1973)

[Yes, it’s true! The Lucha Diaries is a site dedicated entirely to reviewing classic Mexican wrestling films. If the below example ignites your curiosity, its welcoming maw awaits you.]

The art of filmmaking sure has changed in the last forty years. Take La Invasion de los Muertos, for instance. It was originally intended to be the sequel to El Increible Profesor Zovek, but then Zovek went and got himself killed during a break in filming. If that had happened in this day and age, the producers would have simply created some kind of creepy virtual robot or something to finish Zovek's scenes and nobody who didn't pay attention to the news or care whether or not Zovek was dead would be the wiser.

The producers of La Invasion de los Muertos, however, not having access to that kind of technology, had no choice but to insert a bunch of unrelated footage of Blue Demon standing around in what looks like the boiler room beneath a suburban high school and talking on and on at people to fill out the picture. And the shocking thing is that that really doesn't make La Invasion de los Muertos that much worse. By which I mean to say that La Invasion de los Muertos is pretty fucking awesome.

The film wears its debt to Night of the Living Dead on its sleeve - but to get a sense of what La Invasion de los Muertos is like, you'd have to imagine Night of the Living Dead minus social commentary, realistic characters, suspense, human drama, and gore, and plus a masked wrestler, a portion of Zovek's stage act in which he escapes from a flaming coffin, and comic relief. There are some effectively atmospheric moments -- a scene where Zovek battles a bunch of zombies in an underground cavern, the moment when the zombies first rise from the grave and shuffle en masse through the cemetery -- but the scenes with Blue Demon serve to pretty much scuttle any chance of there being any kind of consistent tone.

It's understandable why the producers turned to Blue in their hour of need -- seeing as he seemed to be pretty much game for anything that was thrown his way -- but why they then chose to use him as little more than a talking head is somewhat mysterious. From what we see, it's as if Blue has moved beyond using his fists and has resolved to subdue his enemies by simply boring them into unconsciousness.

A typical scene (keeping in mind that I had no idea of what was actually being said) will have some official type person coming into the boiler room and reporting some event to Blue, after which Blue will begin to talk, and talk, and talk while we alternately cut to shots of the official looking like he's battling both confusion and the sudden urge to take a nap and Blue's comic relief sidekick mugging and grimacing furiously. (And that comic relief sidekick really represents an impressive low point in the genre, seeing as he can best be described as a Carlos Suarez wannabe.)

The apparent desperation to pad out La Invasion de los Muertos' running time makes you wonder just what the consequences would have been for director Rene Cardona Sr. had he not turned in the film at feature length. Could it be that he would have been … killed? Well, that's the explanation I'm going with, anyway, because it's easy enough to believe that, somewhere behind the scenes, there was a gun to someone's head here -- and the price on that someone's head was the imperative that La Invasion de los Muertos be as much of a clusterfuck as was humanly possible. An entertaining clusterfuck, mind you, but a clusterfuck nonetheless.

From the Lucha Diaries Vaults: Las Lobas del Ring (Mexico, 1965)

Just my way of informing you all that I'm out of town this week and won't have time to generate any new content. For more of where this came from, please visit The Lucha Diaries.

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For their third outing, the Wrestling Women apparently decided they needed a break from grappling with mummies, brain-thieving mad scientists, and armor-plated beast men, and instead chose to take on a comparably more quotidian adversary. This would be Lorena Vazquez's last film in the series before she moved on to bigger and brighter things (well, she would next co-star in a couple of Santo's Vergara pictures, so maybe I should just say “other” things) and perhaps doing a Luchadoras film in which she abstained from punching any zombies was the closest she could come to bowing out gracefully.

In any case, the plot of Las Lobas del Ring revolves around a wrestling tournament that pits Loreta Venus (Vazquez), Golden Rubi (Elizabeth Campbell) and their fellow luchadoras against a team of unscrupulous woman wrestlers who will stop at nothing -- nothing, I tell you! -- to win. This focus on wrestlers wrestling makes Las Lobas del Ring a lucha film that's very heavy on the lucha -- and it’s an interesting choice, given that the Luchadoras series is one of the few lucha film series built around stars who are not actual professional wrestlers. As a result, we get a film where Vazquez and Campbell's chunky, unconvincing doubles get a real workout.

For unprepared viewers who come to the film expecting the usual smack-down between big-haired women in leotards and cheesy monsters -- finding instead just more big-haired women in leotards in place of those cheesy monsters -- Las Lobas del Ring will undoubtedly come as something of a wet slap in the face. It's really impossible to over-stress just how much this isn't a monster movie. Still, it's not like everything in the Luchadoras universe has changed; Elizabeth Campbell, for instance, is still inexplicably saddled with a grating comic relief boyfriend (He has to stand on a box to kiss her! Oh my sides!) -- though it's not Chucho Salinas this time around, so perhaps we should at least be thankful for that. Much comedy is also mined from the rich vein of mere women, both in and out of the ring, repeatedly beating the hell out of men. One member of Venus and Rubi's team in particular is shown happy-slapping her tubby boyfriend into a cowering stupor in scene after scene until he finally breaks a flower pot over her head... The End. (Seriously, that's how the movie ends, though I don't think that quite counts as a spoiler.)

Come to think of it, even if you are prepared for it (as I was) Las Lobas del Ring is kind of tough going. In its favor is the fact that it features Velazquez and Campbell, who are always engaging company. (It might also be of interest to Campbell fans for a brief moment where the gringa actress slips into English for a couple of lines.) There is also a somewhat rousing climax in which a group of the Luchadoras' wrestler friends storm the hideout where the villains are holding not just Rubi but also Loreta's mom (nothing, I tell you!) hostage. Still, it’s a good thing that the series got back on track with the next film, the cheesy monster-fest and wannabe Santo movie Las Mujeres Panteras, because seeing the Wrestling Women amidst all this ordinariness is mildly traumatizing.

From the Lucha Diaries Vault: Profanadores de Tumbas (Mexico, 1965)

A small room. A woman in a black leotard and fishnet tights go-go dances suggestively as two men play a classical piece on violin and piano. No audience is present. The woman smiles serenely toward us as she dances, the camera zooming in to focus on her hips as they undulate sensually, if incongruously, to the rather staid music. Suddenly the violin, under its own power, leaps out of the violinist’s arms, one of its strings dislodging and suddenly wrapping itself tightly around the violinist’s neck. As the man strangles, the violin dances of its own accord across the floor, then explodes. The woman screams. End of scene.

Now, if not for the go-go dancing, you might think that what I was describing above was a scene from some early surrealist film. And, in fact, with that and other scenes like it, the Santo film Profanadores de Tumbas could easily hold its own against the anarchic absurdity of classics like Bunuel and Dali’s Un Chien Andalou and L’Age D’or, to name just a couple. In addition to the killer violin, we’re presented with a scene in which a wig tries to strangle its owner and then continues to hop across the floor once it has been cast off. In another, a table lamp bleeds and drives its new owner, Santo, mad by flashing rapidly on and off and emitting weird sounds.

All of this lunacy is accompanied and complimented by the jagged editing, disjointed narrative flow and weird, minimalist sets that are typical of the four micro-budget features Santo did for producer Luis Enrique Vergara during the mid-sixties. Profanadores is the third of the these films, all of which were shot back-to-back within a period of roughly one year with mostly the same cast and crew (see also my reviews of Atacan las Brujas and El Hacha Diabolica and Baron Bracola.)

Profanadores de Tumbas is overall a bit slow and repetitive, but, like even the most mediocre of David Lynch’s movies, leaves you with some weird and unsettling images that stick with you long after the finer details of its plot have been forgotten. And to put an exclamation point on the proceedings, it boasts a climax that is absurdly violent, featuring bodies torn apart by machinery, thrown into boiling pits of acid and shoved face first into blast furnaces. Over the years I’ve catalogued Santo films both good and bad, but it’s very difficult to think of another that’s any weirder than this.

From the Lucha Diaries Vault: El Asesino Invisible (Mexico, 1964)

Life’s petty obligations have overwhelmed me once again, which means it’s time to mine yet another golden nugget from the retired flagship of my Internet empire, The Lucha Diaries, which is easily the most exhaustively misinformed catalog of Mexican wrestling movies online or on anything else. Disfrutar!

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Of all the lucha films in which classic movie monsters have made an appearance, El Asesino Invisible is the only one that I can think of that features the Invisible Man. There are a number of reasons why pitting a luchadore against an invisible foe is a bad idea, one of the most obvious being that Santo, Blue Demon and Mil Mascaras, for all their athletic ability, were not, as far as I know, accomplished mimes, and would have had difficulty selling the idea that they were grappling with a transparent corporeal being -- much less that they were walking against the wind or trapped in a small invisible box. Fortunately for us, the lead here is taken by professional actor Jorge Rivero, essaying the one-off role of El Enmascarado de Oro, aka The Golden Mask. (Unable to beat Santo at his own game, Rivero would go on to join him a couple years later as his co-star in Operacion 67 and El Tesoro de Moctezuma.)

El Asesino Invisible is the type of film that I imagine people are talking about when they refer to a movie as "an entertainment"; There's a sprinkling of plot, a bunch of musical numbers, a little romance, eye candy of both the male and female varieties, and, of course, a couple of wrestling matches shown in their entirety. The adorable Ana Bertha Lepe is the female lead here, and how much you like El Asesino Invisible will depend on how much you like Lepe (I do; she's adorable, remember), because she appears in several full-length song and dance numbers that are distributed liberally throughout the length of the film. Interestingly, Lepe is playing herself here -- or at least a version of famous star of stage and screen Ana Bertha Lepe who exists in a world where she might be stalked by a mad scientist with the power of invisibility -- which I can't help thinking was a move to compensate for the lack of verisimilitude that resulted from having an actor, rather than the "real" wrestler you'd typically see, in the masked hero role.

In a further concession to genre tradition, Rivero forfeits the romantic lead to Miguel Arenas' police detective character, and doesn't even appear unmasked until a very brief moment in the final scene -- an especially odd choice given Rovero's classic movie star looks. On the villainous front, the presence of the ever waxen Carlos Agosti in the cast once again makes a mockery of a film's attempts to create any mystery around the identity of its killer, invisible though he may be in this case.

On that point, I've got to say that the movie's invisibility effects, while not groundbreaking, are always competent and, in a couple of instances, quite striking; in particular the creepy "empty mask" effect when the killer tries to masquerade as El Enmascarado de Oro, and a bizarre, supernaturally-tinged moment when the hero sees the killer made visible as the reflection in a cat's eyes. I like to point out such technical accomplishments, because I've been troubled by some online reviews I've read of later luchadore films which seem to mistakenly interpret those films' shoddiness as being typical of the product of a backward, "Third World" film industry. The fact is that, at the time El Asesino Invisible was made, the Mexican film industry was the major provider of film entertainment for all of Latin America, was making its films for a worldwide audience, and had an established studio system that was a magnet for first rate technical and artistic talent from throughout the Spanish speaking world and beyond.

The real reason that those later lucha movies are shoddy is that, by the time they were made, the genre had fallen out of favor with audiences to the point where they were no longer an acceptable risk for the larger studios, and so became the provenance of smaller studios and independent producers looking to make a quick profit on as small an investment as possible. Still, I can understand how, if the only Mexican film someone has seen is, for instance, the first Superzan movie, they might not have the most charitable view of the country's film industry as a whole -- because that movie looks like it was made by some kind of cargo cult after some camera equipment washed up on the beach. (Hey, I'm not saying you shouldn't make fun of those movies; I'm just saying to be careful about the generalizations you make from them.) Still, even a glossy piece of fluff like El Asesino Invisible, which is entertaining but far from the best the industry had to offer, should serve to handily refute such notions.

From the Lucha Diaries Vaults: La Sombra del Murcielago (Mexico, 1966)

The below is just a small sampling of what can be found over at The Lucha Diaries, a grievously time wasting vortex of Mexican wrestling movie reviews and info, all coming to you courtesy of yours truly. Enjoy!

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The Blue Demon vehicle La Sombra del Murcielago is, like many great monster films, a tragic love story. On one side of its star-crossed equation is The Bat, a hideously disfigured wrestler who lives in a torch lit cave with a trio of slow-witted minions. Like his namesake, he's a strange animal. For one, the mask he wears is almost uglier than the horribly scarred face it's meant to conceal. It looks like a bat's face with scabs on it. At the same time, he's not without vanity, as can be seen from the bejeweled cape he wears, which calls to mind no one so much as Liberace -- especially in those scene where he rapturously hammers away at a large pipe organ (just in case the Phantom of the Opera references weren't already clear enough for you).

Ubiquitous lucha film go-to guy and all around good sport Fernando Oses essays the role of The Bat, and it's quite a broad performance, constantly careening the short distance back and forth between tortured contortions, hallucinatory rants and megalomaniacal tantrums. I just got finished raving about Oses in Baron Brakola, but in my mind right now I'm handing him an imaginary lucha movie Oscar for this one.

At the receiving end of The Bat's affections is Marta Romano in the role of night club chanteuse "Marta". We get to see Marta perform several numbers, and you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching Lypsinka. There's just something about her appearance (enormous wig, eye lashes) and mannerisms (histrionic, femme without being feminine) that scream tranny. Sadly, Marta doesn't return The Bat's affections, which is a shame, because they're both the campest things within miles. You'd think they'd want to support each other through the coming career dry spell, since Pedro Almodovar wouldn't be making films for another 20 years.

As it is, The Bat has no choice but to kidnap Marta and throw her in his dungeon so he can force her to watch him in rigged wrestling matches with the captive luchadores that his minions have wrangled for him. It's kind of like going to Phil Spector's house, except instead of the wrestling, he'd just make you listen to "To Know Him is to Love Him" over and over again. Fortunately, Blue Demon just happens to drive by at a key moment -- in a car with a broken tail light, no less (oh, Vergara Productions! Couldn't you have just cut corners with some more stock footage and at least given Blue a decent car?) -- and joins with Marta's creepy boyfriend to effect her rescue.

All considered, this is an amusing entry, with some odd hocus-pocus -- an old witch, a Mandrake root with boobs whose significance I couldn't quite divine -- thrown in to provide some color. It's another one where Blue doesn't show up until pretty late in the proceedings, but with Oses and Romano ravenously inhaling the scenery as they are, his absence isn't felt too acutely.

From the Lucha Diaries Vaults: Karla contra los Jaguars (Mexico/Colombia, 1974)

Karla contra los Jaguares was produced in Colombia, a fact which renders unnecessary the question of what its makers were smoking.

Okay, that was cheap and stupid. And inappropriate. Because Karla contra los Jaguares, for a low budget film starring a team of motorcycle riding luchadores in matching leopard print outfits, is not nearly as cheap and stupid as it could have been. Consider that, on the scale of motorcycle riding team of luchadore movies, it could have been on the level of either of the two Los Campeones Justicieros sequels, and it's very modest charms become a lot easier to appreciate.

Not that the makers of Karla had any more to work with than the producers of the Campeones movies, mind you. It's just that they seem to have made a somewhat greater effort to cover up for their budgetary shortcomings -- and that they show some sense of obligation to their audience to be at least a little bit entertaining, even to provide us with a couple semi-satisfying moments of cut-rate spectacle. The two heist sequences that the film is built around, for instance, are actually handled fairly well. And on the action front, while there is a midget, there are also karate guys and a small army of burly automatons to provide the heroes with some more equally matched physical opposition. Capping off this vaguely engaging display of base level competence is a musical score that provides everything you'd want from a cheesy 70s action movie soundtrack: psych funk arrangements, disco synths and goth metal guitars, all sounding very Italian and probably lifted from some giallo movie or other.

