Santo vs. Frankenstein’s Daughter (1972)

Original title: Santo vs. la hija de Frankestein

Dr Freda Frankenstein (Gina Romand), the daughter of the original “It’s alive!” Frankenstein, has gone into the family business as a mad scientist. She has a lot going for her: a swanky – if somewhat cold – looking lair in the countryside, a trusted partner in Dr Yanco (Roberto Cañedo), and a bunch of goons in matching outfits to rob graves, kidnap women and whatever else needs doing around the home. Mad scientific success, however, isn’t guaranteed.

Her attempt to inject one of her minions with gorilla blood to achieve, um, who knows what, has turned him into Truxon, a guy in a gorilla mask (Gerardo Zepeda) she has to keep locked up and can only control with her considerable powers of hypnotism. Repeating the experiments of her father has proven somewhat more successful, and she is just on the cusp of creating her own Monster, whom she’ll dub Ursus (also Gerardo Zepeda, but in a different mask of dubious quality).

Frankenstein has also managed to develop a serum that not only stops aging but has a rejuvenating effect as well. This hasn’t just kept her and Yanco ship-shape, but is also a useful tool to recruit old losers into her goon squad and soften them up as victims for her love for controlling sadism and domination. Unfortunately, the serum is beginning to lose its power for the good doctor, and instead of the three months typically going between injections, she has now weeks at best – and the effects decrease ever quicker.

Our mad scientist has a plan, however. She just needs the blood of a very special person to create a more potent formula. Yes, of course it is the blood of Santo (Santo!), idol of the masses, friend of children, and so on and so forth. Santo’s blood, Frankenstein has found out, contains a much higher concentration of whatever stops aging, keeping him youthful, fit, and an all-around perfect physical specimen.

Just asking Santo for some of his blood wouldn’t probably not be kinky enough, and kidnapping him would prove difficult and inconvenient, so instead, Frankenstein sends her minions to kidnap Norma (Anel), Santo’s girlfriend. This, and a helpful blackmail letter, should bring the luchador right to her doorstep, which indeed it does, accompanied not by Blue Demon or Mil Mascaras, but by Norma’s sister Elsa (Sonia Fuentes). Various games of catch and release, monster mashes against Truxon and Ursus, and other shenanigans ensue. Also appearing: Chekhov's lair self-destruct lever.

At this stage of Santo’s film career, budgets were clearly pretty low, but there’s a willingness to make much out of comparably little and a pop cinema energy to Miguel M. Delgado’s Santo vs. Frankenstein’s Daughter the great man’s cinematic outings would increasingly lose. This is even one of those Santo movies where somebody even seems to have been committed to actual production design, so there’s a sense of visual coherence you don’t always get in lucha cinema. That the very early 70s fashion and colours pop very nicely on the print I watched adds to the pleasure here.

The film is comparatively focussed as well – there’s no odious comic relief, no musical numbers, the two ring fights are short and sweet – and the second one takes place only after the plot has been resolved. In fact, there’s no filler in the movie at all.

Instead, Delgado fills those parts of the movie that don’t concern Santo doing Santo stuff, vigorously, to really draw us into the world of our female mad scientist. There’s much fun to be had with her gleefully sadistic way of controlling her minions – which Romand hams up wonderfully – and many a silly-awesome background detail to enjoy. Why, some of the minions even have character traits, and if you look closely, there are even traces of actual relationships between these pulpy characters mostly here to get beaten up by a masked wrestler.

Because these are the early Seventies, the film is on the bloodier side of the Santo cycle – Ursus near fatal wound on a big cross in the graveyard next to Frankenstein’s lair comes to mind, or the moment when Santo repeatedly strikes an already beaten Truxon with a chain – and the fantasy in Fernando Osés’s script turns toward the macabre. There’s a scene in which a grumpy, rejected-by-Santo Frankenstein hypnotizes – yes, of course a colour wheel is involved – Norma into trying to cut out Santo’s eyes, for example. Of course, this isn’t a Fulci film, so the power of love protects, while the minions meant to watch Santo during this are so squicked out by the whole thing, they have to leave the room.

Yes, the film is making a joke here, and it’s actually funny. Which, come to think of it, happens in a couple of scenes, as if, freed from the yoke of the comic relief character, humour can suddenly work and add more to a lucha movie than annoyance.

In “things we never knew about Santo”: both Norma and Frankenstein agree that an unmasked Santo has the hottest male face ever to grace our planet. Obviously, we have to take their words for it.

Thus, this particular adventure of Santo is recommended even to those among my imaginary readers who don’t go for the idol of the masses as much as Norma, Dr Freda Frankenstein or this writer do. There’s cheap but awesome production design! Two monsters – well guys in bad masks – played by a single actor! Sadomasochist subtext! Mad science! A woman who screams whenever she sees someone with a wrinkled face! What more can one ask of any movie?

Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and the Wolf Man (1973)

Original title: Santo y Blue Demon vs Dracula y el Hombre Lobo

Four centuries ago, a wizard named Cristaldi thwarted the combined efforts of Dracula (Aldo Monti) and the Wolf Man (Agustín Martínez Solares) to conquer the world. Of course, there’s a prophecy saying the terrible duo will return from the dead (un-undead?) to take up their old world domination project and take their vengeance on the descendants of Cristaldi. Now (well, in the early 70s), a hunchbacked criminal and occultist named Eric (Wally Barrón) revives the vampire and the werewolf hoping for monetary dispensation (though he’s shrewd enough not to bring the topic up with the the two).

First, the undead and the hairy one want their vengeance, though, and make their plans for the most sadistic way to ambush and murder the contemporary Cristaldi patriarch (Jorge Mondragón), a professor of SCIENCE, his daughter, and little granddaughter, as well as his niece Lina (Nubia Martí). However, Lina just happens to be the (very, very young) girlfriend of the hero of the masses, international man of mystery and adventure, lucha champion, inventor of the radio watch, and all-around fighter for justice, El Santo (Santo). So it’s easy enough for Cristaldi to ask a competent monster fighter for help. For once in a Santo movie, some of his earlier movie adventures seem to have happened in the film’s world, and our hero doesn’t poopoo the Professor’s explanations about the supernatural threat. He is, in fact, all in on protecting the attractive young women of the family against evil.

Despite Santo’s presence, the Professor is taken off the board to only return as a zombie in the last act; the wolfman goes undercover as a man named Rufus Rex (I would have called myself Lon Chaney, Jr.) to woo the Cristaldi daughter, and danger threatens from all sides. It’s the sort of situation where even Santo needs help, so he calls in the redoubtable Blue Demon (Blue Demon, if you must ask), who also makes a good chess partner, as we will learn. Together, they just might manage to keep at least someone named Cristaldi alive.

In the world of Santo movies, Miguel M. Delgado’s S&BDvsD&tWM takes up an upper middle position, quality-wise. It’s not what people who aren’t at least semi-regularly watching lucha cinema like this would call a good movie; on the other hand, the film, for the most part, lacks the cornucopia of filler business that make up the greatest parts of the truly bad entries into the Santo canon. So there are no musical numbers, zero painful hours of comic relief, and most scenes actually fulfil a function in the narrative. Admittedly, there are three short wrestling sequences that have nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of what’s going on, but that sort of thing does come with the territory of lucha cinema and would be bizarre if it weren’t included. Even better, in a weird but useful decision, the final wrestling match takes place after the actual narrative of the film has ended, so the easily bored can simply skip it and will miss nothing whatsoever.

Before that, there would be rather a lot to miss, though, for there is a lot of enjoyment to be had. As always, there are wonderful sequences of our masked heroes going about their masked daily lives, resting their weary bones and brains with a bit of chess, all the while wearing most excellent casual 70s outfits – Santo’s are bit more man about town, Blue’s tend to the more sporty – like all the best superhero dreams come true. The villains’ plans are needlessly complicated, too, and the film knows it. When Eric asks the undercover Wolf Man why the hell they are going through the whole rigmarole of seducing the Cristaldi daughter before kidnapping her when a more straightforward kidnapping and murder would be much easier, the dog-faced one simply explains that this would be too simple. Which sums up the ethos of horror pulp villainy beautifully, and enables quite a few fun scenes of Santo and Blue punching minion wolf persons and a couple of gangsters, so I’m all for it.

The production design, apart from Santo’s wardrobe, is rather on the impoverished side, with wolf man make-up that looks more like dog-faced boy make-up, and not exactly the most convincing vampire fangs, and sets that – apart from the Cristaldi home – do tend to the empty. However, someone involved the production clearly decided that there needs to be some fun, mildly macabre, or strange detail in each scene, so the nearly empty cave set with Dracula’s and Wolfie’s coffins also has a fire breathing bat and wolf head, vampire women are dressed in red full-body veils (okay, probably just red lingerie), and wolf people apparently practice a variation on the Holmgang on wolf persons who run away when beaten by Santo as well as their enemies. There’s also a magic dagger that is apparently a moral philosopher. Consequently, there’s nary a scene that doesn’t provide at least some moment of delightful entertainment.

I also particularly enjoyed Dracula’s portrayal as a right prick with an inflated ego, the kind of guy who delegates killing his enemies to his underlings even when it’s clear it’s not going to work (after attempt number three or so), and a guy you can absolutely believe will watch his last underlings get beaten up by masked wrestlers instead of attacking with them.

In a surprise move for a Santo movie, this year’s girlfriend Lina is actually doing useful things beyond getting kidnapped, even saving our heroes’ bacon at least one and a half times, all the while comporting herself like someone with certain signs of an actual personality. Hell, there’s even a moment or two here where I can actually believe she and the big S are close, which isn’t anything I’ve ever encountered in any lucha movie before.

So, it’s all very good fun, at least if you can be seduced into Mexican monster mash movies with masked wrestlers.

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.