Samson in the Wax Museum

Mexico / 1963 Directed by Alfonso Corona Blake Starring El Santo Claudio Brook Norma Mora B&W / 92 Minutes / Not Rated Format: DVD (R0 - NTSC) Beverly Wilshire Filmworks

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		Review by Brian Lindsey

6     2   10 = Highest Rating

He's Batman, Doc Savage and a WWF star all rolled into one — El Santo, the silver masked man, Mexico's greatest superhero and a real-life professional wrestler. A superstar in the arena, the hero of comic books and a score of Mexican sci-fi/horror/action movies, El Santo is sadly little known north of the Rio Grande. His main exposure to yanqui audiences came via dubbed versions of a handful of Santo films shown on late night American TV during the '60s, in which his character is re-christened "Samson." Beverly Wilshire Filmworks now brings one of those flicks, Santo en el Museo de Cera (a.k.a. Samson in the Wax Museum), to DVD.     A strange rash of disappearances is plaguing the city. When a pretty young photographer vanishes after her visit to the local wax museum, the missing woman's sister and future brother-in-law suspect its proprietor — the urbane and insufferably polite Dr. Karol (Claudio Brook) — of foul play. Wishing to allay their suspicions, Karol approaches his friend Prof. Galvan for help. The professor (whom characters in this dubbed English version call "Halpin" even though his stationary clearly reads "Galvan") is an associate of the mysterious Samson and promises to enlist the crime-fighting wrestler's aid in cracking the case. Before long the masked, glitter-caped do-gooder is up to his eyeholes in villainy, as a knife-throwing assassin tries to murder Karol and Galvan disappears, likely kidnapped. Can the intrepid Samson discover the mastermind behind these evil deeds in time to for his next wrestling match?     The movie starts out slow but soon devolves into a series of short, plot-advancing vignettes in between Santo's wrestling bouts (there are three!) and numerous hand-to-hand combats with the villain's henchmen. This is a good thing, y'all. Santo is at his acrobatic best when in the ring or battling evil. This is not to say the rest of the film's a drag... The dubbed English dialog is hilariously stilted, providing some ripe moments of straight-faced silliness. (The clichéd "villain laughs maniacally" moment is absolutely hysterical; ditto the baddie's over-the-top rantings at film's climax.) In the right frame of mind, Samson in the Wax Museum can be a lot of fun.

Since I'm giving the DVD a rating of 2 (out of 10), I'd like to clarify a few issues. The film is in pretty poor shape, transferred from a well-worn 16mm print. Speckles, pops, scratches — it's just like watching it on TV 30 years ago! (At one point the movie goes black followed by what appears to be a videotape cut.) The mono sound is adequate, with clear dialog and only moderate hiss. There are no extras and only 8 chapter stops (actually 10, because the first one listed in the menu is really # 3). The chapter stops, unfortunately, are not cued to the wrestling matches and action scenes. Packaging artwork is inexplicably generic, without even a mention of El Santo or wrestling (or even a picture of him!).     Though the disc itself is problematic, I have to commend Beverly Wilshire Filmworks for their effort. By all accounts they are an extremely small "Mom and Pop" operation in New York, the only folks willing to take a chance on Mexihorror for the American DVD market. It's safe to say no major U.S. distributor is ever going to digitally remaster old black and white Mexican wrestling movies. The relatively low price of the disc balances out its faults.     I've heard that this and other titles in the BWF line of Mexican films — including a second El Santo adventure, Samson vs. the Vampire Women — have occasionally been spotted in some video/record stores. But such sightings are rare. For the rest of us these discs can still be had via the internet even though BWF has subsequently gone out of business. 4/27/01

UPDATE As mentioned above, BWF went out of business in 2001. However, even two years later I spotted this disc in the bargain bin of a Sam Goody's store, and it seems that copies are still available via Amazon and other web merchants such as Creepy Classics.

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