Lucha Diaries Reviews A-M

While it's true that I don't know the jails work - and that may or may not be a testament to my inelegance - this did not exactly put my mind to rest. There must be a solution to this problem, though none presents itself at the moment. Whatever I do, however, it's clear that I'll eventually have to get around to talking about El Aguila Real, as much as I want to avoid doing so. My viewing of El Aguila Real represents another dip into the stinky troth that is Netflix's selection of Santo films. It's also a product of my recent efforts to plow through some of these lesser Santo movies and avoid the inevitable result of cherry picking my way through the catalog (i.e. that I would be left staring out across a dispiriting wasteland of lucha movie detritus with no remaining high points to break up the monotony). So far this campaign has put me in contact with the listless Santo en la Frontera del Terror, the alluringly horrible Santo Frente a la Muerte and the surprisingly not so sucky Santo contra los Secuestradores. While those movies all had their small share of saving graces to put alongside their many sins, it never occurred to me in the case of any of them to think, "Well, at least it didn't have any animal cruelty in it!" El Aguila Real, on the other hand, can be summarized as follows: Boring bit, boring bit, footage of a real horse tumbling down a cliff, tedium, footage of a real cockfight, snore, snore, Santo forcing a house cat to drink poison, zzzzzzzzzz, footage of a real rabbit being shot, drool, snort, an eagle being forced into a burlap bag and slammed against a wall, boring, boring, the end. In other words, like a crazy alcoholic parent, El Aguila Real keeps waking you from a sound sleep for the sole purpose of traumatizing you. Now, as far as animal snuff goes, I know that arguments can be made about artistic justifications for such material in some cases, but we're not talking about The Rules of the Game here. And if you are so obstinate as to doubt that fact, that you need proof that revered French auteur Jean Renoir did not in fact direct the Santo film El Aguila Real under a pseudonym, just ask yourself whether Renoir would have relied quite so heavily on the abysmal comic relief antics of Santo's manager Carlos Suarez as the director here does. With it's singular combination of boredom and pointless slaughter, El Aguila Real stakes out a new frontier of Santo movie badness, one that actually serves to elevate other bad lucha movies. As a result, I am now forced to reevaluate Santo contra los Cazodores de Cabezas with a more forgiving eye, and may even issue a formal apology to Superzan. So thanks for that, El Aguila Real. In terms of plot, in can be said that the film offers a change of pace from other Santo films, in that it's basically a rural melodrama, but that's not enough to recommend it. Nor is the fact that it showcases the singing of star Irma Serrano, though the scenes of her pitching woo with our masked hero are admittedly pretty hysterical. To sum up, in the interest of better international communication, I will render my final verdict in Babel Fish: The true Aguila is a bad film. Stay far from her!

Watch a clip on YouTube!

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In Anonimo Mortal, Santo and his two sexy young crime fighting associates follow the trail of clues left in a series of bizarre, seemingly random murders to a vengeful concentration camp commandant and his gang of murderous neo Nazis. Among other things, its idea of a sort of Santo detective agency, teaming the masked man with suave swinger Gregoriao Casals and karate chopping fashion plate Tere Velazquez, gives the movie the feel of a TV pilot, specifically one influenced by the type of British detective shows, such as The Protectors, that were popping up in the wake of The Avengers at the time. And that's not a bad thing. I was particularly interested in Anonimo Mortal because it's brought to us by the same folks who gave us Santo contra las Lobas, which to me is one of the best and most underrated of Santo's 1970s screen efforts. While not quite as good, Anonimo Mortal is similar to Las Lobas in that it seems its makers were making a conscious effort to produce a different type of Santo film than what was otherwise being made at the time. There is a lower cheese factor, for one, and the attempts to create an atmosphere of mounting tension are mostly pretty effective. Unfortunately, because it's more of a detective story than an action film, Anonimo Mortal is a bad viewing choice if you're a monolingual English speaker like myself. To follow it I had to rely heavily on the detailed synopsis provided by Mexican film historian David Wilt on his Santo Filmography web site. Still, I found it thoroughly enjoyable. As I've said elsewhere, if you're not going to pit your heroes against some kind of supernatural threat, you can't do much better for lucha movie villains than a bunch of filthy Nazi swine. Even though they are by necessity - given the considerable stretch of time between the events of these films and those of world war II - a bunch of doddering old men, no one will object to you disposing of them in the most brutal ways possible. And, in that spirit, the commandant here meets with the same poetically ironic fate (hint: ssssssss) that John Carradine did in the last wrestlers vs. Nazis picture I watched, Enigma de Muerte. Of course, the fact that Anonimo Mortal is entertaining is as much a result of the company it keeps as it is of the efforts that went into it. Having recently viewed such entries in Santo's 1970s oeuvre as El Aquila Real and Santo en la Frontera del Terror, just having the camera change position in the course of a scene is cause for excitement in itself. And to have a musical score, minimal as it is here, that has as its obvious objective to augment the mood of what you're actually seeing on screen seems so beyond what one has come to consider reasonable to expect that it's almost an occasion for tears. These considerations, however, are more a result of me not being able to resist slamming those other films and are not meant to sell Anonimo Mortal short. It's got a bit of style, a strong story and some solid performances, and my guess is that, if someone were to put it out on a subtitled dvd (yes, please), it would probably be up among my favorites.

