Starring El Santo, Blue Demon, Dracula, and The Wolf Man

Directed By Miguel M. Delgado

Professional wrestling in Mexico - known as lucha libre - is infinitely more popular and respected than it is in the United States. Many luchadores as the wrestlers are called are known for wearing colorful masks, as wearing masks into battle was an Aztec tradition, or so they say. The most popular luchador of them all was El Santo, which translates to The Saint. It wasn't just a name as even today the man is a Mexican cultural icon and his trademark silver mask is practically considered to be sacred. You see El Santo was Hulk Hogan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Superman all rolled into one. A real-life superhero, he was El Santo in the wrestling ring, El Santo on the movie screen, and El Santo on the streets. In his illustrious movie career that spanned four decades, he starred in around 60 movies. Until now, only a handful have ever released North of the Border.

El Santo wasn't the only luchador to cross over into cinema. Because of the popularity of the genre, several other luchadores would star in their own cinematic franchises resulting in a whole new genre of movie, the Mexi-lucha movie. So basically what you'd get would be a horror, sci-fi, or adventure action movie with a Mexican wrestler as the hero. They would battle monsters, aliens, robots, spies, gangsters, etc and the filmmakers would even toss in 2 or 3 actual wrestling matches. Sometimes they'd have crossover movies and team up a combination of luchadores to deal with a certain menace. One of the most popular Mexi-lucha stars behind El Santo was Blue Demon. The two of them teamed up for several movies later in their careers. This is one of them.

Following the opening obligatory wrestling match in which Santo defeats another masked rival (and it should be noted that lucha libre matches are traditionally 2-out-of-3 falls so the wrestling scenes usually last a minimum of 10 minutes), the lunacy begins. You see, an evil hunchback possesses the coffins containing the corpses of Dracula and the Wolfman with plans to resurrect them because Dracula apparently has a vast fortune in gold somewhere and the Prince of Darkness will reward his resurrectionist handsomely. Oh, and for some reason, his lair has these two big bat heads that spit streams of fire constantly for no particular reason. At least they look cool doing so.

We soon come to learn the truth about what really happened to Dracula. You see, Dracula planned to take over the world by joining forces with the Wolf Man to crossbreed the two "damned species" thus creating an unstoppable army. Unfortunately, Dracula was thwarted by a wizard name Cristaldi, who killed the two monsters using a magic dagger. Well, the descendants of this wizard are alive and well and living in Mexico. The Cristaldi family descendants consist of this professor, his daughter, his granddaughter, and his niece. In fact, the pretty young niece of Professor Cristaldi (Professor of what we are never told.) is dating the Man in the Silver Mask. It should be noted that by the time this movie was made in the early 70s El Santo was nearing his mid-50s so it seems he's a man of honor and a defender of justice but not above a little cradle robbing. The Professor tells Santo the tale of Dracula and his wizard ancestor and asks if he can help protect the family from the coming evil. Santo, realizing this is a tall order, recruits Blue Demon to join him but not until after we watch an actual wrestling match between Blue Demon and Renato the Hippie. Personally, I'd have rather seen Santo and Renato the Hippie vs. Dracula and the Wolf Man, but it simply wasn't to be.

The professor, who still has possession of the magical dagger, places it on the nightstand of his young granddaughter because apparently just its presence alone is enough to repel evil. In fact, at one point Dracula enters the girl's room but flees after seeing the dagger that begins flashing red for whatever reason. It should also be noticed that after this young girl goes to bed in the first act, she doesn't seem to wake up until sometime in the third act meaning she either slept for days or did wake up and never found it strange that there was a humongous knife laying on her nightstand. Either the professor knew that she slept for days at a time or he just doesn't have much regard for the rest of his family because you'd think he'd want to keep that knife around to protect his entire family.

Needless to say, Dracula and the Wolfman get brought back to life and Dracula immediately vows revenge against the Cristaldi family. Oh, and the Wolfman, who also rises from the dead in full wolf mode (Pretty good make-up job too in the Lon Chaney Jr. tradition.), spends the duration of the movie wearing clothing that looks like something out of Saturday Night Fever. He also has the greatest werewolf name in the history of cinema - Rufus Rex. Now even though Dracula is supposed to be this all-powerful evil entity, he still concocts a half-assed plan for getting his revenge. You see Rufus Rex in human form looks a lot like a younger, somewhat hunkier Joe Don Baker, albeit wearing disco clothes in a pre-disco era; so why not have the werewolf go seduce the daughter and lure her into a trap? Of course, that makes little sense because as the movie progresses, Dracula will pretty much come and go in and out of the Cristaldi's house as he pleases with virtually no resistance.

As I said, the first half hour is a camp riot but after that the movie just screeches to a halt and becomes a crashing bore as virtually nothing happens for long periods as a time. Somebody follows somebody else and spies on them. Yawn. Somebody has a conversation with somebody else recapping everything that has previously happened. Yawn. Somebody reads something and acts upset after doing so. Yawn. We hear something that happens off camera that might have actually have been interesting to actually see rather than hear. Yawn. Dracula does a lot of glaring. Yawn. Rufus Rex romances the daughter. Yawn. The granddaughter sleeps. Yawn. Santo and Blue Demon play chess for hours at a time. Well, that is kind of amusing at first but quickly becomes tedious. Okay, there is a brawl about halfway into the movie in which Santo and Blue Demon battle some generic henchmen in a warehouse that plays out more like a fight sequence from the old Batman show. You keep waiting for the word bubbles to pop up with "BAM!" and "KAPOW!" Other than that, very little of actual interest occurs.

The finale takes freakin' forever to set up with a seemingly endless amount of time wasted during which characters wander around the woods and/or this creaky old house that leads to Dracula's lair. Finally, a somewhat entertaining brawl with the two luchadores slugging it out with a small army of vampires and wolfmen around a pit of spikes takes place. Then it's off to the movie's horrendous ending. Blink and you'll miss it. I won't give it away other than to say the final showdown with Dracula and the Wolf Man lasts all of about 5 seconds and it doesn't even involve the magic knife that's supposed to be the only thing that can stop them. I think I actually yelled "Bullshit!" out loud when I realized that really was all there was going to be to it. The resolution will leave you frustrated and pissed that you wasted all this time watching this movie for it to culminate in such a lame split second climax. And tacking on an actual tag team match in which Santo and Blue Demon team up to beat the same two guys they each individually beat earlier in the movie doesn't make up for the fact that the resolution to the actual plot is utter crap.

Look, watching one of these movies you don't expect much in the way of a coherent plot, great special effects, or stellar acting. You expect to have a good time watching a goofy genre of film that has been rarely seen outside of Mexico. And you do just that for about the first half-hour until the movie goes from being lively and convoluted to boring and convoluted. And that ending - UGH! Too bad because it definitely had its moments and the first half-hour of the movie is a camp riot. Then it all went downhill so fast. I was watching this movie with a friend of mine who is a much bigger Santo fan than I and even he was profoundly disappointed by this one. Hopefully the other Santo movies being released in the franchise aren't as big a waste of time as this one was.

Still, it gets and extra half Drac just for the fire-spitting bat heads, Santo's flying body splash off the tower of boxes, and for his oddball fashion sense. I swear, at one point he was running around wearing this suit that made him look like an 1800's Southern plantation owner, albeit one wearing a silver mask.

1 1/2 STARS