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Santo
& Blue Demon
Vs. The Monsters
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7
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6 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Santo
& Blue Demon Vs. The Monsters
(Santo Y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos)
is an astonishingly absurd motion picture. I know,
I know... Not exactly a revelatory statement when
it comes to these lucha libre flicks, now
is it? If you're even a semi-regular visitor to
Eccentric Cinema then you're well aware that absurdity
is de rigueur for the cinematic adventures
of El Santo, the Mexican wrestling superhero who
never takes off his mask. ALL of the Santo films
are silly to begin with, but this one —
my tenth —
easily takes the whole enchilada! I would've spent
nearly the entire running time in stupefied, slack-jawed
amazement had I not been laughing my ass off.
Personally, I can't ask anything more from a film
this inherently bad —
I was thoroughly entertained throughout. So while
it may not be House Of
Frankenstein, y'all, to me this particular
monster rally is actually a lot more fun. My leg
is still sore from all that kneeslapping.
Santo really has his hands full in
this one. When controversial scientist Dr. Bruno
Halder dies and is interred, his devoted disciple
Waldo (Rafael Muñoz) — a bald, hunchbacked
dwarf with bad teeth — has the body stolen from
the family crypt and carried to Halder's secret
laboratory in a cave beneath a castle. Using his
master's patented corpse-reviving machinery, Waldo
brings him back to sentient life. Halder (Carlos
Ancira, a dead ringer for Lenin) is evil, of course,
bent on conquering the world with an army of the
living dead he plans to create. But first he wants
revenge against his brother Otto and niece Gloria
(Hedy Blue), who publicly denounced his unethical
experiments. To destroy them he'll have to get
past crimefighting wrestler El Santo — who just
happens to be Gloria's boyfriend — and Santo's
best buddy, the equally formidable luchadore
Blue Demon.
Halder knows his small cadre of green-faced,
zombified henchmen (dead, reanimated criminals)
are no match for Santo and Blue. So he finds and
revives five deadly (i.e., super-cheesy) monsters
to do his bidding: a werewolf, a vampire, a mummy,
the Frankenstein Monster, and an amphibious one-eyed
creature appropriately dubbed the Cyclops. These
cats are some groovy ghoulies indeed! The Wolf
Man is just an old bearded guy with fake furry
ears, dimestore fangs and putty globbed on his
nose. (A fairly energetic old guy, though,
considering all the roughhousing he does.) El
Vampiro is your basic Lugosi-inspired tux and
cape-wearing bloodsucker, only he sports ridiculously
goofy pointed rubber ears and attacks like a complete
spaz. The rather pathetic mummy — why not the
Aztec Mummy, dammit! — makes John
Carradine look like Bruce Jenner... except when
being noticeably doubled by a beefier stunt man
in the fight scenes. The Frankenstein Monster
is clearly modeled on the classic Universal creature,
but is stylin' with his distinctive Fu Manchu
'stache and goatee. (So that's how you
avoid copyright infringement...) The Cyclops costume
is visibly falling apart and the animatronic head
used for close-ups of the shrieking, tubercular-sounding
beast is a laugh riot. There's also a weird little
space alien-like creature with an exposed brain
(or bleached perm, take your pick) which is never
explained and just stands on the sidelines, doing
nothing. (???) Adding to Halder's growing bestiary,
Poor Man's Dracula bites two women and turns them
into scantily-clad vampiresses. And as if he still
didn't have enough aces up his sleeve (or perhaps
because the monsters are really lame), our mad
doctor creates an evil robotic clone of Blue Demon
after the wrestler gets careless and is captured.
Not knowing that the real Blue is held prisoner,
Santo thinks his compadre has gone over
to the dark side and is trying to kill him!
Basically, the film is nothing but a series
of long, wild, fist-flailing melees between Santo,
Blue Demon, the monsters and the evil Blue Demon
clone, only occasionally interrupted by brief
plot-advancing scenes. (And the occasional wrestling
match. And a musical number lifted from another
Mexican film made in the '50s.) The action is
naturally more ridiculous than exciting but man,
it's a total gas. Even now and then Santo
squares off against individual monsters (the Cyclops,
El Vampiro) or the clone, but most of the time
our hero manfully battles the whole lot of
them at once! Where else are you going to see
a professional wrestler head-butting the Wolf
Man, raining a flurry of karate blows on the Frankenstein
Monster or flipping the Mummy over his shoulder
with a judo throw — all at the same time? (The
mano a monstruo duel with the Cyclops is
hysterical... Seeing that his Kirk-chops and roundhouses
are coming to naught, Santo just says to hell
with it, picks up a stick and starts pummeling
the bejeezus out of the varmint.) It's noteworthy,
however, that the film does include two Hollywood-style
action stunts I haven't seen in a Santo adventure
before: when Gloria leaps from her kidnappers'
vehicle*
to that
of her grappler boyfriend, who's managed to pull
alongside during a car chase; and when El Santo,
to escape the monsters, jumps off the roof of
a tall building.
Santo
& Blue Demon Vs. The Monsters
draws again and again from a virtually bottomless
fondue pot of steaming, gooey cheese. Of course,
this almost goes without saying when the flick
in question is Mexican and pits a medico loco
and assorted monstruos opposite masked
wrestlers. But beyond that, the film has no real
sense of space, time or continuity, either — the
pathetic day-for-night photography and chaotic
editing are amusingly inept. Happily the script
and actors treat every bit of this hooey with
stone-faced seriousness, resulting in a film that
is deliriously — nay, gloriously — INSANE.
Any self-respecting Santo or Blue Demon fan (the
kind who watches their films for the unintentional
humor, that is) simply cannot afford to miss seeing
this movie.
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*
The
Frankenstein Monster is driving the getaway car.
(Really!)
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Produced
for the Spanish-speaking Region 1 market, the
Alter Films/Hannover House DVD is a fabulously
colorful presentation — the best I've ever seen
for a Santo film. The comic book style artwork
of the packaging and menu screens is really pretty
cool. (They obviously "get" it.)
The transfer used boasts the best A/V quality
of any color
Santo movie to yet make its way onto DVD. Despite
some print damage (particularly during the opening
credits) it's definitely superior to all the offerings
so far from Rise Above Entertainment. It's important
to note here that all the packaging text, menus
and bonus features are in Spanish ONLY. Monolingual
yanquis need not fret about the movie,
however; optional English subtitles are provided
which, a few syntax errors aside, get the job
done nicely.
Even
though I don't speak or read Spanish I was quite
prepared to award this disc a solid "7"
for a DVD rating. Nonetheless I had to knock a
point off the score due to one extremely irritating
aspect, one that to my mind is simply inexcusable.
Rather than make the trailers for three other
Mexican films available from a menu selection,
the disc automatically plays them at startup.
The viewer is unable to skip these promos or
even fast-forward through them. Were they
trailers for other lucha libre/horror flicks
I wouldn't mind so much; unfortunately they're
for mainstream films (a drama, comedy and noir).
My advice is to start the DVD, then go do something
else for awhile.
3/22/04
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