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As wild as a lot of these Mexican wrestling films are, it sometimes seems like not a lot of imagination goes into their titles. There's definitely a strict limit on adjectives. Then again, it might just be that I'm jealous, because I simply don't live on the scale that these guys do. None of the opposing forces that I encounter in my life could without irony be called "infernal" or "diabolical". If Santo and Blue Demon were forced to live in my world, their movies would have titles like Blue Demon vs. the Condescending Waiter or Santo versus the Stubborn Screwcap. And, to be honest, while I might be able to relate more to one of those films on a personal level, I'd really rather watch something called Aranas Infernales - which, happily, happens to be the title of the Blue Demon entry that I will be considering here. Probably the one thing that I could relate that would most succinctly sum up Aranas Infernales is the fact that it steals its special effects footage from Plan Nine from Outer Space and Teenagers from Outer Space. As much as this is equivalent to copying the slow kid's homework, it still guarantees that Aranas Infernales' special effects are immeasurably better than those of Blue Demon contra las Invasoras. Still, for the viewer (or, at least, this viewer) there's nothing like the sudden recognition of, not just the fact that you're watching a movie that aspires to pass off footage from what is popularly considered one of the worst films of all time as its own, but that you immediately recognized that footage as such, to make you most acutely feel the corresponding, rapid draining of the sands of time from your mortal hourglass. This, combined with the fact that all of the scenes in Aranas Infernales that aren't filmed outside or set in a wrestling arena look like they were filmed inside a really small box, could really send me into a funk. But then here comes Fernando Oses, challenging Blue Demon in the ring with a ridiculous looking spider puppet on his hand, and all is forgiven. A sublime moment like this, occurring in a film's final minutes, is enough for me to see the total time invested, no matter how freighted with inanity, as well spent. On top of all the aforementioned pilfering and claustrophopia, Aranas Infernales has a really extraordinary number of wrestling sequences (I honestly lost count). Fortunately, due to Blue Demon's typically spirited commitment to his role's physical demands, these are all pretty good, as are all of the plot-related brawls. As for the spiders, they're not all that infernal. And, dovetailing fortuitously with the film's obviously limited effects budget, they're not all that spidery, either. It seems that the aliens' choice to assume human form was for the purpose of blending in, so that they could walk among their intended prey undetected. But they kind of defeat that purpose with their insistence on wearing sparkly capes with big pointy collars. Their vanity is their ultimate undoing.

El Asesino Invisible (1964)
(The Invisible Assassin)
IMDB
Available from Mexicine DVD

