Reel Bad Cinema: Santo & Blue Demon vs. the Monsters (1970) review

SANTO & BLUE DEMON VS. THE MONSTERS 1970 aka SANTO, EL ENMASCARADO DE PLATA Y BLUE DEMON CONTRA LOS MONSTRUOUS

Santo (Enmascarado de Plata), Blue Demon (Alejandro Cruz), Jorge Rado (Otto Halder), Carlos Ancira (Bruno Halder), Hedy Blue (Gloria), Rafael Aldrete "Santanon" (Waldo), Vincente Lara "Cacama" (Wolfman), Manuel Leal (Frankenstein Monster), Gerardo Cepeda (Cyclops), David Alvizu (The Vampire), Fernando Rosales (Mummy), Elsa Maria Tako (Sonia, Vampire Woman #1), Yolanda Ponce (Fabiola, Vampire Woman #2)

Directed by Gilberto Martinez Solares

The Short Version: Ghouls just wanna have fun in this 82 minute Monster Mash Mexi-trash movie. Every passing minute is even more lovingly rancid than the last in what has to be one of the single most entertaining plotless pieces of shit to ever get across the border. Get a bunch of friends together, grab a big bowl of chips and salsa, and prepare to indulge in a massively overstuffed Bad Movie Burrito Supreme.

 

A noted scientist named Bruno Halder, famous for reviving dead bodies through brain transplants, dies under mysterious circumstances.

Apparently, he died before he was able to perform a similar function on the writers of this picture. Anyways, Bruno's brother, professor Otto Halder is alive and well and his daughter, Gloria, just happens to be Santo's girlfriend.

Bruno's corpse is stolen by his bizarre goon squad led by the bald midget hunchback, Waldo, and later revived back at his castle. Apparently, they didn't embalm dead bodies in Mexico back then. Through a plot point that's never sufficiently explained, Bruno Halder has a beef with both Santo and Blue Demon and hates his brother and niece because they called him crazy. Go figure.

Meanwhiiiiile, back at the Legion of Doooooom--Err Bruno captures a snooping Blue Demon and informs him of his insidious plans regardless of how nonsensical they may be.

Considering this is a Santo and Blue tag team double header, it's time to introduce the running gag of Blue being subjugated by the bad guys instead of actually BEING a bad guy to preserve his then popular status as a hero of the ring. Instead of simply injecting him with an eeeveeeel serum, he goes through the trouble of making an eeeveeel Blue Demon duplicate in a machine that looks like a tanning bed without the fluorescent bulbs.

After the first failed attempt for Evil Blue Demon and a gang of zombies at snatching Santo and Gloria, Bruno gathers his gaggle of ghouls for what amounts to a long series of battles and ambushes.

Santo dukes it out with the Cyclops From the Black Lagoon and kills it with a stake to the chest. Bruno performs surgery on it and this one eyed reptilian rubber menace is as good as new.

From there, the various creatures attack Santo, Gloria and Otto Halder at various locations whether at Otto's home, a night club, even during a wrestling match between Santo and El Vampiro! When it looks like the Saintly One is gonna win, the other monsters rush the ring just like The Four Horsemen would do any time Dusty Rhodes, Magnum TA, or any other NWA babyface was getting the upper hand back when wrestling was worth watching.

After the monsters finally get their claws on Gloria and Otto (yes, the Frankenstein monster is driving the getaway car!), Santo chases them back to Bruno's castle where the big monster mash finale takes place.

Santo trades punches with Evil Blue Demon and defeats him by tossing a Blue Demon dummy off a cliff. Reviving the real Blue, the dynamic duo trash the mad scientist set and vanquish all the monsters just before the castle is destroyed.

Cue the bizarre muzak styled soundtrack of Gustavo C. Carreon as the curtain closes on this Película muy loca.

As much as saying Mexican wrestling movies are the very definition of batshit crazy, SANTO & BLUE DEMON VS. THE MONSTERS is the crescendo of crapola; and that's of the utmost recommendation.

