Very Cool!!!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This film is from Mexico and features the fan favorite wrestler Santo. So of course, this movie is going to have people saying that this film is good, we Americans just do not understand it and blah blah blah. Some seem to think that just because it is foreign it is somehow good, but let's face it, this film is the equivalent of one of those horrible Hulk Hogan films we make. Sure Santo may be popular in Mexico, but that does not mean a film he is in is good or that he can act or the story is somewhat tolerable. The only thing tolerable in this wreck of a film is the vampire ladies after they get all pretty. For the most part though when the film is not plodding along it is showcasing Santos' wrestling skills which for me is even more boring than the plodding along! The story has a coven of vampire women and their three wrestling vampire men plotting to kidnap a woman and making her the new vampire queen. They still have the old queen, but a new one is needed because I suppose the old one gets bored of being queen or something. Well a professor wishes to protect his daughter, who is the next in line. He asks for an inspector's help and promptly dismisses the man several times during one conversation. Meanwhile, the coven has chants and this and that and about halfway in the movie Samson shows up (Santo). Why one would want a wrestler to protect them is questionable against vampires, but I suppose it makes sense seeing as how the vampire men are all wrestlers. Well Santo is not very effective, mainly able to just flip people away, but he somehow manages to get ahead in the game and burn all the vampire women alive as they close themselves into their caskets...basically helpless.So the main problem is the pacing. The film is so slow and when there finally is action it is simply people being flipped around. This does not make for a good movie no matter how you slice it. It is laughable that a wrestler can match up with a vampire, and even more laughable how he burns the women vampires alive at the end. Wow, how heroic of you, Samson..er Santo, or man in silver mask. We are even treated to a wrestling match during the film, we do not need to see this in the middle of a vampire film! Mexican wrestlers are hailed as heroes in Mexico and perhaps a little kid from that country can see the appeal, but I do not as I do not like wrestling and do not hail them as heroes.So the film is mainly a bore. The only thing making this film a two instead of a one is the very attractive vampire women. The one doing most of the work is the best one, reminding me of that girl in the Roger Corman film, The Undead. I find it funny how they kept acting as if the girl they were after to become the next queen was super beautiful, when she was okay, but not nearly as cute as most of the vampire women. So if you are into Mexican wrestling and can enjoy a very pointless plot and non epic final showdown, give this one a look see. However, I would advise you look away if you ever see it on.

All I know about the cult of "Luchadore"/Mexican wrestling is what I gleaned from reading Gilbert Hernandez in "Love And Rockets" more than a decade ago, so when I happened onto this particular nugget via Mystery Science Theatre, it was disorienting. The idea of masked wrestlers as superheroes seems pretty out there. Still it actually makes some sense when you consider that El Santo and his compatriots a) wear tights, b) wear masks to conceal their identities and c) are tough muscular hombres with preternatural wrestling abilities. Who better to be street level superheroes? And before anyone in the States makes too much fun of this movie's sheer goofiness, remember that our culture is responsible for "Gilligan's Island", "Ozzy and Harriet" and Sid and Marty Kroft.On to the actual movie.As promised by the title, Samson (actually "El Santo") fights vampires to rescue a young lady from her fate as the new Queen of the Undead. Well, not so much "fights" as "wrestles". And he doesn't really fight the vampire women - he mostly tussles with their thuggish male assistants. (Vampires are apparently immune to bullets, but luckily they are susceptible to sunlight, crosses, and front suplexes.) The plot moves along briskly from scene to scene. This is so that you don't have a lot of time to think about some of the plot holes and inconsistencies...such as vampire cults that forget to put shutters or curtains over the windows of their castle to keep out the sunlight. And the way El Santo manhandles three vampires at once during several outdoor mêlées, but one of the three almost kills him during a one-on-one wrestling match (by 'using karate' on him). Or that Samson/El Santo pledges to protect the young woman, but can't be bothered to actually hang around, so he's always pulling up in a convertible at the last moment and leaping on the bad guys. (You think it would be easier and more effective to actually BE THERE with the victim when the vampires make their move). Or the fact that the vampires are proved to be EXTREMELY susceptible to the sight of crosses, but it never seems to occur to anyone in the movie to actually carry a crucifix.I suspect that this was another case where K. Gordon Murray took a fairly decent (if cheesy) film and sabotaged it with a 'English version' plot and editing job that didn't mesh with the original, sapping it of much of its coherence and integrity. (admittedly, we're talking about a Mexican wrestler film here, not "The Man Who Would Be King").There is also some unfortunate voice dubbing - El Santo is OK (if somewhat stentorian), but the Professor in particular has a fruity baritone better suited to an animated cartoon character like Dudley Doright.Still, this was a lot of fun to watch - there were some pretty good sets and lighting and camera angles, the women were pretty hot, the hero was noble and brave, and I can see how a young Latino audience would think that a masked muscle-man who drives his own sports convertible and travels around wrestling and fighting evil would be the shiznit. If I have a chance to see another "El Santo" film, I'll take it and see how it holds up.

In the late 50's and early 60's Mexican wrestling was flowing with renewed popularity. El Santo, The Man in the Silver Mask, was the most popular wrestler at the time, a true idol of the masses. So somebody at some point decided to make "wrestling movies" transforming popular wrestlers into superheros (after all, they are masked and caped, aren't they?) and pitted them against criminal mobsters, evil scientists and in one occasion, a martian invasion. Of course these movies are on par with the best (and worst) of B movies of the time, but this particular movie is considered an icon, receiving awards in Europe and Asia. Today this movie would only inspire chuckles and outright laughs, but its a nice history lesson of the time when caped and masked men were in the imaginations of millions of Mexican kids.

I mean the above as a good thing. Used for the last season six episode of MST3K, this Mexican wrestler film has good cinematography, an interesting plot, cool vampires... okay, so the girl's father has a goofy, dubbed voice and the wrestling scenes (one with a buff vampire!) might be tedious for some (like me). This movie has turned me on to Mexican horror of the 50's and 60's -- is that wrong?