Santo & Blue Demon vs. Doctor Frankenstein (1974)

Original title: Santo y Blue Demon contra el doctor Frankenstein

There’s trouble in Mexico City! A mysterious madman kidnaps women, who are never seen again. That is, until he decides it’s better to let the corpses of his victims return as radio-controlled zombies who then proceed to kill their families. The police are clueless what this is all about, but the audience is quickly introduced to the bad guy, one Irving Frankenstein (Jorge Russek), owner of a pretty impressive beard, and the grandson of the original Doctor Frankenstein.

Apart from striking terror into the hearts of men, he’s kidnapping these poor women to perfect his brain transplantation technique. Sacrifices (preferably those of other people) need to be made for science, and for…love. For Frankenstein has the frozen body of his beloved tucked away in one of the many chambers of his silver corridor-heavy (okay, it’s one silver corridor filmed as if it were a labyrinth of corridors, but hey) lair, keeping her fresh so she doesn’t die from the brain cancer she has been diagnosed with. Once his brain transplantation technique is perfected, he’ll just pop the brain of another woman into his beloved’s body and…honestly, I have no idea how that’s going to help, but Frankenstein must. He’s the mad scientist after all.

Anyway, up until now, his only successful brain transplant has been moving the brain of a “South African giant” into the body of a very buff black gentleman - or, “a black giant from Africa”, as the totally not racist Frankenstein as a character in a film with not at all awkward racial politics calls him – whom he now controls via brain radio and who is his secret weapon when it comes to evil-doing, seeing as he’s super strong, impervious to bullets when Frankenstein tells him he’s wearing a bulletproof vest (he isn’t), and about as fast as a snail.

That’s not enough to fulfil the good doctor’s second goal, though, taking over the world with an army of brain radio controlled brain transplanted supermen. He has another super body lined up looking for a new brain, tentatively dubbed “Mortis” (which will turn out to be one of Frankenstein’s favourite names), and he has called dibs on a brain that would add enormous skill, intelligence and experience to the Mortis body. Of course, right now, that brain is still safely tucked away in the body of the idol of the masses, the great, the heroic, the singular Santo (Santo). And you don’t just go and try and steal El Santo’s brain directly.

Fortunately, Frankenstein has a plan for that too. He’s just going to kidnap young bacteriologist Alicia (Sasha Montenegro), and wait for Santo to come to him. Alicia, it turns out, isn’t just another younger woman Santo has a bit of an undisclosed romance with, she is a kind of non-legal ward to Santo and his fellow luchador, buddy and partner Blue Demon (Blue Demon), who apparently promised their mentor/her father to take care of her (not that kind of care, Santo!).

So once Frankenstein’s henchmen do indeed kidnap Alicia, he has two very motivated luchadores on his trail. Who, as it turns out, make better archenemies than brain donors.

In 1974, the movie adventures of Santo and his fellow luchadores weren’t exactly at their prime anymore. The budgets, never terribly impressive, had clearly sunken into the deepest depths, and quite a few of the lucha movies of this era seem to consist of more filler than movie. Veteran director (ending his career with 140 movies in his filmography!) Miguel M. Delgado’s vs Frankenstein is certainly no exception to the budget troubles (it is a Calderón production, after all), but Delgado does not torture his audience with days of comedy – there’s only some unfunny business about the doddering professor who is Alicia’s boss – nor are horrifying musical numbers rearing their ugly heads. There are two overlong, rather boringly staged in-ring wrestling sequences to get through, but that’s the sort of thing every movie about a luchador needs to include, so complaining about it would be churlish.

It’s not that the film does not include filler, mind you, it’s just that someone involved in the production must have realized that an audience going into a movie about Santo and Blue Demon fighting Doctor Frankenstein (and the good doctor is indeed fit enough to get beaten up by Blue Demon) will be more interested in spending some macabre good times with Frankenstein going about his day, seducing brain surgeons into working for him by giving them his de-aging elixir, letting his computer (with lots of blinking lights, so it must be excellent) compute the right cutting patterns for his brain surgeries, and ranting. These rants are presented by Russek with great gusto, quivering facial hair, and the air of crazy delight every good mad scientist in a very pulpy horror movie needs.

Of course, as is genre standard, we also get a couple of scenes of Santo and Blue going about their day, charming ladies, be it wards or – and I quote – “beautiful police women”, having a nice ride in Santo’s sports car and so on, when they are not hitting henchpeople and radio controlled African Americans in the face.


So really, as a late-ish period lucha movie, Santo & Blue Demon vs. Doctor Frankenstein is as good as you can reasonably expect, pitting our heroes against a proper madman and his crazy science experiments, presenting enough extra standard lucha horror tropes to keep anyone happy, and generally going about its business with a sense of delight not exactly typical of this phase of lucha cinema. And if you’ve seen enough of these films, you might just get an extra kick out of Blue saving Santo’s bacon for once this time around.