Seldom do truly awful movies strive to be as inanely stupid as this one. THE MUMMIES OF GUANAJUATO (1970) comes hilariously close, but it doesn't have the roll call of monsters this particular movie does. Even the giant bat prop from both THE BLOODY VAMPIRE (1962) and its superior sequel INVASION OF THE VAMPIRES (1963) is used here. To put it bluntly, this is the DESTROY ALL MONSTERS (1968) of lucha libre flicks on a $1.95 budget.

If nothing else, this movie has energy. The frenetic pace is non stop. The film barely slows down (save for a bewildering dance number) and nobody seems to care there's zero plotline; or that the Cyclops suit looks like a bulky, scaly costume fitted like a shirt and pants with matching clawed hands and feet.

All of the monsters are rather laughably stitched together (haha) and it's this carelessness towards just about everything production wise that makes this stain on the couch so endearing.

The Mummy is of an equally raggedy design looking like a scrawny old man covered in very clean gauze. Oddly enough, during the wrestling sequence when the monsters stampede the ring, a different, bulkier guy missing a bunch of teeth is decked out in the shambler's rags.

Going further down the list, this films vampire has got to be one of the least threatening bloodsuckers to ever grace a movie screen.

He is often seen perched on the sides of buildings with these ridiculous bat ears and dressed up like Lon Chaney Sr. from LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT (1925). The scene where Bruno and Waldo prep him for his match with Santo is a riot.

Speaking of the vampire, Blue Demon also comes equipped with a Secret Decoder Ring that keeps El Vampiro in line when he gets thirsty and wants to put the bite on Bruno's zombie horde.

There are also two vampire women seen here and they offer the film some brief moments of welcome cheesecake. I assume their inclusion here is to homage the classic 1962 Santo favorite, SAMSON VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMEN aka SANTO VS. LAS MUJERES VAMPIRO (1962). In my view, we don't get to see enough of them, if you get what I mean and I think you do.

Considering the hell Hammer went through to gain the rights to use the Jack Pierce make up designs for their own EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN (1964), I wonder if the Mexican producers even bothered; simply purchasing a Halloween mask instead. This Mexi-Franken-monster not only has the films most violent moment (he squashes a young man's head), he also drives a car!

El Hombre Lobo is played by frequent Santo bad guy, Vincente Lara. He has a similarly hilarious appearance, but it's easily the best make up appliance of the gruesome group. He's also the most energetic of the monsters and looks more like one of the human experiments in THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE (1972) than a werewolf. Still, the design is more believable than what was used in the 1958 Mexi-horror classic, THE MAN & THE MONSTER.If that list of creatures weren't enough, there's also a gang of zombies, a hunchback midget and that bizarro alien thing with an enormous brain exposed from THE SHIP OF MONSTERS (1960). In all likelihood this profoundly fake looking creation was the inspiration for Roger the alien on AMERICAN DAD. The cyclopean creature is likewise recycled from SHIP, only it's been modified in appearance, and shows serious signs of wear and tear in that ten year interim.

With all the monster action crammed into these brief 82 minutes, a Santo flick wouldn't be such a thing without wrestling. We get three matches here; two back to back at the opening and one additional later on when The Vampire meets Enmascarado de Plata in the squared circle. 

The opening match is notable in that it features luchadoras (lady wrestlers). This is then followed by a tag match between Blue Demon and El Arabe vs. Garza and Ebana.

If anybody ever accused the wrestling sequences in these movies of being padding, they haven't experienced the mind bogglingly intrusive dance numbers that seem to crop up a lot in Santo's 70s movies. The one here seems to go on for almost ten minutes before the goofy monsters crash the party leading to a great mummy dummy death scene. Actually, there's two prime examples of dummy deaths here; the ultimate in mannequin mauling occurring towards the end when Santo effortlessly tosses what looks like a paper doll of Eeeveeel Blue Demon off of a cliff!

The organ dominated muzak score of Gustavo C. Carreon is just as in-consequentially out of place and mind-numbingly awful as it was in SANTO VS. BLUE DEMON IN ATLANTIS from the same year.

