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Santo
In The Border Of Terror
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5
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5 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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You
gotta hand it to El Santo. Mexico's Man in the
Silver Mask certainly appeared in some wacky,
one-of-a-kind adventures. The latest DVD release
from Rise Above Entertainment, Santo
In "The Border Of Terror", showcases
just such a unique motion picture experience.
In it, the
wrestling superhero goes up against a murderous
mad doctor (what else?) who's harvesting the organs
of illegal immigrants for sale on the black market.
And it's a musical!
Buddies Fernando (Federico Falcón)
and Gerardo (singing star Gerardo Reyes) are eager
and willing to work but can't find gainful employment
in their small Mexican town. So, stripped to their
skivvies, the pair joins a group of other men
fording a river on the border with the United
States. (They could've just rolled up their pants
legs... The water looks only about a foot deep.)
Driven back by warning shots fired by the U.S.
Border Patrol, Gerardo suggests they enlist the
services of a smuggler to help them get across.
He knows of one such coyote who procures
workers for a wealthy American rancher. They arrange
to the meet the man in a bar, where Gerardo
apropos of nothing
belts out a song to the accompaniment of the establishment's
jukebox.
The guys set a rendezvous
with the smuggler for the next day. They then
amble over to another tacky lounge to watch Fernando's
fiancée Azucena (Carmen del Valle) perform
a torch song which must use the the word placer
("pleasure") about 400 times. (That's
right, two songs within five minutes of
each other. Arrrgh!) With the conclusion of this
particular atrocity, Fernando visits Azucena's
backstage dressing room, where we learn she's
the guardian of her blind little sister, Florecita
who wears Elton John sunglasses and has an annoyingly
squeaky voice. The girl needs an expensive operation
to restore her eyesight. Fernando promises to
raise enough money for the surgery, after which
he and Azucena will be married. But to do so he'll
have to cross the border as a mojado
illegal immigrant
and get a job in the U.S.A.
Jumped by some hooligans as they're
leaving the club, the couple
is saved by El Santo, masked
wrestler and champion of justice, who
just happens to be driving by with his fussy bald
manager, Carlitos. (Played by Santo's real-life
manager, Carlos Suárez, who's appeared
in almost every Santo movie I've seen, usually
as an evil henchman.) Santo dispenses with the
thugs and, learning of Florecita's medical problem,
gallantly offers to pay for the operation. Now
Fernando can work towards saving money for his
and Azucena's marriage. Next day, he and Gerardo
make their border crossing and are taken to the
ranch of Mr. Richards (an American actor speaking
particularly robotic Spanish) and given unspecified
jobs. Richards seems nice enough, but soon they're
put under the charge of the ranch's sinister physician,
Dr. Sombra (Jean Safont) and his bullying overseer,
Monk (The Puma Man's
Miguel Αngel Fuentes). Turns out their new "jobs"
are to be slaves, imprisoned at the ranch (which
actually looks more like a disused factory) until
Sombra selectively harvests their organs for sale
on the black market. The mad medico uses
the profits to finance his weird experiments,
which include turning some of the captive workers
into remote-controlled zombies he can order around
via a small radio-like device.
Fernando and
Gerardo seem doomed. But a
worried Azucena contacts El Santo
after she fails to hear from her boyfriend for
more than a week. Ever the paladin, Santo agrees
to investigate (after
his wrestling match, of course). Along
with whiny sidekick Carlitos, he enters the U.S.
and sneaks into the work camp, uncovering Dr.
Sombra's nefarious scheme. Your typical Santo
silliness thus ensues, though they manage to jam
in two more musical numbers from Reyes and del
Valle. ¡Ay carumba!
This is the first Santo flick I've
seen to mix a bit of social commentary in with
the usual wrestler vs. mad doctor shenanigans.
Fortunately this doesn't get in the way of the
cheesy, oddball story and goofy dialog. (The depiction
of the mojados and their plight is naturally
sympathetic, but the film doesn't really dwell
on it.) Unfortunately, Santo doesn't do a whole
lot of fighting/brawling in this one. Even the
obligatory wrestling matches
clumsily filmed with a mostly static camera
are shortchanged in favor of the musical numbers
and soap opera subplot. In comparison to such
action-packed adventures as Santo
Vs. Frankenstein's Daughter and Santo
& Blue Demon Vs. The Monsters, Border
Of Terror is a real letdown in terms of
fisticuffs and roughhousing. Our hero is his usual
stoic self, ready to spring into action at the
drop of a sombrero, but just isn't given
enough to do. His pal Suárez, instead of
being amusing, merely irritates as the patently
unfunny comic relief. You'll wish someone would
slap that oh-so-adorable blind kid, too. Still,
even substandard Santo offers better entertainment
than the average so-bad-it's-good variety of cheese
from north of the Rio Grande. And you might just
learn a bit of Spanish on the side.
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It's
been almost a year since Rise Above's last Santo
DVD was released, so the arrival of Border
Of Terror comes as welcome news to the
luchador's many American fans (like me).
No changes in presentation, though... As with
the previous discs, the transfer is fullframe
with easy-to-read English subs (including song
lyrics); you get the same extras
the Best of Santo highlight reel, a small
image gallery of black and white stills, trailers
for four of Rise Above's other Santo DVDs
that we've seen before.
While I'm happy to report that Border
boasts some of the best visual quality of the
RA titles, there's an unfortunate problem with
the audio track that I'm guessing has nothing
to do with the disc's authoring. For perhaps a
third of the running time either the dialog looping
and/or the sound effects are out of sync, at least
a half-second behind the images. I first noticed
this at the start of Reyes' song in the bar, about
10 minutes into the movie. I could be wrong, but
I think this is probably a condition of the film
itself
an extremely cheap production, mind you
and not a defect with the disc. (At times the
dialog matches the actors' lip movements but sound
effects like punches and crashing furniture remain
off-kilter.)
8/27/04
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