A mad journey into the mind of the depraved!
Thursday, November 5, 2015
SANTO AND BLUE DEMON VS. THE MONSTERS (1970)
I was raised up, as a young man, on a steady diet of Pro Wrestling and monster movies. So when I picked up an issue of Fangoria magazine back in the early 80's and first read about these Mexican lucha libre monster movies it blew my fragile eggshell mind. This one here specifically seemed like one of the wackiest things ever put on film and is clearly the highlight of this weird genre for me just for it's sizable monsterrific value. You get a mad scientist, his evil hunchbacked dwarf assistant and a whole gang of unruly monsters including a mummy(La Momia!), a wolf man(El Hombre Lobo!), a Frankenstein monster(or Franquestain!), a vampire(El Vampiro!) and a couple of his ladies. There's also a weird-ass cyclops thing who's basically a stand in for The Creature From The Black Lagoon. He even gets a scene where he hangs out at the bottom of a lagoon even though he doesn't appear to have much of a swimmer's body or do much there besides leer on with his goofy flashlight eyeball. The weirdest monster though is this big-brained fellow who also appeared in the earlier Mexi-horror flick SHIP OF MONSTERS(which also had a very similar Cyclops monster now that I think about it). In this movie he just stands around, does nothing and is never even referred to! It seems very odd to me that a giant-brained Martian could just carouse about in the background going unnoticed but that's just what happens! Another awesome thing is that even though this film seems to have been made for kids there's a few moments of bright red blood being spewed and also a scene of a little boy whose parents are murdered by The Wolf Man right in front of his eyes! The soundtrack is pretty sweet and the wrestling scenes never drag as they sometimes do in these Santo flicks. In fact one of the wrasslin' bouts turns into a pretty sweet monsters vs. wrasslers battle royal! The only two bad points I will mention are the horrible confusingly shot day-for-night scenes and the old-timey musical numbers that look like they were pulled out of an older movie when Santo hangs out at a nightclub. Besides this though this one is a great kitschy ride!
Weird-ass speeded up Benny Hill-esque intro!:
Labels:
1970's horror,
Blue Demon,
lucha libre,
Mexico,
Santo
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