With everything else being so butt-burningly bad here, the horrendous score is a perfect fit. You'll laugh and you'll cry because you're laughing so hard at the sheer unbridled lunacy of SANTO & BLUE DEMON VS. THE MONSTERS. Movies rarely get 'So Bad It's Good' than this, the El Grande Mierda of Santo movies. Highly recommended for Mexi-movie fans, Masochists, and for those who take very little seriously.

This review is representative of the Alter Films-RTC DVD. There are English subtitles offered.

Santo vs. the Zombies (1962) review

SANTO VS. THE ZOMBIES 1962 aka SANTO CONTRA LOS ZOMBIES aka INVASION OF THE ZOMBIES

El Santo (Santo, Enmascarado de Plata), Armando Silvestre (Lt. Savage), Jaime Fernandez (detective Rodriguez), Dagoberto Rodriguez (Chief Almada), Irma Serrano (detective Isabel), Carlos Agosti (Don Herbert Rutherford), Ramon Bugarini (Roger), Lorena Velazquez (Gloria Rutherford)

Directed by Benito Alazraki

"...A legend. A chimera. He embodies the greatest things. Justice and goodness. That is Santo...the Silver Mask."

The Short Version: Santo's first leading role is an entertaining, if hopelessly silly 1930s level serial style madness. Much better than some of the later movies, The Saintly One, having been immortalized in the ring and in comic book form, gets a motion picture translation of his enduring popularity. There's a lot of child-like wonder unfolding here and in many other Mexi-horror movies; and with that mindset, you can't go wrong with one of the adventures of Enmascarado de Plata.


After returning from Haiti with his daughter Gloria where he wrote a book on Haitian psychology and voodoo practices, professor Rutherford disappears on his way to have his book published.

Unable to locate him, Gloria and the police look to masked wrestler and part time crime fighter, Santo for help. Her fathers blind brother, Don Herbert is also interested in his whereabouts.

Meanwhile, a jewelry store is robbed by three hulking zombie men who are impervious to bullets. The police believe a former Italian gangster named Dino Povetti is tied in to the robberies, but Santo knows better.


From his crime fighting headquarters, Santo is somehow able to see (on closed circuit television) a hooded villain sending his zombie minions on a mission to kidnap children from an orphanage to use the little tykes in experiments. Santo intercepts them leading to a high speed chase.

Amazingly, the hooded villain has his own satellite capabilities and sees the entire incident unfold. He then blows up his zombies in their getaway car to keep Santo and the cops from uncovering his plans.

Despite Santo having his hands all over it, a crowbar-like metal rod one of the zombies had in his possession shows traces of fingerprints belonging to Luis Roco; a dead convict killed in a police shootout eight years prior. Learning that Luis's body was claimed by Dino Povetti, the police investigate only to find Povetti murdered.

The hooded villain next sends his zombies to kidnap detective Isabel, but Santo prevents the lumbering goons from snatching her.


Irritated, the next plan of action is to kill Santo during a wrestling match by kidnapping his opponent and placing a mind controlling device in his trunks! This makes sense since that's where us men's brains are located. When that plan fails, too, the hooded zombie controller (who also has a hooded assistant) kidnaps Gloria and uses her to lure the meddling cops to the villains lair hidden beneath a mansion.

Having seen it all on his privacy invading television, it's Santo to the rescue.

Now at the conclusion of the movie, having been unexplained and overlooked throughout the first 70 minutes, the zombies electric belts turn their metallic crowbars into lethal cattle prods! We do see one of the zombies using this crowbar-like thing to burn into the jewelry store safe near the beginning, but its correlation to the belts isn't mentioned till the end.

Arriving just in time to save Gloria from becoming the first zombie woman, super Santo battles it out with the Double Diabolical Hoods destroying them, their laboratory and the zombies in the process. Triumphant, Enmascarado de Plata walks away anxiously awaiting his next silver screen adventure.


El Santo's first leading role is a curious picture indeed. It's just as goofy as any number of other entries and shot on a bigger than normal shoe string at the glorious Churubusco-Azteca studios; the home of such notably wacky Mexi-horror classics like the immortal THE BRAINIAC (1961) and the surreal, spooky excellence of CURSE OF THE CRYING WOMAN (1961).