Of all the lucha films in which classic movie monsters have made an appearance, El Asesino Invisible is the only one that I can think of that features the Invisible Man as its villain. There are a number of reasons why pitting a luchadore against an invisible foe is a bad idea, one of the most obvious being that Santo, Blue Demon and Mil Mascaras, for all their athletic ability, were not, as far as I know, accomplished mimes, and would have had difficulty selling the idea that they were grappling with a transparent corporeal being - much less that they were walking against the wind or trapped in a small invisible box. Fortunately for us, the lead here is taken by professional actor Jorge Rivero, essaying the one-off role of El Enmascarado de Oro, aka The Golden Mask. (Unable to beat Santo at his own game, Rivero would go on to join him a couple years later as his co-star in Operacion 67 and El Tesoro de Moctezuma.) El Asesino Invisible is the type of film that I imagine people are talking about when they refer to a movie as "an entertainment"; There's a sprinkling of plot, a bunch of musical numbers, a little romance, eye candy of both the male and female varieties, and, of course, a couple of wrestling matches shown in their entirety. The adorable Ana Bertha Lepe is the female lead here, and how much you like El Asesino Invisible will depend on how much you like Lepe (I do; she's adorable, remember), because she appears in several full-length song and dance numbers that are distributed liberally throughout the length of the film. Interestingly, Lepe is playing herself here - or at least a version of famous star of stage and screen Ana Bertha Lepe who exists in a world where she might be stalked by a mad scientist with the power of invisibility - which I can't help thinking was a move to compensate for the lack of verisimilitude that resulted from having an actor, rather than the "real" wrestler you'd typically see, in the masked hero role. (It would appear that having this kind of bridge between fantasy and reality was important to the audience for these type of movies at the time - or at least the producers certainly thought it was.) In a further concession to genre tradition, Rivero forfeits the romantic lead to Miguel Arenas' police detective character, and doesn't even appear unmasked until a very brief moment in the final scene - an especially odd choice given Rovero's classic movie star looks. On the villainous front, the presence of the ever waxen Carlos Agosti in the cast once again makes a mockery of a film's attempts to create any mystery around the identity of its killer, invisible though he may be in this case. On that point, I've got to say that the movie's invisibility effects, while not groundbreaking, are always competent and, in a couple of instances, quite striking - in particular the creepy "empty mask" effect when the killer tries to masquerade as El Enmascarado de Oro, and a bizarre, supernaturally-tinged moment when the hero sees the killer made visible as the reflection in a cat's eyes. I like to point out such technical accomplishments, because I've been troubled by some online reviews I've read of later luchadore films which seem to mistakenly interpret those films' shoddiness as being typical of the product of a backward, "Third World" film industry. The fact is that, at the time El Asesino Invisible was made, the Mexican film industry was the major provider of film entertainment for all of Latin America, was making its films for a worldwide audience, and had an established studio system that was a magnet for first rate technical and artistic talent from throughout the Spanish speaking world and beyond. The real reason that those later lucha movies are shoddy is that, by the time they were made, the genre had fallen out of favor with audiences to the point where they were no longer an acceptable risk for the larger studios, and so became the provenance of smaller studios and independent producers looking to make a quick profit on as small an investment as possible. Still, I can understand how, if the only Mexican film someone has seen is, for instance, the first Superzan movie, they might not have the most charitable view of the country's film industry as a whole - because that movie looks like it was made by some kind of cargo cult after some camera equipment washed up on the beach. (Hey, I'm not saying you shouldn't make fun of those movies; I'm just saying to be careful about the generalizations you make from them.) Still, even a glossy piece of fluff like El Asesino Invisible, which is entertaining but far from the best the industry had to offer, should serve to handily refute such notions.

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In Asesinos de Otros Mundos, Santo faces off against a villain who has at his disposal a giant, man-eating space blob. The reason that this film isn�t called Santo contra los Blob is that Santo knows better than to pit his wrestling skills against a blob. How would he determine its vulnerable points? If he was able to lift it and spin it over his head, which end of it would he then bounce off the mat? Wouldn�t head-butting it be inadvisable? Given these considerations, Santo�s encounters with the blob usually end with him trying to get himself and those in his charge away from it as quickly as possible (or as quickly as necessary, since the blob isn�t exactly cheetah-like in its celerity). The blob effect is achieved by having several people scurry around underneath a tarp. This makes Asesinos de Otros Mundos a cousin to the Z- grade horror classic The Creeping Terror. If you haven�t seen The Creeping Terror, you really should � and if you�re contemplating investing your time in watching a movie as terrible as Asesinos de Otros Mundos, you obviously have no good excuse not to. In fact, watching this film without first watching The Creeping Terror would be like watching The Departed without first watching Infernal Affairs (which is what most people did, but it�s still wrong). I think that having an understanding of Asesinos de Otros Mundos� rich cinematic lineage will deepen your experience of the film. Which is not to say that you shouldn�t also be drunk while watching it.

Ah, the joys of contemplating Santo films in all their infinite variety. There are the competently made B horror thrillers of the early 60�s; the slap-dash low budget train wrecks of the 70�s, period epics, jungle adventures, spy films and even westerns. And then there are the Vergara pictures. David Wilt, on his wonderful, scholarly Santo Filmography website, provides a good deal of background on these particular films. For my purposes, I�ll just say that they were a series of four low-budget, independent films that Santo did for producer Luis Enrique Vergara between 1964 and 1965. Other than their obviously limited production values, these films share a strangely disjointed narrative approach, jumpy editing and eccentrically decorated, minimalist sets that combine to give them a tone of (I�m assuming) unintentional surrealism. The fact that each also contains some seriously oddball ideas and story elements provides them with a level of interest well beyond that of the throwaway cheapies they�re price tag puts them in the company of. Because I�ve been bad, I decided to watch the three Santo Vergara films I could get my hands on (Baron Brakola eludes me as of this writing) in one sitting - an example of the strange, pie-eating contest approach I�ve taken to watching these films, turning something that�s very pleasurable in reasonable apportionments into a grueling test of endurance.

