El Mano Negra (David Silva), evil mastermind and mad scientist, returns! Years ago, a team-up of Blue Demon, Mil Mascaras, El Medico Asesino, Tinieblas and La Sombra Vengadora put an end to his evil plans. Now, freshly escaped from jail, the fiendish tea drinker sets out to take his revenge. He has everything one could need: a lab which looks a wee bit as if it was situated in his mother's cellar (which is perfectly fitting - the Miss Mexico gala seems to take place in her living room), three nameless and talentless wrestling goons, the named and talented wrestler Black Shadow, and an army of midgets dressed in some very fine (and also very red) cape ensembles. It's even better - El Mano Negra also has a plan: after his first attempts to kill his archenemies fail, he decides to kidnap the wrestlers' goddaughters (yes, each of them has one, and of course each of the goddaughters is a candidate for becoming Miss Mexico). This will provide him with a fine way to get his hands on our wrestling heroes and also with "volunteers" for his hibernation and mind control experiments.
People who are much more knowledgeable of the lucha film than me have not been kind to this film, so I approached it with a certain amount of trepidation. To my surprise, Los Campeones Justicieros turned out to possess some unexpected positive qualities that made it somewhat endearing (it is also possible that I made my green tea too strong again and was intoxicated while watching, but oh well):
- The budget of this film must have been absolutely lavish for an Agrasanchez production: 6 wrestlers (the goons don't count), 5 motorcycles, a boat, a plane, at least 3 or 4 cars (one stolen from James Bond's kid brother), plus a horde of midgets equals an immense budget. The poor Agrasanchez people didn't even have enough money left to put filler into the film (except for a long, long, long waterskiing sequence - but what would you do when you had A BOAT for your film?)!
- The action scenes are rather enthusiastic (especially when the lucha film you have seen before this one was the Dr. Zovek/Blue Demon team-up) - the Agrasanchez Little People ensemble was seldom this good at throwing themselves at masked wrestlers.
- There is some kind of plot that could even be said to move along at something amounting to a pace. Even more bizarre is the fact that the script contains one and a half surprises - which I won't spoil here, of course.
- And then there's the music - someone locked a mediocre hard bop ensemble up, promising not to let them out until they had produced a soundtrack for the mighty Los Campeones Justicieros. That worked out nicely. It's not only the first time something as good as mediocre can be found in an Agrasanchez film, the music itself is also a true test of one's love for the lucha genre. If you are willing to watch a film whose musical accompaniment has nothing whatsoever to do with the things you see on screen and seems to consist of more drum solos than the drum solo portion of a Grateful Dead show but with less jugglers and fire-eaters, just because said film features masked wrestlers, then you are one of the truly devoted.
- The film also answers one of the burning questions of our time: Does a luchador wear his mask in bed?
- Also, there are lots of midgets fighting against luchadores
Honestly, this is rather fun. Did I mention the midgets and the masked wrestlers!?
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6 comments:
It's becoming obvious to me that I need to give this movie a second chance. Perhaps I'd eaten some bad clams or something before watching it the first time around.
But, seriously, what's up with making your lucha movie a sequel to a previous entry that doesn't exist? Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monsters did the same thing, with the bad guy seeking revenge against Blue and Santo for all this stuff we never got to see happen.
That damn (tasty) seafood strikes again!
Ah, I have a theory regarding the films being sequels to non-existent movies: The first encounters took place in the comics (if Santo had one, I bet the others had their own) and we're watching the hight points of the first mixed media crossover.
Old Shaw Bros. films used to handle that nicely by having a narrator go over about five minutes of stuff, pre-credit, that contains enough names and plot twists to comprise five movies on its own. Then we launch into the movie we expected to watch, completely buried beneath a mountain of names and clans and motivations.
I like the Campeones Justicieros movies. But to be honest, I've only ever sort of watched them. I use them constantly as background images for parties and get-togethers, though, as nothing captures the eye and sparks conversation than the sudden glimpse of a midget in a sparkly cape beating the crap out of Blue Demon.
That's a very good theory. It never occurred to me that the movies might draw on the comics for their plots.
It turns out that, in addition to Santo, at least Blue Demon had his own comics, and man do they look awesome.
A perfect example of what Keith's talking about is Chor Yuen's first Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre movie, which starts out with a flashback montage that looks like a recap of about five movies mashed together, and features actors, like Lo Lieh, who aren't even in the movie proper. I gave up all hope of being able to follow that movie within the first two minutes.
Or the Brave Archer movies which start with recaps of the last movie in the series. Just with new actors in various roles and major differences in what was supposed to have happened from one film to the next. And no archers brave or otherwise.
As chance wants it, I just found two links to scans of the first two Blue Demon comics...
http://rapidshare.com/files/51996353/Blue_Demon__01_-_2_fieras_para_un_demonio_azul.cbr
http://rapidshare.com/files/51996649/Blue_Demon__02_-_Lavado_de_cerebros.cbr
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