THE VAMPIRE AND SEX (1969)

 There are 2 different versions of this movie starring Santo the silver-masked wrestling legend(who also plays a scientist here for some inexplicable reason). The one I viewed recently is the sexier nudity-filled cut. In this Dracula likes to pull down gals tops and inspect their large breasts before biting them on the neck. There are a bunch of sexy vampire women, super fake bats, time travel and gratuitous wrasslin' scenes to go along with the nekkidness. This is the 20th film(out of 52!) in the Santo filmography and certainly the sexiest!

 The original tamer version is titled SANTO IN THE TREASURE OF DRACULA and has been used on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER before.

THE BATWOMAN (1968)

  Not sure how or why I avoided seeing this Mexican superhero knockoff flick all these years. Being a big fan of that other Mexican Batwoman movie from 2 years earlier and having a poster of this one hanging on my walls for quite a few years now you would have thought I woulda got around to it sooner. I think the problem was that there wasn't an English-friendly version readily available. Having now seen it though it was totally worth the wait. The Batwoman here is one of the sexiest Mexican ladies I've ever seen and she's not only an ass-kicking, crime-fighting hero but also a masked lady wrestler because that's the way these movies always seem to work. The bad guys here are a mad-scientist who's killing male wrasslers and using their pineal-gland juice to create a fish-man/monster, reminiscent of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON to liven things up, and his faithful sidekick Igor, who seems to be a tall midget of some sort.. What more could you want? Classic kitschy fun. 

Colorful!:

               

Known in Germany as DRACULA'S DAUGHTER AND PROFESSOR SATANAS(somehow they forgot to even put Batwoman on the poster!) : 

LOCO FIGHTERS (2006)

 Documentary about lucha libre(made by Spanish folks from Spain and not Mexicans from Mexico) that features a collection of interviews with various Mexican pro wrasslers mixed with some high action-spots ranging from the big leagues of south-of-the-border wrestling like CMLL to smaller extreme-type promotions where they stupidly roll around in broken glass for thrills. It gives us the midgets(or minis as they're called), the ladies and even a couple of homosexual grapplers which is something to see. I think you would have to be really into this stuff to enjoy this whole movie and if you're not it might be a little on the long side but I found it to be an ok production even if they try and sell me on the idea that this stuff is all real and not planned out at all. It does make me want to see a more in-depth movie where they go into the history a bit deeper with the old-school favs like Santo and The Blue Demon but I guess I have to look elsewhere for that. Original title- THREE FALLS

SANTO AND BLUE DEMON VS. DRACULA AND THE WOLF MAN (1973)

 Very similar to the earlier SANTO AND BLUE DEMON VS. THE MONSTERS, this Mexican wrestlers vs. monsters flick pairs down the creatures to two big main villains. Of course there is the hump-backed Igor-like assistant that sets everything into motion, Dracula's vampire slaves and, what I found to be one of the coolest elements, a whole gang of werewolves led by main Wolf Man, Mr, Rufus Rex. Rufus not only has one of the best names for a werewolf person but he also sports some snazzy outfits including a golden shirt and very massive 70s sideburns. As a bonus he also looks a lot like Paul Naschy's Hombre Lobo which is pretty sweet. There's also a surprising amount of bloodletting, most notably when Dracula is revived by having someone's neck slit like a slaughtered pig above him, in a film that I assume was viewed by many young Mexican children at the time. While I would rank ...VS. THE MONSTERS as the king of these kooky wrassler movies this one is a close second. This does get a little bogged down in the long grappling scenes which look as though they were filmed in an empty arena in outer-space, besides this though it's good kitschy times.

Hazing is tough for wolfmen:

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!:

NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES (1969)

 
 Caught an awesome theatrical showing of this last night hosted by sleaze/rockabilly wild-man Johnny Legend.  Although it doesn't feature the great Santo or Blue Demon this one is probably my favorite of the lucha-libre/horror movies from Mexico.  It covers all three bases as far as blood, breasts & beasts go.  You get a half-man/ half-gorilla going around tearing the clothes off women, attempting rape and also tearing people apart with his bare hands.  Heads roll, eyes roll and there's some masked lady wrasslin' to break up this "orgy of terror".  Thanks to director Rene Cardona, who is basically just remaking his earlier film DOCTOR OF DOOM, this piles up the 70's blood and crazy over-the-top gore, including real scenes of some heart surgery, enough to make fans of later splatter-filled movies happy.  Thank you Mexico!
 AKA GOMAR: THE HUMAN GORILLA & HORROR AND SEX .

