Santo vs. Dr. Death, aka Masked Man Strikes Again (Spain/Mexico?, 1973)

I've wanted to see Santo vs. Dr. Death for a very long time. It was produced in Spain, where Santo was also phenomenally popular back in the day, and, as such, is the only Santo film not produced entirely in Mexico or the Americas. (And, while it kills me, note that I am not including 3 Dev Adam in that list, because that features Turkish actor Yavus Selekman playing Santo, but not Santo himself.) It definitely has a Euro feel to it, and gives us the pleasure of seeing Santo opposite such Eurotrash eminences as frequent Eurospy femme fatale and Horror Express star Helga Line.

But, of course, I've seen the Spanish version of Santo vs. Dr. Death -- or, as I should say, Santo contra Dr. Muerte -- but what I hadn't seen is the rare English dub of the film, which also goes under the alternate title Masked Man Strikes Again. This, in the cruel calculus of internet nerdom, makes my claims of being a Santo completist an act of egregious fraud. You see, only a small handful -- four, as far as I know -- of Santo's fifty-plus films received such treatment, with Dr. Death being the only one of his many features from the seventies to do so (the rest were gothic-tinged early sixties efforts like Santo vs. the Vampire Women). Having now seen it, I can report that it is as haphazardly looped as any European B movie from the seventies, and that that dubbing probably adds very little to the film other than the fact that I could occasionally text while watching it. Not only that, but Santo is consistently referred to as "The Saint", in an act of overzealous translation that makes me glad none of the movie takes place in Los Angeles. But, more important is the fact that I have now seen it and, as far as I know, have only to watch the nudie version of El Tesoro de Dracula to make my claims of Santo scholarship airtight.

Santo vs. Dr. Death is actually a fairly conventional Santo film -- if perhaps, under the direction of Rafael Marchant, a bit more handsomely mounted than his typical seventies fare -- though one propelled by an exceptionally bizarre plot. It begins with a very detailed depiction of what at first appears to be a daring museum art heist by a lone cat burglar, only to have that burglar, after rappelling himself into the gallery, spray one of the displayed masterpieces with acid and leave. This masterpiece is about to be handed over by Mexico to a museum in Spain, and while the obvious damage to it isn't Mexico's fault, it does seem a little careless that no one notices it until it makes its arrival across the pond. Oops!

Santo is the obvious person to call in the event of an international art scandal, and the fact that he has an upcoming match in Madrid provides perfect cover as far as his superiors at Interpol are concerned.  And, to be fair, Santo, jack of all trades that he is, seems perfectly comfortable hobnobbing with officials at the Louvre and other higher ups in the world of fine art. In fact, he asks all the right questions and quickly makes a connection that every non wrestler has so far missed. All of this while keeping up his commitments in the ring, which, in Dr. Death, amount to three lengthy bouts which are all but one filmed from beyond the ropes in that flat, undynamic style we've become so used to.

Anyway, it turns out that the man to whom the Spaniards turn to restore the damaged masterpiece is one Dr. Mann (George Rigaud, another Horror Express alumnus). Unknown to them, however, Dr. Mann has developed a formula and device -- that appears to be like a crude art xerox machine -- that can make a perfect duplicate of a painting, which he then returns to the museum, sadly informing them that what they had was a forgery all along. Mann pulled this same trick on the French -- nabbing, as it is later suggested, the Mona Lisa in the process -- but in that case murdered the actual restorer hired by the Louvre, a Professor Schwartz, and substituted his nephew Peter (Antonio Pica, of Satanik and Vengeance of the Zombies) in his place.

Ensconced in his creepy old castle with his secretary Sara (Line) and Peter, who is for some reason pretending to be blind, Mann learns of Santo's French escapades and, fearing that his murder of Schwartz will be uncovered, orders his thuggish minions to rub the masked man out. The first of these thrilling assassination scenarios takes place in a men's room at the Mexico City Airport, where a gunsel invades the sanctity of Santo's stall with a hale of bullets. Fortunately, the wily Santo has merely placed his shoes in that stall, only giving the appearance that he is taking a dump, and instead comes up and clobbers the deserving hood from behind.

And so Santo arrives in Madrid, with manager Carlos Suarez in tow -- who is, in a rare instance, actually playing Santo's manager rather than a villain or comic relief sidekick and is rocking a wig. Soon thereafter, he is introduced to his partner in spying, Paul (Carlos Romero Marchent, a regular in director Marchent's films), whom Santo initially disapproves of due to his mustache, shaggy hair and mod threads. To be fair, Paul's look is a lot more Tony Orlando than Manson, but in any case he quickly wins Santo's trust by dispatching another would-be assassin with his lightning fast knife throwing skills.

It should also be noted that Dr. Dea... I mean Dr. Mann, is also an artist himself, and keeps a dormitory full of beautiful models on staff at the castle for this purpose. It should be further noted that these models appear to be more prisoners than guests, and that Mann occasionally kills one of them before gorily surgically extracting something from her body and dumping her into an acid pit. ("A Doctor of what?" Santo asks one of the Spanish museum officals, regarding Mann. "Art", comes the reply. "And some kind of science.") Eventually, one of the models, Ester (Night of the Skull's Maribel Hidalgo), during an exploratory visit by the two sleuths to the castle, slips word to Paul that she suspects something sinister is going on.

When a replacement model is sent for Ester, who has been given notice, Santo and Paul intercept her in transit and replace her with Susan, a convenient lookalike who is also an Interpol agent. Susan is portrayed by Mirta Miller, a beautiful Argentinian actress who boasts several Paul Naschy films on her resume, as well as, among many others, appearances in Lenzi's Eyeball and the Tony Anthony spaghetti western Get Mean. Miller ends up bearing a heavy load in Santo vs. Dr. Death, as much of the film's middle section focuses on her exploits, much of which understandably involve her running around the cobwebbed subterranean corridors of Mann's castle in a diaphanous nightgown. She nonetheless presents a tough-as-nails heroine, at one point shutting up the tremulous Ester -- who, accompanying her on one of these jaunts, protests that she's afraid -- with a terse "Oh, please!"

Throughout all this, Santo is somewhat sidelined, mainly seen waiting faithfully by his ham radio for Susan's call. When those calls stop coming, Santo, not having read The Rules, immediately sets off with Paul to lay siege to the castle. Meanwhile, we finally learn what Mann has really been up to all this time, and it's fucking weird. Throughout their captivity, he has been secretly giving the models daily injections of estrogen. This promotes the growth of fibroid tumors that in turn provide the special ingredient to his art duplicating formula -- and also clearly indicates that no woman's hands ever came within striking distance of the script for Santo vs. Dr. Death. What I do like about all this is that Mann has no grand scheme for doing this beyond just wanting to have a really amazing art collection.

And what I like about Santo vs. Dr. Death, despite its flaws, is how it neatly combines the three primary genres that characterized Santo's Mexican films of the period while seldom overlapping. Basically, by this time you either got gothic Santo, usually in conjunction with Blue Demon, in films like Santo y Blue Demon contra Dracula y el Hombre Lobo, sci-fi Santo, as in Asesinos de Otros Mundos, or, with increasing frequency, Santo as Interpol's secret weapon in spy thrillers like Mision Suicida and Anonimo Mortal. Dr. Death combines a little bit of all of these while thankfully overlooking the cinematic Atavan of Santo on the hacienda (El Aguila Real) and Santo on the border (Santo en la Frontera del Terror).

I also like that, while Santo vs. Dr. Death's story is indeed strange, it is told with much more coherence and energy than many of Santo's later exploits. For one, the film really takes its action seriously, the final act, comprised of Santo and Paul's attack on the castle, being exemplary. In quick succession, we see a number of furious fights that are both well choreographed and filmed, Santo negotiating a series of perilous booby traps in the corridors of the castle, a speedboat chase, and some nifty stunt work that involves Santo making a high dive off a cliff and later being towed in pursuit of the villain while hanging from the ladder of a helicopter, all while sporting a snazzy, leather paneled turtleneck.

Then again, perhaps my expectations have been battered into submission by other film's insistence on showing me two minute of Santo idly watching television while also showing me what he's watching on television. But, hey, I'll take whatever excitement in a 1970s Santo film I can get, and Santo vs. Dr. Death, in its vaguely appealing Euro way, delivers.

Santo vs. Dr. Death can be seen in its entirety on YouTube.

Friday's best pop song ever

The Friends of 4DK: Elomea (East Germany, 1972) by Keith Allison

As other, non-4DK related matters have been making demands on my time of late, I've reached out to some friends in the blogosfear to contribute guest posts. The first comes from my esteemed friend, colleague and boss over at Teleport City, Keith Allison.

Of the three science fiction films produced by East German studio DEFA that found their way to the United States, Eolomea is often considered the least of the three. It lacks the 1950s pulp appeal of The Silent Star and the eye-popping disco style of In the Dust of the Stars. Compared to those two brightly colored space adventures, Eolomea is a more somber affair set in a lived-in solar system where the wonder and daring of space travel has been replaced by workaday drudgery and blue-collar boredom. The space stations are less wonders of futurist architecture and more akin to a grubby bachelor pad. The cosmonauts of Eolomea are not bold venturers into the great beyond; they are mostly irritated guys who just want to do their time and get home, like a crew stationed at some remote Antarctic outpost.

Eolomea begins with one of those multi-cultural “general assembly meeting” that are usually convened to discuss what to do about the Mysterians. Scientists and associated bureaucrats on Earth are panicked when they start losing contact with their far-flung network of space stations. Unable to figure out what might be causing this (some sort of plague is suspected), they take the emergency measure of freezing all space flights. This order sits poorly with cosmonaut Dan Lagny (Ivan Andonov), stationed on a remote outpost with only one other ennui-wracked crewmember for company. Lagny is sick of space stations and endless voids, and his return to Earth is delayed by this new order. Luckily, space -- like the Soviet Union -- is pretty big, and most of the people on the outskirts of the colonized cosmos simply ignore orders from Earth.

Thus is Dan able to escape the confines of their little station and return home, where he can don space-age (1970s) leisure-wear and yell at the sky. His retirement is derailed when he meets scientist Maria Scholl (Cox Habbema), in charge of investigating the communications blackouts and uncovering the mystery behind the single cryptic message anyone has received from the space stations: the single world “Eolomea,” which seems to have no meaning. Despite his grouchiness, Dan is pressed into service once more. The investigation eventually uncovers something sinister to do with another prominent scientist and leads Dan, Maria, and their small crew to the littered and wrecked halls of one of the seemingly abandoned space stations -- seemingly.

The dramatic change in tone that sets Eolomea apart from other DEFA sci-fi films is thanks largely to it being one of the first Eastern Bloc science fiction films released in the wake of 2001: A Space Odyssey. That film effectively ushered in a new era, one less concerned with rocket models and monsters and more concerned with human drama played against the vastness of space. The first Communist response to 2001 was 1970’s Signale – Ein Weltraumabenteuer, a German production that places one foot in the pre-2001 world of space pulp and the other in awkward attempts at post-2001 intellectualism. That film is largely forgotten, falling as it does in the twin shadows of both 2001 and the Soviet response, Solaris, a stark and complex film that is as well-regarded and almost as well-known as 2001. Also existing in that shadow is Eolomea, based on a book by Bulgarian writer Angel Vagenshtain, released the same year as Solaris and promptly forgotten until recently.

Although its disjointed timeline and contemplations on the emptiness of space make Eolomea a more complexly structured film than Silent Star and In the Dust of the Stars, it’s still relatively accessible compared to Solaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The central mystery proves more solvable than the mind-bending freak-outs that comprise the ends of either of those movies. Like Solaris, Eolomea explores the effects of space and isolation on the human psyche, but Eolomea’s themes are more proletariat than the melancholy, metaphysical weirdness of Solaris. Here, the chief human emotion is not grief, but simple everyday boredom.

It’s not unexpected that Eastern Bloc science fiction in the 1970s, buoyed by the Soviet space program, would chose to dwell on this aspect of space exploration. In oversimplified summary, while the American space program went for flight and exploration, the Soviets went for space stations and orbiting settlement. The Soviet space station program kicked off in 1971 with Salyut-1. Both Solaris and Eolomea came out a year later. The effects of living in such an environment must have been as heavy an influence on the directions of both films. Once you have guys actually up there, it tends to scrub away a bit of the polish to expose the gritty reality of day-to-day space life: less proud cosmonaut pointing toward the stars, more bored cosmonaut with holes in his socks.

It seems at first a jarring change of tone for a Communist science fiction film, so full were they of can-do attitude and faith that adherence to core socialist principles would eventually see us achieve the stars. In Eolomea, we have achieved the stars, and it turns out it’s kind of dull. It starts to make more sense as the film progresses, however, and in the end Eolomea is about the importance of not letting the drudgery and bureaucratic red tape of space travel outweigh the profundity of the pursuit. Despite similar trappings, it’s a much more optimistic view of man versus the cosmos than Solaris.

Still, despite the ultimately hopeful “to boldly go” ending, Eolomea is rather a jarring shift from DEFA’sother sci-fi films. Trading in pop-art set design for grubby space stations, primary colored space suits for more workaday realistic ones, and scantily-clad space dancing girls for irritable cosmonauts with stinky socks might be part of what keeps Eolomea from attaining the same level of love shown the other DEFA scifi romps. It’s a fascinating and ambitious science fiction film though, and as long as you don’t go in expecting the non-stop visual disco of In the Dust of the Stars, Eolomea gives you a slow burning but engrossing mystery. And hey, it’s not all depressing space grind! There’s Cox Habbema in her future-bikini, Ivan Andonov in his space leisure-wear, a reel-to-reel robot, some cool spaceship and station miniatures, and of course space vodka. Lots and lots of space vodka.

My legacy is secure.

 

Screw you dodgy servers and Ukranian dick pill farmers, or whatever you are. It takes more than your poxy efforts to keep Teleport City down. In fact, the phoenix-like resurrection of that venerable site continues apace, with the latest good news being that my complete archive of film and music reviews -- some five years' worth -- has now been fully reinstated. This process has provided a real walk down memory lane for yours truly -- except, of course, in those cases of reviews that I don't remember writing, which happens. In any case, feel free to check it out, maaaan.

Friday's best pop song ever

Gaddaar (India, 1973)

Few Indian crime films are as pure as Gaddaar. Within seconds of its opening credits, we are right in the middle of a thrilling depiction of its central crime and meeting our criminals. And what criminals they are – brutalizing women, children and the elderly with equal abandon, murdering innocent witnesses. These are hard, awful men.

And what a cast playing those hard, awful men! While Gaddaar provides a good showcase for star Vinod Khanna and his matinee idol good looks, its arguable main attraction is the first rate assemblage of Bollywood character actors who portray its crooks. Not only do we have career bad guys like Madan Puri and Ranjeet doing what they do absolutely best -- even if Ranjeet’s wardrobe is a bit disappointingly sedate -- but MVP’s like Iftehkar taking a rare step outside his usual police official roles to essay the part of the noble villain. And then there is B.K., probably one of the all time great Pran roles. Prone to referring to himself in the third person and making extravagant claims of infallibility, B.K. is a figure at once ridiculous, imposing, and tragic, ultimately undone by his own ego.

Gaddaar begins with the gang of seven men led my B.K. stealing a royal fortune of forty lakhs from an electrified palace safe in a meticulously planned robbery. Their number includes Sampat (Anwar Hussain), an acrobat, Professor (Iftehkar), the science guy, Babu (Ranjeet), who punches people, Kanhaiya (Madan Puri), the driver, John (Ram Mohan) and Mohan (Manmohan). Just as it seems the gang is going to get away free, a guard pulls an alarm and a shootout ensues. B.K. is wounded and the gang is separated. Later, everyone makes it back to the hideout except for Kanhaiya, who was carrying the money. The men wait, becoming more quarrelsome by the moment.

Night falls and the gang make their way to Kanhaiya’s apartment. There they come upon Raja (Vinod Khanna), a small time thief, in the process of an attempted burglary. Raja knows who they are and asks for a cut of the loot in exchange for his silence and his assistance in tracking down Kahnaiya. Before B.K. can answer, he escapes. Later the men go to see a cabaret dancer (Padma Khanna) who is a known consort of Kanhaiya’s. Raja shows up again and takes the woman into his custody, again asking the gang for a guaranty of a cut. B.K. agrees, and Raja strong arms the dancer into divulging Kanhaiya’s whereabouts before apparently shooting her in cold blood.

Kanhaiya’s trail leads to the village of Rampur in the snowy Himachal Pradesh region of Northern India, where Vinod Khanna and his giant swastika necklace arrive in short order. Lost in a snow storm, he comes upon the isolated Hotel Mansaro. This turns out to have been recently purchased by Kanhaiya, who lives there with his daughter Reshma (Yogeeta Bali) and young son Tito (Master Raju). The hotel is otherwise empty for the off season, with the only other guests being Mathur (Satyenda Kapoor), an alcolholic doctor, his wife, and Shankar (V. Gopal), the hotel’s porter.

Meanwhile, the rest of the gang is hiding out in a cave near the hotel, with B.K. overcome by a racking, consumptive cough that gets worse by the minute. Informed by Raja of Kanhaiya’s presence, they make their way to what they think is an abandoned barn on the property, where an armed guard seriously wounds Sampat before being shot dead by them. The men then descend upon the hotel and take the staff and guests hostage. After B.K. threatens little Tito with torture, Kanhaiya reveals that thirty five remaining lakhs of the treasure are buried in a cave nearby. B.K. and Professor follow him there, only to find that the cave is the very one that they had just been hiding in. Kanhaiya begins to dig up the strong box, but then pulls a gun and shoots Professor. As he dies, Professor asks B.K. to promise him that there will be no bloodshed. B.K. does, but we can’t see whether or not he’s crossing his fingers.

Like any great “heist gone wrong” tale, Gaddaar descends into greater and greater violence as it goes along, depicting the erosion of trust between the criminals in fairly unflinching detail as the bullets fly with increasing frequency. Leavening this somewhat are Laxmikant-Pyarelal’s musical sequences, which include a strange, Egyptian-themed nightclub number that involves white hippie girls and a lot of eating. Overall, the duo’s song score here is pleasantly heavy on the tribal rhythms and traditional melodies, while the film’s instrumental score relies heavily on needle dropped cues from Enno Morricone’s score to For a Few Dollars More. Anand Bakshi’s lyrics are also clever. Upon learning of the remaining loot, the gang archly celebrates Madan Puri’s Kanhaiya with a rousing rendition of the theme song:

“You are a traitor after all
you are a cheat after all
you are our old friend
At least you love money.” 

Gaddaar was apparently only the second film as director – and the first as producer – for Hamesh Malhotra, a career director whose work included 1986’s fanciful “snake lady” film Nagina. His talent is nonetheless well in evidence, from his arresting use of bold primary colors, to his shrewd, atmospheric use of the snowy Himachal Pradesh locations, to his taut staging of the opening heist. True, there is room for all kinds of films under the Bollywood action banner, from the sober social drama of Deewaar to the comic book histrionics of a Maha Badmaash. But it is films like Gaddaar that hold down the rare generic middle ground. As such, it is one that I’d recommend to any fan of either great caper films or crime films of an international nature, whether or not they’ve yet gotten their Indian cinema training wheels.

Challenge to White Fang, aka Il Ritorno di Zanna Bianca (Italy/France/West Germany, 1974)

So what if Italian goremeister Lucio Fulci wanted to make a hero dog movie starring Django? These are the kinds of questions I like to ask. Move along people; there's nothing to see here!

Challenge to White Fang is the sequel to Fulci's original 1973 Zanna Bianca. And while I haven't seen that film, I think I can take a pretty good stab at what it's about, since Challenge seems to be that kind of sequel that laboriously reassembles all of the elements of the original and then starts over again at square one. We start with the Eskimo family to whom the wolf dog White Fang belongs being massacred by the gang of a corrupt trader named Forth (John Steiner). Soon thereafter, an old prospector named Tarwater (Harry Carey Jr.) happens to come sledding by and takes White Fang back to his mining camp in the Klondike, where the dog bonds with his young grandson Bill (Renato Cestie).

Back in town, we also meet Sister Evangelina, who is played by famed Italian sexpot Virna Lisi in a reprise of her role from the previous film. Evangelina recognizes Forth, who has made himself a powerful fixture in the town, as the villain from the first film, Beauty Smith, and calls in our hero, Jason Scott, played by old Blue Eyes himself, Franco Nero. Scott is both a famed adventurer and White Fang's erstwhile hagiographer, a sometimes companion to the animal who chronicles its written adventures for an adoring public. Together with his manly trapper pal Kurt Jansen (Raimund Harmstorf), Scott determines to get to the bottom of just what Smith is up to in the town, which, it turns out, is no good. Smith is entering into usurious contracts with the prospectors, taking a lions share of their take in exchange for insufficient rations and supplies, with lost lives the result.

Effete and vicious, Steiner's Beauty Smith strikes one as an especially nasty villain within the nominally family friendly context of Challenge to White Fang, and the performance works nicely against elements like Carlo Rustichelli's somewhat chirpy score and the myriad tear jerking "boy and his dog" moments to rescue the film from the vanilla wasteland. It should also be said that, while there is not a torn viscera in sight, Fulci's darker gifts are not completely wasted, as quite a lot of attention is paid to grim frontier hardship. Over the course of the film, we get prospectors harrowingly freezing to death in the open, two suicides by shotgun, and an emergency amputation. Elsewhere, Fulci's direction, not surprisingly, is professional but not overreaching, leaving the film neither particularly beautiful or homely. The action sequences -- a climactic sled race, in particular -- are handled thrillingly.

As for White Fang himself, for those of us who have read about the stunning natural charisma of an animal actor like Rin Tin Tin -- or witnessed it in the case of a Pedro or Moti -- he doesn't impress all that much, coming off more as the mascot of the film than its star, which is clearly Nero. True, the dog does expose a card cheat in one scene, which is a pretty neat trick. He also at one point defends young Bill from an attacking eagle and is blinded in the process, which proves that not even a dog's eyes are safe from Fulci's abiding obsessions.

But the most egregious eye violence that Fulci wants to do to his audience in this case is to its tear ducts, as evidenced by a last minute Old Yeller moment at Challenge to White Fang's conclusion. Not to deny that putting the director in a box in this manner is somewhat juvenile and reductive, but it's difficult to shake, watching such a moment, that this was a film made in the wake of Lizard in a Woman's Skin and, what is to my mind Fulci's masterpiece, Don't Torture a Duckling. Granted, there is much of well paced, rousing entertainment on display throughout the film, but there are certainly moments during which less sentimental viewers might prefer the splinter.

Sounds

I missed a lot of music news during my recent travails, and it's now all trickling back in like a delayed reward. All the more reason to be thankful for having a brain.

Savages, Silence Yourself. It's easy to imagine the members of Savages gathered, cell-like, subjecting the gatecrashing releases of the post-punk era -- Wire's Pink Flag, Gang of Four's Entertainment! -- to rigorous interrogation, breaking them down to their basic DNA for more efficient assimilation into their fearsomely disciplined sound. They may not be delivering anything strictly new here, but they certainly provide a thrilling recreation of the expressionistic, Kabuki shadowed birth agonies of the new as experienced through those aforementioned seminal discs all those years ago. An exhilirating release.



The Knife, Shaking the Habitual. I hope that, as long as I love them, Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer remain eccentric and provocative. On the duo's desperately awaited follow-up to Silent Shout, they once again utilize classic pop sounds, but in the service of something more disarmingly intimate and troubled than the pop spectrum normally accommodates.

 

Wire, Change Becomes Us. And finally, speaking of Wire, their latest compiles long overdue studio versions of songs composed during the waning days of their first incarnation, some of which were included on their great 1981 live album for Rough Trade, Document and Eyewitness. This cherry picking was probably the best strategy for hitting the high bar set by the band's previous Red Barked Tree, with the result that these elder statesmen somewhat improbably continue to rage from strength to strength as they continue into their fourth decade.


Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some listening to do.

Friday's best pop song ever