El Enmascarado de Plata had already enjoyed a near three decade wrestling career before appearing in motion pictures. Reportedly, he began wrestling as El Santo sometime in the 1940s. He was also immortalized in a long running, extremely popular comic book series beginning in the early 1950s.

Having appeared in smaller roles in two movies previously, SANTO VS. THE ZOMBIES was his first major role. Santo is portrayed as a larger than life character for the first few films in this series; a superhero and a fighter of crime. He's seen as a government spy in some films and even a cowboy in one peculiar entry. His image as a wrestler is never undermined, though.

The first 11 minutes of this movie (including the credits) showcases Santo in the ring in what appears to be actual footage and not wrestling scenes shot for the production. In furthering the Silver Masked One's status as a Mexican of All Trades, a total of three matches are featured here; two of them specific to the plot.

A cadre of other wrestlers are on display here as well including Black Shadow and The Gladiator, some of which no doubt play some of the musclebound zombie men.

The script, while not perfect, is more focused than so many of these movies. They were geared towards a family audience anyways, but the three writing contributors (including the director who was also the mastermind behind the exquisitely macabre CURSE OF THE DOLL PEOPLE) for this entry fashion a nicely character populated landscape that rarely goes off on any wild tangents.

You can probably guess who the hooded villain is (so many of these Mexi-movies have hooded bad guys in them) early on, but the writers take the time to throw a red herring or two in there.

Judging by the way Santo is shown in the ring and in the action scenes in the film, he seems a bit uncomfortable performing the numerous fight sequences. During the ending, he even falls over a table, but the camera keeps shooting. He also repeatedly uses his head as a battering ram like some characters would do in later Hong Kong kung fu movies.


There's also an unintentionally semi-creepy side to Santo's character in some of these earlier superhero movies. He watches everything, "Big Brother" style, from his closed circuit television situated in his secret headquarters. Granted, this explains how he just happens to show up whenever the villains are around, but it also makes one wonder if the Saintly One isn't occasionally peeking in on some of the curvier looking members of the movies cast.


The zombies are rife for poking fun of with their unintentional Stoogian moments when Santo lackadaisically tosses them around.

These zombies are also rather strong. It takes merely one smash to the head to take down a normal human, but Santo takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'. At one point, instead of disposing of him, the zombies decide instead to attempt to remove his mask!

There's also a lot of guns being fired into the zombies' bodies allowing the effects team to cut loose with some effective bullet hits. Early in the film, one of the main zombies takes a slug square in the head and keeps coming! Take that George Romero!


The Hooded villains have little to do till the end aside from watching their TV screens while clutching their fists, or concocting serums in their El Cheapo Franken-lab. They are less a presence than other similar antagonists such as the hooded bad guy from DOCTOR OF DOOM (1963), the first of a series of Luchadoras (lady wrestling) movies.


That films star, the lovely Lorena Velazquez, has a supporting role in SANTO VS. THE ZOMBIES. She's in and out of the narrative and does little aside from look gorgeous and provide Santo a reason for assaulting the zombie stronghold during the finale. Velazquez was a popular actress in Mexi-horror not counting her wealth of other roles.

When she wasn't playing a vivacious lady wrestler, she was playing the lead villainess in one of Santo's best loved pictures, SANTO VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMEN (1962), the follow up to his zombie-fest. Velazquez also essayed the Queen of the Witches in 1968s mediocre ATTACK OF THE WITCHES (filmed in 1964), a so-so film that comes off for all the world like a remake of the superior SANTO VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMEN (1962).


The music by Raul Lavista is much better than this series was afforded later on down the road. The cues are quite strong and typical of the early 60s Mexi-movies. These compositions sometimes sound like they'd fit comfortably in a sword and sandal movie.

It may not be as overly entertaining as SANTO VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMEN (1962) and SANTO IN THE WAX MUSEUM (1963), but this 30s level serial styled B/W spooker is an enjoyably swift 80+ minutes. A silly, but modestly auspicious beginning to Santo's movie career that would span 50+ feature films and an incredible legacy in Mexico.

This review is representative of the RTC-Cinematografica Rodriguez DVD. There are English and French subtitles.