In what is beginning to seem like a kind of minor lucha movie tradition, The Jaguars themselves don't actually get called in to take part in the action until the movie's halfway point, and then with comparatively little ballyhoo. I kind of like how this lack of fanfare makes the whole business seem like routine procedure, as if sending in a team of unarmed masked wrestlers in leopard print briefs is just one of the many tactical options available to the police, and was, for some reason, in this case preferable to sending in the SWAT team. Still, I was left with a lot of questions concerning The Jaguars that I hope will be answered in the film's sequel, Los Jaguares contra el Invasor Misterioso. For instance, do they all share a house, like The Monkees?  We don't even get to see them in a wrestling match, for God's sake. 

As for the top billed Karla, the icy blonde villainess comprises, with her permed and jump-suited boy toy, a sort of pairs skating team of evil. It's not hard to see who's the top in the relationship, especially when the poor guy shows up with a giant sparkly "K" appliquéd on his shirt (some guys would get a tattoo, but whatever), and more especially at the end when she blithely elbows aside his bullet-riddled ass to board a waiting helicopter and make her getaway.

Seeing as it's playing to some markedly lowered expectations here, the only thing I found disappointing about Karla contra los Jaguares is that it contains so little that is truly atrocious. Given that, I had to make do with the architect's model Karla's gang uses to plan a heist involving the hijacking of a skyscraper mounted crane. It's frustrating, because all too frequently people make fun of the models used in B movies by saying they look like they were made by six year olds. But this particular model is made of construction paper and toothpicks, and I'm reasonably certain that it actually was made by a six year old.

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For more reviews of classic Mexican wrestlin’ movies, please visit 4DK’s sister site, The Luchadiaries!

From the Lucha Diaries Vaults: Rocambole contra las Mujeres Arpias (Mexico, 1965)

Judging from the costume worn by the titular hero of Rocambole contra las Mujeres Arpias, I'd have to guess that Rocambole is Spanish for "check out my junk". You can make your own call based on the picture that accompanies this review, but to me that emblem on his chest looks like an arrow showing us the direct route downtown.

For this and many, many other reasons, las Mujeres Arpias is a truly silly movie, one that I'm sure will provide lots of amusement for those who can put aside -- or revel in -- its backward gender politics. How could you expect any less from a film whose super hero sports a uniform incorporating a truckstop novelty tee-shirt? I only wish that Rocambole's sidekick wore a costume as well, so that he could have one of those sex position zodiac symbols on it.

Anyway, you've got to wonder what's up with this war between the sexes we see playing out in lucha films. We've so far seen masked wrestlers set upon by female vampires (both women and girls), witches, mini-skirted femaliens, just plain diabolical women, and now... harpies? In keeping with this spirit, Rocambole contra las Mujeres Arpias taps into female villainy at its very root, giving us bad guys who make a group of chorus girls literal slaves to their vanity by injecting them with a fugly-making drug and then bribing them to commit crimes with the promise of a temporary antidote.

Of course, not a one among these women -- even Rocambole's trusty girl friday -- is willing to sacrifice her beauty for the moral high ground, and so the harpies are born. To be fair, we're not just talking about run of the mill, every day fuglitude here, but rather the kind of full bore, mirror cracking, oatmeal-faced fugilaciousness that makes adults and babies alike cry in terror and confuses dogs into thinking they should bury the one afflicted. (Not to put too fine a point on it.)

Entrenched in the Wrestlers vs. Women film cycle as it is, contra las Mujeres Arpias sets itself apart from the pack by not providing male henchman for the physical tussles with the hero and instead has Rocambole actually slugging it out with the women themselves (or, in most cases, obvious male doubles in bad drag). These fights are actually quite brutal, and Rocambole -- not the nicest of masked Mexican movie heroes -- actually seems to be getting off on it a little bit. He just really likes to hit people, it seems, and it's a testament to just how thick the cheese is sliced here that this never manages to come off as repellent as it probably should.

Rocambole contra las Mujeres Arpias is one of those movies that skirts the margins of what can really be considered lucha cinema, and, to be honest, I'm mainly including it to mix things up. Rocambole, like Neutron, is a fictional character (loosely based on a 19th century French pulp hero, it seems), and, while his look and fighting style are similar to those of a luchadore, he's not presented as a professional wrestler. Instead, he's essentially a traditional super hero who, when he's not in his ridiculous costume, wows nightclub crowds as a stage magician who's sort of a one man Ed Sullivan show, punctuating the pulling of bouquets from his sleeve by exhibiting his skills as a ventriloquist, knife thrower and escape artist. It may just be a function of his troubling resemblance to Bob Saget that makes actor Julio Aleman's suave take on this alter ego come off as more smarmy than was probably intended. But it just makes it all the more enjoyable when he has to put on that stupid looking costume. It's like his punishment for being creepy.

Do I recommend Rocambole contra las Mujeres Arpias? Well, yes; just as I implicitly recommend any film that I don't specifically say should be avoided. Like a lot of these movies, it clearly has issues, but if there's a cry for help in there somewhere, I wasn't able to hear it over the sound of my own laughter.

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Check out more of my reviews of classic lucha movies at The Lucha Diaries!

From the Lucha Diaries Vaults: El Aguila Real (Mexico, 1971)

It’s time for From the Lucha Diaries Vaults again, which can only mean one thing. That little thing called “life” has once again stepped in and prevented me from watching any obscure old foreign pulp movies to review for you, thus forcing me to recycle old content from The Lucha Diaries to keep things rolling over.

For those of you who are new to this ritual, The Lucha Diaries is a site that I created a couple years ago in connection with my project to watch and write capsule reviews of as many classic Mexican Wrestling movies as I could get my hands on. Said project continued until I developed a rare, highly selective form of hysterical blindness that resulted in me only being able to see a static image of a crudely drawn vase of flowers whenever I looked at any movie containing Superzan.

So basically From the Lucha Diaries Vaults is a lot like one of those clip-based flashback episodes that your favorite sitcom used to air as mid-season filler. So much so, in fact, that we might as well frame it in the same way. So here goes.

RICHIE
Hey, guys! Remember when Todd watched El Aguila Real… and then WROTE about it?

POTSY
What a nerd!

JOANIE
I love Chachi!

THE FONZ
Aaaaaaaay!

Suddenly things start to go all wobbly as we FADE TO:

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So I woke up last night with this horrible idea that some Spanish speaking person might happen across this site and try to run it through Babel Fish or Google Translator or something, and that the resulting garbled interpretation would somehow make me look like more of an asshole than I am -- or, at least, a different kind of asshole than the kind I'm trying to portray myself as. I mean, those things might work okay with a site that's actually trying to dispense clear, practical information about its chosen subject, but when a site's subject is just a springboard for its author to engage in self involved ramblings and transparent attempts at cleverness, it's a different story. To reassure myself, I ran my review of Triunfo de los Campeones Justicieros through Babel Fish, translating it first into Spanish and then back into English, and got this result:

“I do not know the jails work. I am not elegant that way. But I think that they can work in the same way that the films of Justicieros Champions work. The fact that these films offer to equipment of the greatest stars of the masked fight, and it aspires, the marks he touching to say that they are less than the sum of his pieces...”

While it's true that I don't know the jails work -- and that may or may not be a testament to my inelegance -- this did not exactly put my mind to rest. There must be a solution to this problem, though none presents itself at the moment. Whatever I do, however, it's clear that I'll eventually have to get around to talking about El Aguila Real, as much as I want to avoid doing so.

My viewing of El Aguila Real represents another dip into the stinky troth that is Netflix's selection of Santo films. It's also a product of my recent efforts to plow through some of these lesser Santo movies and avoid the inevitable result of cherry picking my way through the catalog (i.e. that I would be left staring out across a dispiriting wasteland of lucha movie detritus with no remaining high points to break up the monotony). So far this campaign has put me in contact with the listless Santo en la Frontera del Terror, the alluringly horrible Santo Frente a la Muerte and the surprisingly not so sucky Santo contra los Secuestradores.

While those movies all had their small share of saving graces to put alongside their many sins, it never occurred to me in the case of any of them to think, "Well, at least it didn't have any animal cruelty in it!" El Aguila Real, on the other hand, can be summarized as follows: Boring bit, boring bit, footage of a real horse tumbling down a cliff, tedium, footage of a real cockfight, snore, snore, Santo forcing a house cat to drink poison, zzzzzzzzzz, footage of a real rabbit being shot, drool, snort, an eagle being forced into a burlap bag and slammed against a wall, boring, boring, the end. In other words, like a crazy alcoholic parent, El Aguila Real keeps waking you from a sound sleep for the sole purpose of traumatizing you.

Now, as far as animal snuff goes, I know that arguments can be made about artistic justifications for such material in some cases, but we're not talking about The Rules of the Game here. And if you are so obstinate as to doubt that fact, that you need proof that revered French auteur Jean Renoir did not in fact direct the Santo film El Aguila Real under a pseudonym, just ask yourself whether Renoir would have relied quite so heavily on the abysmal comic relief antics of Santo's manager Carlos Suarez as the director here does.

With it's singular combination of boredom and pointless slaughter, El Aguila Real stakes out a new frontier of Santo movie badness, one that actually serves to elevate other bad lucha movies. As a result, I am now forced to reevaluate Santo contra los Cazodores de Cabezas with a more forgiving eye, and may even issue a formal apology to Superzan. So thanks for that, El Aguila Real. In terms of plot, in can be said that the film offers a change of pace from other Santo films, in that it's basically a rural melodrama, but that's not enough to recommend it. Nor is the fact that it showcases the singing of star Irma Serrano, though the scenes of her pitching woo with our masked hero are admittedly pretty hysterical.

To sum up, in the interest of better international communication, I will render my final verdict in Babel Fish: “The true Aguila is a bad film. Stay far from her!”

From the Lucha Diaries Vaults: Santo contra el Rey del Crimen (Mexico, 1961)

In this installment: the sport of the future!

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The plot of Santo contra el Rey del Crimen -- aka Santo vs. the King of Crime -- concerns corruption in the sport of Jai Alai. I had seen this sport depicted in an old episode of Miami Vice, which not only saved me some Wikipedia time, but also kept me from spending most of the movie scratching my head and saying, "What the hell?" Like Santo contra el Cerebro Diabolico, which I had watched previously to this, El Rey del Crimen is one of three pictures that Santo did for Peliculas Rodriguez with stars Fernando Casanova and Ana Bertha Lepe. As with Cerebro Diabolico, Casanova and Lepe are really the focus here, with the bits of Santo action rather awkwardly -- almost inexplicably, in fact -- integrated into the story.

Watching El Rey del Crimen gave me some insight into what gives these films that strange, disjointed feel. The producers here were trying to present Santo as a traditional superhero, hampered by the fact that his alter ego couldn't be shown. In your usual masked crime fighter yarn -- such as those told in the old Republic serials that clearly had such an influence on these films -- those scenes that here feature Casanova as police detective Fernando Lavalle would be those featuring the hero's alter ego. It's as if Superman and Clark Kent really were separate people -- and Superman really did just show up coincidentally whenever Clark and Lois were in trouble, just like Clark was always saying he did. (In fact, in her role as Virginia, an ambitious and fearless "girl" reporter -- and also Lavalle's girlfriend -- Lepe fills the Lois Lane role in all but name.)

El Rey del Crimen even gives us an origin story for Santo, showing us Santo as a young boy being told by his ailing father of the legacy of the Silver Mask, and goes on to introduce an Alfred-like manservant, Matias, who gives the young Santo his first look at the Batcave-like Santo lab. (Interestingly -- to judge by the cars, architecture and clothing -- the scenes of Santo's boyhood take place in what was then the present day, which means that the film's later events take place, well, a couple of years ago, though the films' version of our very recent past looks a lot like the early 60s.)

There's a fascinating, monastic element to the Enmascarado de Plata role that young Santo's guardians lay out for him here; the mask isn't meant for concealing identity so much as it is a means of renouncing it altogether. By becoming faceless, Santo is turning his back on the sin of pride and any potential for the desire to do good to be tainted by the desire for fame or worldly reward. Unfortunately, the film kind of skirts over the whole issue of how this version of Santo jibes with him pursuing fame as a professional wrestler -- and, needless to say, doesn't even touch upon the fact that his mask would just eventually become his (very famous) face. In any case, by 1966, we had a version of Santo whose house featured a room containing a simulated tropical beach in which he made sweet love to bikini clad women whom he dismissed with a snap of his fingers (see Operacion 67), so I think it's pretty safe to say that the idea of Santo as an ascetic was ultimately pretty much abandoned.

Anyway, while I didn't enjoy it quite as much as Santo contra el Cerebro Diabolico, I found this film to be fairly entertaining. And, it saddens me to say, it wouldn't be much less so without Santo. I just find Casanova and Lepe to be tremendously appealing actors (and Lepe is adorable, even with the tremendous hairdo they've got her hoisting around). I'm looking forward to Santo en el Hotel de la Muerte, the last of the Rodriguez pictures that I have to see. But, by this point, I know what to -- and what not to -- expect.

The Lucha Diaries: Too pointless to die!

So I finally got all of the domain issues sorted out and The Lucha Diaries is now once again accessible via the luchadiaries.com url. In the course of dealing with that I was reminded that it has been quite a long time since I pulled off a lazy 4DK update by recycling old Lucha Diaries material. So, guess what time it is, kids?

Look, even though I'm no longer updating the Lucha Diaries, I still think that all of the blood and suffering I put into compiling it needs to be occasionally remembered. And, no, I am not being overly dramatic. I suffered! See the below entry from some time in '07.

******

La Furia de las Karatecas (1981)
(The Fury of the Karate Experts)

Damn, damn, damn. Here I was thinking that I was done with Santo -- at least for the time being. I thought I'd watched every dvd -- both legit and gray market -- that was available, and in the process had seen all but three of the fifty-four(!) films in El Enmascarado de Plata's oeuvre. Confident that those remaining three films would continue to be elusive for the foreseeable future -- and, let's be honest, too spent from my efforts to put much work into finding them in any case -- I commemorated this milestone by adding an elegiac postscript to my review of Santo contra el Asesino de la Television, wistfully reflecting on the place Santo has had in my life and dreams over all these long years. Then, just days later, I came across a gray market copy of Santo's final film, La Furia de las Karatecas. Thank you, internet. Thank you so very much.

La Furia de las Karatecas stars a 64 year old Santo and Grace Renat, a woman with freakishly enormous breasts. Renat plays twins here, a circumstance that opens such a broad vista of possible juvenile puns that my only response can be to turn and quietly walk away. As the evil sister, she spends almost the entirety of her screen time doing orgasmic, mostly-naked booty dances in supplication to some kind of glowing space rock. As the good sister... well, who cares what the good sister does. There is a monster also -- awakened by Bad Grace In the course of her gyrations -- and he appears to have symmetrically-spaced, hair-sprouting moles all over his body.

I find the fact that this film is a continuation of the immediately preceding film, El Puno de la Muerte, both puzzling and frightening, because La Furia de las Karatecas falls far short of having enough content to make even one movie interesting, much less two -- so what on earth could El Puno de la Muerte possibly contain? Providing little relief are the aged Santo's action scenes, which are limited to a couple of enervated brawls between himself and Tinieblas, who here plays one of the evil Grace's henchmen. As for the karate experts referred to in the title, they really don't make much of a showing, which makes it difficult to ascertain exactly what it is that they're so furious about.

La Furia de las Karatecas is really pretty horrible. The only way it could be worse, really, would be if you could actually catch some kind of disease by watching it. I'd only recommend this one if you're dying to see a Santo movie with an annoying 80s synth score; otherwise, I'd give it a wide berth. And don't even think about the fact that Santo would be dead within a few short years of completing this one. That's just too depressing to bear.

From The Lucha Diaries Vaults: Santo contra los Jinetes del Terror (Mexico, 1970)

Yes, it's time for another trip down memory lane by way of lucha libre alley. If you like what you read here, many, many, MANY more reviews of Mexican Wrestling films can be found on my site The Lucha Diaries. (Seriously, there's a lot.)

******

Santo contra los Jinetes del Terror is a western about lepers. That fact alone is enough to draw me to it irresistibly. That it also contains Santo represents to me such an embarrassment of riches that I wouldn't be surprised if it also featured a female secret agent in a catsuit and a Taoist priest shooting cartoon rays out of his hands.

Now, exactly how Santo ended up in frontier times is not explained. There is, for instance, no reference to a time machine, or a prologue casting him as an ancestor of the modern day Santo. But I'm not going to speculate on the matter. I pledged at the outset that the words "canon" and "universe" would never appear alongside the name Santo in the Lucha Diaries -- just as I would never use the phrase "Wait for it!" -- and doing so would take me into dangerous territory. Instead, let's all just enjoy this horsey ride for what it is: an odd and reasonably entertaining oater in which Santo tracks a vicious gang who are using a group of escaped lepers to cover their crimes.

In terms of how the lepers are presented, the filmmakers really try to have it both ways. No opportunity is missed to exploit the scare value of their gruel-faced fuglitude (which is sometimes explored in such extreme close-up that I think I actually contracted leprosy through the TV screen). At the same time, great pains are taken to present them as sympathetic. So much so that Los Jinetes del Terror sometimes comes off like a leprosy themed After School Special. Santo cannot mention the lepers without pointing out how "unfortunate" or "miserable" they are, and there's even a scene in which Santo asks a doctor to explain the different types of leprosy, which the doctor proceeds to do in pretty great detail.

It's almost as if the movie was just one facet of a larger public awareness campaign regarding the disease. That's all well and good, but I must admit it's odd to see such sensitivity toward the afflicted in a genre that's so far proven to never be above the most callous exploitation of the vertically challenged. Then again, I may just have missed the movie where Santo runs around insisting that midgets be called "Little People" as he hurls them off scaffoldings and into sparking control panels. In any case, Santo's leper loving here seems to go so far as to blind him to the facts, as he promises the escapees that they will not be punished for the gangs' crimes, even though we've seen that the lepers actually agreed to take part in the scheme and even took part in a robbery in which a person was murdered. What a bleeding heart!

Another unusual aspect of Los Jinetes del Terror is how, due to Santo looking just extra weird wandering around in a late 19th century frontier town, the writers really had no choice but to have the other characters address the fact that his head is entirely covered by a silver wrestling mask. One of the bad guys even mocks Santo to his face by saying he looks like a pigeon. Then Santo kicks his ass. I myself would not tell Santo to his face that he looks like a pigeon. I'm no fighter, and while there may have been times when I have written things about Santo that weren't entirely respectful, if he were to appear before me right now I'd probably be all like, "Oh, uh, hey, Santo. I was just writing about how totally awesome you are. As usual! Heh heh..."

Anyway, Santo ultimately ingratiates himself with the townsfolk by defeating the bad guys and sparing the lepers from the wrath of an angry mob, then puts the icing on the delicious leprosy cake by delivering the good news of a cure. Unfortunately, he's a bit premature, because Dapsone, the first drug to effectively treat leprosy, wasn't introduced until the late forties (thanks Wikipedia!).

From The Lucha Diaries Vaults: Neutron contra los Automatas de la Muerte (Mexico, 1960)

Since this week's review fare seemed to tip largely toward the underwhelming, I thought that--for this installment of From The Lucha Diaries Vaults--I'd repost a review of a movie I actually enjoyed. In doing so, I inadvertantly stumbled upon the reason why Chunaoti and The Drifting Classroom both failed to live up to their potential: Neither of them featured a wrestling superhero who looked like a lighting bolt-adorned version of The Gimp from Pulp Fiction.

*******

To be honest, I've been avoiding Neutron ever since watching his first film, Neutron, el Enmascarado Negro. As much as I like the old black & white, early 60s lucha movies, I found that particular one a bore, mainly because it featured a whole lot of talk and very little Neutron. Still, someone must have enjoyed Neutron, el Enmascarado Negro, because the character was brought back for no less than four more features. And that fact has made Neutron a little hard for me to avoid. Finally I decided to just suck it up, tuck in, and not come up for air until I'd watched the lot of them. My starting point was Neutron contra los Automatas de la Muerte.

Now, given that Los Automatas de la Muerte is one of those instant sequels, filmed back to back with the first film and with the same cast and crew (as was the next film Neutron contra el Doctor Caronte), I had little hope that I'd be seeing much variation from el Enmascarado Negro. But the happy fact is that, because Los Automatas de la Muerte starts right where El Enmascarado Negro left off, and the previous film did all of the hard work of establishing all of the characters and situations, Los Automatas de la Muerte has the luxury of dispensing with all of that and simply cutting to the chase, which it does in fine style.

Probably the best thing about Los Automatas de la Muerte is that it affords us ample opportunity to really savor the wonder and strangeness that is Neutron's nemesis, Dr. Caronte. As perfect a specimen of a hysterical megalomaniac as you could ask for, Caronte prowls his vast laboratory in an outfit that bespeaks of a certain career ambivalence, equal parts wrestling togs and surgeon's scrubs, affectionately leading his freaky uni-browed dwarf assistant Nick by the hand as he proclaims and declaims in a booming voice about his various dastardly designs.

Caronte needs lots of human blood in order to keep alive the collection of talking, disembodied brains--harvested from captured scientists--from whom he hopes to learn the secrets of the much coveted Neutron Bomb (which, as far as I can understand, is not a bomb that just kills Neutron, but more like a regular bomb, only better somehow). To do this he will use his army of Death Robots, a bunch of faceless, ape-like zombies in coveralls that Caronte appears to bake in giant pizza ovens.

Now, granted, there's not a lot here that we haven't seen before (well except for the robots being baked in pizza ovens, which is... well, holy shit), but the fact is, when something like this is done right, you really feel like you're watching a maniacal villain in a wrestling mask having a conversation with a roomful of disembodied brains harvested from kidnapped scientists for the very first time. And, what I'm saying is, Los Automatas de la Muerte really does it right. This is quite a well made film, exhibiting all of those qualities present in the most well-appointed and technically proficient of the early lucha films: Rich black and white photography, moody night-for-night shooting, and camera work that makes the most of some impressive and atmospheric set designs--basically the same Film-Noir-meets-Universal-monster-movie look we see in great early Santo films like Santo en Museo de Cera and Santo contra las Mujeres Vampiro.

On top of that, the action in Los Automatas de la Muerte is virtually nonstop--and always outlandish. My favorite scene has got to be the one in which a fleeing Death Robot, on the brink of being captured by Neutron and his pals, commits suicide by pulling off his own head. But there's a lot of competition in that department, especially when you have so many scenes featuring little freaky Nick scurrying around and barking orders at the Death Robots in a screechy, overdubbed voice (there really is something genuinely disturbing about the little dude).

Happily, the film ends on an uncertain note, cluing us in that Dr. Caronte and Nick will be back for the next installment (cluing us in further is the fact that the next installment is called Neutron contra el Doctor Caronte, so duh). That I'm actually looking forward to that, despite all of my initial ambivalence, is a testament to the amazing, life-transforming power of Neutron contra los Automatas de la Muerte.

From The Lucha Diaries Vaults: Night of the Bloody Apes (Mexico, 1968)

Okay, here's the deal: In addition to writing for Teleport City and maintaining this blog, I also have a site called The Lucha Diaries which contains more reviews of masked Mexican wrestler movies than anyone in their right mind could ever want. At regular intervals, I repost one of those reviews here -- not out of laziness, mind you, but as a service. Now, enjoy your damn bloody apes.

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In my fantasy you are begging me to review Night of the Bloody Apes. "Please," you moan. "Tell us about the dirty lucha movie. The one with boobies." Needless to say, I am unmoved by your tears -- did I mention that you were weeping? -- and toy with you mercilessly. "What? You mean Now, Voyager?" "NO!", you wail. "The one that's just like Las Luchadoras contra el Medico Asesino, but with titties! Good God, man! The titties!"

It's at this point that I realize that, as much as I pride myself on being a hardened sadist, there are depths of self abasement that even I find a little nauseating. And so I relent. It's a classic control fantasy, really, one where I take all of the feelings of powerlessness and suffering that I endured at the hands of Night of the Bloody Apes and project them onto you. And seeing as you've been such a good sport about it -- I mean, you're still reading, aren't you? -- it's only fair that I give you the thing that I've imagined you asking for. Even though, in reality, you probably want it less than a sack of cold sores and Monday mornings.

The plot of Night of the Bloody Apes is one of lucha cinema's most often told tales. It made it's first appearance in 1956 in the sublime Ladron de Cadaveres, then reappeared in 1963's Las Luchadoras contra el Medico Asesino and then continued evolving downward until it came to rest within the damp confines of La Horripilante Bestia Humana aka Night of the Bloody Apes. In all three movies, monstrosity ensues when a mad scientist performs a gorilla to human organ transplant. In Ladron, only the local constabulary are available to combat the rampaging beast man, but Las Luchadoras introduces a pair of civic-minded wrestling women, with policemen boyfriends in tow, to aid in the fight. Night of the Bloody Apes, while more similar to Las Luchadoras than Ladron, strips things down by only featuring one policeman-dating wrestling woman, and, while she wears a cute devil girl outfit and appears in a couple of gingerly choreographed wrestling matches, she ultimately proves to be of absolutely no consequence to the plot.

However, it's not what Night of the Bloody Apes gives us less of that distinguishes it, but rather what it adds to the formula. It was a practice in the Mexican film industry at the time to occasionally spice up films for import release by inserting bits of female nudity that were not available in the domestic versions. Night of the Bloody Apes, the U.S. cut of La Horripilante Bestia Humana, is a rare extant example of one of these sexo versions of a lucha movie, though there were apparently others made. It strives to increase its appeal to decadent foreign interests by also inserting numerous shots of explicit gore, including some pretty nauseating footage of real surgery. These scenes are actually quite extreme for the time, though the staged shots are also laughably inept, combining the hasty, no-budget improvisation and stark utilitarian prurience of H.G. Lewis with the curiously liquid notion of bodily integrity exhibited in The Story of Ricky. Bodies break apart and separate like warm loaves of bread, an eye-gouging exposes the shockingly high foam rubber content of the human head, and, best of all, a "scalping" scene is accomplished by dragging a stage-blood-soaked toupee across the head of a Dr. Phil look-alike, revealing the grizzly horror of his male pattern baldness.

Most of these shots are inserted pretty clumsily, and the resulting abrupt transitions between them and the typically affable goofiness of the lucha movie that contains them can make watching Night of the Bloody Apes a jarring experience for those used to being lulled by the genre's familiar tropes. (The film was directed by Rene Cardona and -- when it's not shoving grue in your face -- has the same colorful production look as other of his luchadore films from the time, such as La Mujer Murcielago.) As for the nudity, as much as I'm wholeheartedly in favor of there being more female nudity in Mexican wrestler movies (and, come to think of it, maybe less of the male kind), it pains me to say that it being so inextricably intertwined with the gore in Night of the Bloody Apes makes it pretty unappealing. Other than in some boudoir scenes of star Norma Lazareno, all of the female bodies that are bared here are so done in the process of being broken. Granted, in some of these scenes there's certainly amusement to be had from the Benny Hill-like ridiculousness of the ease with which these women become relieved of their clothing in the process of fleeing or fending off the monster. But it's just not titillating.

Still, there is something bracing about the very sleaziness of Night of the Bloody Apes for me. Having become perhaps overly familiar with the formula of these movies, it was nice to see it get such a violent shake up here, and, in the process, to be reminded that all the cartoonish violence and juvenile innuendo usually on display is just a family friendly face put on some darker, more complex impulses roiling behind the camera's eye. That's the kind of thing we depend on extreme cinema for, and it's something that it often does best when it's at its crudest.

From The Lucha Diaries Vaults: La Mujer Murcielago (Mexico, 1968)

With this edition of "From The Lucha Diaries Vaults", I decided to use the occasion of the opening of the new Batman movie to draw attention to the long and proud tradition of movies featuring bat-persons that it continues. As I'm sure you'll agree, it has a lot to live up to.

*******

Exhibiting a brazenness comparable to 3 Dev Adam's in it's attitude toward international copyrights, La Mujer Murcielago has Maura Monti -- in her role as secret agent and masked wrestler Bat Woman -- costumed almost identically to TV's Batgirl. I say "almost" because -- while the mask, cape and boots she wears are indistinguishable from her American inspiration -- where Batgirl would wear a skintight bodysuit, Bat Woman just wears skin. Now, I don't need a whole lot more than that, and the makers of La Mujer Murcielago have shown an eerie prescience by providing me with just that: very little more than Maura Monti padding around in a miniscule bikini for 85 minutes. And, while I am grateful, it pains me to say that, despite the very forgiving attitude I brought to the film, I did find La Mujer Murcielago slow going in some parts.

This is not to say that there aren't some nods toward plot and the corresponding elements of same. To justify long sequences of Bat Woman scuba diving and -- as already mentioned -- padding around, we have a mad scientist (quelle surprise!), his assistant Igor (Parents, please! Don't you realize that naming your child Igor dooms him to an adulthood spent in servitude to a mad scientist?), and their killer goldfish man. Now this may be something that was lost to me in the non-translation, but the mad scientist here appears to have the most un-secret hideout in film history. Said hideout is a large ship -- named, I'm delighted to report, Reptilicus -- that's anchored conveniently just offshore from the seaside resort where our heroine is stationed. Whenever Bat Woman and her male cohorts want to spy on the doctor, or tussle with his henchmen, or throw acid in his face, they just take the short boat ride out to the Reptilicus and tuck in. However, despite all of the doctor's obvious criminal activity, they never take any of these opportunities to just haul him in. Of course, these are 1960s movie secret agents we're dealing with, so they'd be remiss in their duties if they didn't hold off on closing the case until the opportunity arose to have the villains and their hideout consumed by an enormous explosion. (Is that a spoiler?) La Mujer Murcielago also has wrestling matches, but, since Maura Monti is not a professional wrestler, a considerably more chunky double is used for these scenes (and, since the substitution is glaringly obvious, the scenes are very brief).

If you have read any of my other reviews on The Lucha Diaries, there may have been times when you regarded my description of something that happened in a film with skepticism. And you should do. In many cases here I am describing, without the aid of a re-viewing, films that I watched many weeks previous. And the condition in which I originally watched them was often one of either somnolence or compromised sobriety. As a result, there are "reviews" here in which I freely admit to remembering very few of the subject film's details, or in which I unwittingly invent those details because I confused that film with another one that I watched in an equally inattentive state. I say this because, in his entry regarding La Mujer Murcielago in his fine book The Mexican Masked Wrestler and Monster Filmography, Robert Michael "Bobb" Cotter describes the process by which the mad scientist creates the goldfish man as involving putting a fish and a G.I. Joe doll in an aquarium together and boiling the water. I thought that this sounded just too good to be true. However, I should not have doubted the generosity of a film that would give us a seagoing vessel named Reptilicus, for, when I watched the film, what Cotter described is precisely what I saw.

From The Lucha Diaries Vaults: Aranas Infernales (Mexico, 1966)

Hey, kids! Did you know that there's a whole world of fun and adventure that you can visit any time you like, no matter where you are? You did? Do you know what it's called? Your imagi-what? No! I was talking about The Lucha Diaries. God! So disappointed right now.

Anway, whatever. If you want to read more awesome reviews of Mexican wrestling movies like the one below, that's where you go. Or you can just "imagine" them. 'Cause I bet that would just be so much fun.

*******

As wild as a lot of these Mexican wrestling films are, it sometimes seems like not a lot of imagination goes into their titles. There's definitely a strict limit on adjectives. Then again, it might just be that I'm jealous, because I simply don't live on the scale that these guys do. None of the opposing forces that I encounter in my life could without irony be called "infernal" or "diabolical". If Santo and Blue Demon were forced to live in my world, their movies would have titles like Blue Demon vs. the Condescending Waiter or Santo versus the Stubborn Screwcap. And, to be honest, while I might be able to relate more to one of those films on a personal level, I'd really rather watch something called Aranas Infernales - which, happily, happens to be the title of the Blue Demon entry that I will be considering here.

Probably the one thing that I could relate that would most succinctly sum up Aranas Infernales is the fact that it steals its special effects footage from Plan Nine from Outer Space and Teenagers from Outer Space. As much as this is equivalent to copying the slow kid's homework, it still guarantees that Aranas Infernales' special effects are immeasurably better than those of Blue Demon contra las Invasoras. Still, for the viewer (or, at least, this viewer) there's nothing like the sudden recognition of, not just the fact that you're watching a movie that aspires to pass off footage from what is popularly considered one of the worst films of all time as its own, but that you immediately recognized that footage as such, to make you most acutely feel the corresponding, rapid draining of the sands of time from your mortal hourglass.

This, combined with the fact that all of the scenes in Aranas Infernales that aren't filmed outside or set in a wrestling arena look like they were filmed inside a really small box, could really send me into a funk. But then here comes Fernando Oses, challenging Blue Demon in the ring with a ridiculous looking spider puppet on his hand, and all is forgiven. A sublime moment like this, occurring in a film's final minutes, is enough for me to see the total time invested, no matter how freighted with inanity, as well spent.

On top of all the aforementioned pilfering and claustrophopia, Aranas Infernales has a really extraordinary number of wrestling sequences (I honestly lost count). Fortunately, due to Blue Demon's typically spirited commitment to his role's physical demands, these are all pretty good, as are all of the plot-related brawls.

As for the spiders, they're not all that infernal. And, dovetailing fortuitously with the film's obviously limited effects budget, they're not all that spidery, either. It seems that the aliens' choice to assume human form was for the purpose of blending in, so that they could walk among their intended prey undetected. But they kind of defeat that purpose with their insistence on wearing sparkly capes with big pointy collars. Their vanity is their ultimate undoing.

From the Lucha Diaries Vaults: Santo vs. Las Lobas (Mexico, 1972)

Allow me to introduce this week's labor-saving installment of "From The Lucha Diaries Vaults" in a manner that might seem a little off-topic at first. You see, in previous posts I've sought to establish the eerie parallels between the careers of Bollywood bad guy Amrish Puri and Canto-cinema bad guy Sek Kin. Then, this week, in a suitably eerie parallel, David Wells at his Soft Film blog and I at mine -- with no previous planning, no wirework and no CGI -- each reviewed films in which Sek Kin and Amrish Puri, respectively, played werewolves. Freaky, right? Like, those aren't fingers crawling up your spine -- they're totally goosebumps, dude. (BTW, the movie that David wrote up sounds like a real hoot, so you should just stop messing yourself over how scary what I just told you was and go read his review.) Anyway, to keep the werewolf-y vibe going -- or perhaps I should say, in solidarity with Beth, in avoidance of all things non-werewolf-y -- I thought I'd post a review of a werewolf-themed Santo movie, Santo vs. Las Lobas, which also happens to be one of my very favorite Santo movies. Enjoy!

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As much as I sincerely love Santo movies, I have to admit that, when I sit down to write about them, I take for granted that I'm usually going to spend part of my review ticking off the various ways in which a particular film fulfills certain formula requirements. So, when a Santo film surprises me as much as Santo vs. las Lobas did, I really have to take my hat off and bow down. Unlike Santo's other monster movies from the seventies, which were mostly throwbacks to Universal's monster movies from the forties, Las Lobas is clearly a product of its time. It's unremittingly bleak and oppressive in the way that only a horror film from the seventies can be, and it likewise makes a virtue of it's grainy and murky photography as many such films of that era did. (There's actually one scene that reminded me in particular of the original version of The Hills Have Eyes, though Las Lobas predates that by a few years.)

It's not these stylistic touches, however, that really made me sit up and take notice of Las Lobas, as much as it was the way in which the film puts Santo in some situations I really hadn't seen him in before. Las Lobas starts with Santo being asked to come to the aid of a rural village besieged by a clan of werewolves. Having once again had his memory of countless previous encounters with wolfmen and other monsters somehow erased, Santo somewhat callously demurs, scoffing at the very notion of lycanthropy. His feelings begin to change, however, when, later that night, his efforts to escape from a pack of vicious demon dogs (I know they should be wolves, but they're even referred to as dogs in the dialog) leave him literally hanging from the rafters of a deserted arena, screaming for help. Santo is really terrorized and rendered helpless - pathetically so - in this scene, and I actually found it kind of shocking to see; I've really got to give Las Lobas props for, for the first time, leaving me unsure of exactly where a Santo movie was going. Later, when Santo goes to the village and tries to question the villagers about what's going on, they're so crazed with fear that they threaten him and tell him to butt out - then pummel him with fruit and vegetables! The final surprise comes when we learn that, having been bitten by one of the demon dogs, Santo himself will turn into a werewolf at the next full moon if he doesn't defeat the king of the werewolves. Putting added pressure on Santo is the fact that the rise of the werewolf king will bring about the end of mankind and herald an age of werewolf dominion on Earth. You know, the whole apocalypse thing.

Now, I'm so immersed in all things Santo at the moment that it's hard for me to determine if the degree to which I love Santo vs. las Lobas can be separated from the context of Santo films as a whole. It's certainly far from a perfect film. The she wolves actually look pretty terrible when seen under direct light (which the filmmakers wisely avoid as much as possible) and the fact that it manages to be so consistent in tone makes those moments when it breaks with that tone (some cheesy action music in one later scene, for instance) especially glaring. For this reason, while I enthusiastically recommend Santo vs. las Lobas, I wouldn't recommend it as anyone's introduction to Santo. I think it would be ideal to first watch something like Santo contra la Invasion de los Marcianos and then this one, thus treating yourself to two very opposite extremes of quality Santo.

From the Lucha Diaries vaults: Kaliman en el Siniestro Mundo de Humanon (Mexico, 1976)

Okay kids, Daddy's busy, so go read your lukewarm leftovers in the form of "From the Lucha Diaries vaults". That's where I post an old review of a Mexican wrestling movie from my site The Lucha Diaries while I tend to other pressing matters of state. Don't hate, though, because what I'm busy with is a feature-length review of Santo vs. Blue Demon in Atlantis that's just for you because you're special. Sure, I know your Mom says that I'm just sleeping off my traditional "thank God it's Tuesday" celebration, but she would say that wouldn't she?

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Kaliman is a popular costumed hero of Mexican comics and radio. A somewhat new agey super hero, his super powers -- from what I can glean from Kaliman en el Siniestro Mundo de Humanon -- are telepathy, the ability to quote from the Koran and endlessly spew all sorts of pseudo spiritual hooey gooey, and some vague form of martial arts that involves lots of crouching and hand waving. Kaliman en el Siniestro Mundo de Humanon is not a lucha movie, but it contains enough dopey weirdness for ten Santo movies (providing that one of those ten isn't Profandores de Tumbas), and that for me is enough to qualify it for inclusion in The Lucha Diaries.

I've heard that the first Kaliman movie was one of the most expensive productions in Mexican film history, complete with globe-spanning locations, lavish sets, and a large international cast. Kaliman en el Siniestro Mundo de Humanon, however, is the second Kaliman movie, and it exhibits the kind of downward scaling and hastiness of construction with which viewers of late 70s lucha films will be comfortably familiar. Kaliman himself, though he does not wear a face obscuring mask, does share with Santo and Blue Demon the fact that his super hero identity is in effect twenty-four/seven and, as such, requires him to wear his Kaliman costume at all times, no matter what the circumstances. The producers highlight this to fine effect by placing the film's action in Brazil, because nowhere could Kaliman's outfit of turban, cape, and blindingly white tunic and tights look more conspicuous than as he strolls among the bikini clad sun worshipers on the beaches of Rio.

Kaliman's sidekicks include a small boy wearing a fez (more of a liability than an asset, really, because he keeps getting kidnapped and imperiled - and simply leaving him at home never appears to be an option) and a woman who wears very little else besides a black veil that conceals her hideously disfigured face, which is later revealed to itself be a mask concealing -- for no reason other than shits and giggles, apparently -- her real face, which is unremarkable but at least not at all disfigured. These are strange characters, indeed, though the villains in El Siniestro Mundo de Humanon serve to normalize them a great deal. Humanon, for instance, who wears a bright red Klansman's outfit (but with sunglasses worn over the hood) and a cape with an atomic symbol on it, hides out in a secret jungle compound with a magical dwarf lady, a cackling, hyperactive witch doctor, and a grizzled right hand man with the demeanor of a crazy old prospector and does all kinds of weird shit for no discernable reason. Among Humanon's projects are the placement of animal brains and electronic parts into captured scientists to create what he calls "Zombie-tronics", a collection of living disembodied heads in jars, and a furry cyclops who he claims to have evolved from a rock. Obviously a stop needs to be put to all this, because, even though none of it really make any sense, it's not particularly right either.

Kaliman en el Siniestro Mundo de Humanon hits the ground running, providing a rich, projectile stream of insanity that lasts from it's first moments to its very last. And if that doesn't sound like an endorsement, you don't know me very well.

From the Lucha Diaries Vaults: Santo en el Misterio de la Perla Negra (Mexico, 1971)

Man, last week I must have set some kind of record for posts; there were like a million of them -- exactly a million, I think, if I calculate with both my fingers and toes. This week, though, not so much. That is because I'm currently immersing myself in the career of Filipino king of comedy Dolphy in preparation for my Teleport City review of James Batman. And that's where my recently inaugurated feature "From the Lucha Diaries Vaults" comes in. That's the feature that simply involves me lazily reposting old capsule reviews of Mexican wrestling movies from my site The Lucha Diaries. (Hey, they're new to you, right?) This week's review covers Santo en el Misterio de la Perla Negra, probably the worst Santo film ever made. And if you like this stuff, why not just spend your entire day browsing through the dozens upon dozens of similar reviews I have up over at the Diaries. It's not as if you have anything better do, right?

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It's impossible to discuss Santo en el Misterio de la Perla Negra without first discussing Santo Frente a la Muerte, and, because of that, I think that a little disclosure is in order: I have a very unhealthy relationship with Santo Frente a la Muerte. It's a truly awful movie; eighty to ninety percent of Santo's scenes in it are shot with a laughably unconvincing double, it's musical score is inappropriate to the point of approaching ironic commentary, and it's obviously on-the-fly location shooting is continuously marred by passers-by gawping both at the actors and into the camera. But it's just so brazen and unapologetic in its crappiness that, I have to admit, I secretly thrill to it.

Perhaps this is because I see something in Santo Frente a la Muerte that I lack: a brash and heedless strain of self acceptance that says, "Yes, I'm crappy, but who's the idiot watching me? Oh, sorry, that would be YOU, wouldn't it?". And, lord, Santo Frente a la Muerte is crappy. So crappy, in fact, that it's hard to believe it could be any crappier than it already is. And it couldn't be, apparently. Because when they were through making Santo Frente a la Muerte, there was some crappiness left over. And they took that crappiness, stitched it together, added a bunch of new crap to it (and a lot of old, as well), and created its sister film, Santo en el Misterio de la Perla Negra. So, now that I've unburdened myself to you, I don't mind telling you that, while I approached Misterio de la Perla Negra with an outward display of trepidation, deep inside I wanted it to hurt me. Really bad.

Most of the cast from Frente a la Muerte returns for this one, including Santo's unconvincing double - who, for easy identification, is also wearing an unconvincing double of Santo's mask, which looks like it's made from a pair of off-white pantyhose with silver lacing up the back. One new addition to the cast is Maria Eugenia San Martin, playing a lady who makes her living dancing badly at nightclubs. This provides an opportunity for padding in the form of two lengthy examples of her act. For the first, a lavish musical production number from some film from the 1950's, complete with shots of an appreciative 1950s audience, is inserted in its entirety into La Perla Negra with clumsily added close-ups of San Martin to tell us we're supposed to think she's actually participating in the number. For the second one - and this is more what we're used to - San Martin dances solo to tinny canned music in a dank and tiny third rate basement supper club. Santo (the real one) watches her appreciatively, and we're helpfully provided with a close-up POV shot of San Martin's chest, just to make the whole scene that much more classy.

Much of La Perla Negra is made up of this kind of padding, and most of it is footage taken from other films. To add to the overall incoherence, that footage is often inserted without any rhyme or reason, as is the case with a lengthy free-for-all wrestling match between a bunch of masked female wrestlers that just pops up during the first twenty minutes and has nothing to do with the story. Simply put, if I were to randomly edit together parts of every dollar dvd I bought at Walgreens over the last year - including the cartoons and silent films -and mixed it up with some grainy vacation videos, I would end up with something with more narrative drive than - and actually quite similar to - Santo en el Misterio de la Perla Negra.

More simply put, Santo en el Misterio de la Perla Negra is furiously and irredeemably awful. Oh, the chills! In fact, people, I think it's time to break out the bubbly. I've watched all but a very small number of Santo's films at this point and I think that I can say with near certainty that this is the absolute worst. That's right, I said it.

Some people consider Samson vs. the Vampire Women to be a classic "so bad it's good" film, and they just don't get it. Because Samson aka Santo contra las Mujeres Vampiro is an attractively shot and well paced film made by experienced craftsmen who cared about creating a quality product, who felt a responsibility to their audience to be entertaining, regardless of how silly the plot and characters in their film might be. Santo en el Misterio de la Perla Negra, on the other hand, was made by people who, while they might have had the know-how to make a better film, really didn't care to, and really didn't care if their audience knew it. You get the sense that these guys would have been happy to splice in anything that would run through a projector, celluloid or no, just to fill out the required running time, be it calcified strips of bacon or film strips made from woven human hair.

And, again, I admit it: I admire them for it. So, hats off to you, you brazen hacks, wherever you may be. Yours is truly a singular accomplishment.