MASKED MAN STRIKES AGAIN: SANTO VS. THE DR. DEATH(1973)

 This was a fun tale of Mexican masked wrestling hero Santo(called Saint in the dubbed print that I watched). In this one he takes on a doctor(actually a doctor of art, whatever the hell that is?) who keeps models locked up in his basement that he gets sick so he can experiment on them. I wasn't exactly sure what the end result was for these experiments but the doc seemed to be really into his work so it must have been important enough. He also keeps an acid pool in the sub-basement accessible by a fun slide where he throws away dead ladies bodies.   Santo gets an unmasked partner here, a fellow named Paul, who has a sweet 70's moustache and some keen fighting skills. Together they get into some James Bond-esque adventures. Santo gets into a fight in a public toilet wearing socks with no shoes on which I find very humorous and slightly disgusting.  While there's no monsters or supernatural elements in this film I think it works fine in it's slightly more realistic super secret agent approach.  AKA SANTO STRIKES AGAIN

SAMSON IN THE WAX MUSEUM (1963)

                                                    
 Producer K. Gordon Murray brought over two of these Santo movies in the 60's and re-dubbed our Mexican masked wrestler's name as Samson(there's also SAMSON VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMEN). I imagine this may have been done because the Italian Samson and Hercules peplum movies were a big deal at the time. Our Samson here ain't no Greek god though, he's more like a Batman type of hero who helps the police solve some murders happening around a wax museum. One of the odd things about this dubbed version is that it's never explained why every once in a while Samson stops the investigation to go have a wrestling match. It's just something he enjoys doing I suppose. It's also weird that they didn't bother to dub over all the wrasslin' fans loudly shouting SANTO! SANTO!.
 As a fan of mexi-lucha cinema I found this flick fun and amusing if in the right state of mind. Getting to this state may require a bit of alcohol and/or at least a sense of humor which obviously is lacking in most "serious" movie-viewing jackoffs. But for those looking for a good example of Santo's 1960's exploits this movie works as well as any. I'll take this over most Hollywood "action" shitfests anyday. As for the plot it's about Santo's quest to rid Mexico of an anti-social Hitleresque type(who was ironically a survivor of a concentration camp during World War II) that wants to spread murder and chaos throughout the world and also set up a sweet wax museum(of course a bit of HOUSE OF WAX is ripped off here). There's monsters(real & wax), wacky henchmen(one that looks like Vincent Price strangely enough and the other that looks like "Batboy"), a caveman/wrestler and many scenes of old-school pro-wrassling. If you dig this movie look for Santo's 70's adventures for a more colorful example of monster-bashing goodness.

ENTER...ZOMBIE KING (2003)

While zombies, Mexican-wrestlers, gore, hot chicks and rock 'n roll are some of my favorite things in the world shot-on-video, amateur movies are among my least favorite things.  With all those ingredients it must have been hard to make such a boring movie.  The supposed Mexican-wrestlers are all played by people with Canadian accents so that's a bit weird and the gore fx are pretty crappy.  Real WWF wrestler Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart shows up in a small role.  George Romero was supposed to be in this also at one point but wisely passed.  The only positive things to say is that the surf music played by a band of masked "wrestlers" is pretty good and there is a bit of nice-looking goth chick nudity.  While not the worst SOV thing I've ever seen, there's a ton of worse zombie movies out there, I would only recommend this to people with very low standards.  Watch SANTO VS. THE ZOMBIES instead for some classic Luchador vs. zombie action.

This German trailer says presented by George Romero which is kinda weird cuz my DVD doesn't have his name anywhere on it:

BLUE DEMON CONTRA LAS DIABOLICAS (1968)

It's become sort of a Halloween tradition that at least one of the Spanish channels show a classic masked wrestler flick to celebrate the holiday.  This one is a weird choice because there aren't any monsters in it and it's not spooky at all but I guess since Blue Demon wears a mask it counts.  These lucha libre movies are all pretty much the same as far as plot goes.  There's some bad guys doing bad things until our hero figures some shit out and fucks up the evil bastards.  They're Mexico's answer to the kung-fu flick in their simplicity but where they top the typical kung-fu flick is in the style and kitsch department.  In this one the Demon takes on a weird shadowy baddy who likes to whittle wood for some unexplained reason and whose face we don't see until the big final showdown.  He also takes on an evil Blue Demon doppleganger who likes to put women in choke-holds.  Some of the sets look awesomely fake with Demon's view of the city looking particularly cardboard-like.  These movies were childhood favorites that still never fail to entertain me and they must have made a million of them because I keep finding ones I've never seen.

Some inspirational tunes!: