Santo vs. the Vampire Women (1962)

Original title: Santo vs. las mujeres vampiro

A couple of centuries after they have been beaten by one of those naughty warriors of light, a coven of female vampires decide that now, in these dark times of 1962, it is time for female vampiredom to rise again, and get rid of those oatmeal faces they seem to have acquired while waiting for better/darker times in their coffins.

For that rising to properly work, the vampiresses need to find a woman to replace their current Queen Zorina (Lorena Velázquez), for some occult reasons I never understood, because Zorina seems perfectly well and happy, or rather, happily evil. Vampire priestess Tundra (Ofelia Montesco), who will be the brains as well as the face of this particular operation for the film’s first two acts, already has an eye on a replacement queen. Diana Orlof (María Duval), her candidate, may be the descendant of their last would-be replacement queen. That last time, things did not work out, leading to those centuries of waiting and becoming food-faced, but there are prophecies going around that suggest evil will win out this time. So it’s only a question of waking up three male vampires who are built suspiciously like wrestlers (and one of whom is of course played by the great Fernando Osés) for the strongman parts of the job, and take the win for Evil.

However, Diana’s father, Professor Orlof (Augusto Benedico), is close enough an associate of El Santo (Santo!) to possess his own Santo videophone, so when he finds his daughter threatened by malignant forces, he calls in his famous, ultra-capable and all-around perfect friend. Who will proceed to lurk around the side-lines of the movie for its first half, because this still belongs to that phase of Santo’s movie career when studios didn’t trust him to carry a film on his own. Thus, he shares the male lead duties with the Professor, Diana’s boyfriend and a police Inspector (Jaime Fernández).

Which really is the least fun thing about Alfonso Corona Blake’s Santo vs. the Vampire Women, for less Santo is never a good thing, even if the film at hand does attempt to cast his frequent absence as part of his mystique as a masked luchador and force for Good. This does of course also mean we lose out on scenes of a masked Santo in loungewear, cosy pyjamas, or romancing the ladies.

On the plus side, there’s everything else. The film begins as a lovely pulp gothic concoction with a dramatically lit vampire priestess expositing in a lair full of spectacularly fake cobwebs, upright coffins and improbable shadows, adds rubber bats and the much beloved (by me) vampire cape walk, and never looks back from there. What follows are some pleasantly zippily shot scenes of overcomplicated vampire plots, close-ups of “hypnotic” staring committed by pretty women, and rather more chases than you’d usually get in a Santo movie. The cops and a suddenly appearing caped Santo chase cape-running, woman-stealing vampires, Santo chases vampires, vampires chase Santo, Santo in his sports car chases a lone vampire towards a cross. I get all chased-out just talking about it.

There’s also the time-honoured sequence of a vampire (using deadly karate chops, Santo informs us) pretending to be one of Santo’s ringside foes to kill the great man and a resolution that hinges not on our hero fighting off the vampires, but on him fighting them long enough for the sun to shine through the unfortunate hole in their underground crypt-temple-thingie. Afterwards, our hero sets torches to the coffins, vampiresses screeching in horror, because this is not a film for the faint of heart, even if it is as deeply, infectiously silly as a proper lucha movie is supposed to be.