Fittingly, Atacan las Brujas starts out with a very long dream sequence that�s actually a lot less dreamlike than many of the following scenes that are supposed to be taking place in waking life. It�s revealed that the witches are imposing their will upon the heroine�s dream life, filling her head with cryptic and ominous visions. And it appears that they�re also doing the same to us � aided, of course, by lots of primitive optical effects and scary close-ups of taxidermy. It�s a weird ride, filled with apparitions, sudden transformations � and a whole lot of Catholicism, thanks to the fact that these witches-in-name-only are just a bunch of slumming vampire women, with all the same crucifix-borne allergies. In fact, just as in Santo contra las Mujeres Vampiros, the leader of the pack (after Satan himself, of course) is played by the first lady of Santo films, Lorena Velazquez. Santo relies heavily on the old �human cross� move to combat Lorena and her crew, just extending his arms and letting the light hit him just so whenever he gets backed into a corner. It�s a low impact approach to conflict, but the film makes up for it with a wrestling match that�s one of the few that's really made me sit up and take notice. It�s a furiously paced brawl between Santo and Fernando Oses (who, in keeping with the film�s overall approach to continuity, is also cast as one of the witches� henchmen, with no attempt made to connect the match in any way to the rest of the plot) filled with all kinds of crazy flips and acrobatic holds.* It speaks well of Atacan las Brujas that, at its conclusion, I was able to contemplate the combined three hours of El Hacha Diabolica and Profanadores de Tumbas that I had ahead of me with no more than the very reasonable amount of dread that I had entertained at its beginning.

*Since writing this review, I've seen 1961's Santo contra el Rey del Crimen, the film from which this fight was lifted, so in regard to this particular footage, I can't credit the producers of Atacan las Brujas with anything other than the good sense to steal it.

El Baron Brakola (1965)
(Baron Brakola)
IMDB

It's hard for me to hear the name Baron Brakola without thinking of that old "Heinrich Bimmler" sketch that Monty Python did. Couldn't Doctor Brankenstein have been included as well? Having seen the movie, though, I realize that the name is perfectly appropriate, because Baron Brakola is essentially the Anti-Dracula. Unlike the comparatively effete Count D we see in films like El Tesoro de Dracula and Santo y Blue Demon contra Dracula y el Hombre Lobo, Brakola is a bit of a thug, and, when his back's against the wall, he's just as likely to beat the shit out of you as turn into a bat and flit away. This unique and entertaining take on the old vampire shtick is entirely the creation of Fernando Oses, and I can't in good conscience discuss this movie without taking some time out to put him in the spotlight. Oses is such a ubiquitous figure in lucha cinema that he's become something of a legitimizing presence for me; It's gotten so I just can't feel like I'm watching the real thing unless it has that Oses stamp of authenticity. Not only has he appeared onscreen in an enormous number of these films, but he's also contributed to writing many of them, Baron Brakola included. As an actor, he's normally seen employing his considerable athleticism in subordinate heavy roles, sparing the marquee actor playing the lead villain from himself having to throw down against Santo or Blue Demon, while still guarantying the audience the brutal, fast-paced brawls they came to see. He made a rare exception to this practice with both Baron Brakola and a previous Vergara production, El Hacha Diabolica, by stepping into the role of the titular villain, and the results - especially in the case of Brakola - are pretty damn entertaining. Oses' scraps with Santo are among the best in the genre (so good, in fact, that footage of one of them, from Santo contra el Rey del Crimen, was recycled in not just one but two subsequent pictures) and those in Brakola easily live up to that standard. They're viscerally exciting in a way that even a guy like me who's usually tempted to fast forward through the wrestling matches in these movies isn't immune to. And the fact that Oses is grunting and sweating through these savage dust-ups in full vampiric nobleman regalia while sporting oversized fake teeth that give him a fanged overbite adds to the experience immeasurably. In terms of plot, the film is nearly identical to El Hacha Diabolica. Both concern Santo having to clean up the unfinished business of his 16th century ancestor, the Caballero Enmascarado de Plata, and both set a considerable part of their action in an under-funded school play representation of the Colonial era. This is a little weird in the case of Brakola, because, unlike in El Hacha Diabolica or El Mundo de los Muertos, where the Caballero was simply Santo in a ruffled collar, he is here obviously a completely different guy - and, rather than a wrestling mask, he's just wearing a regular half mask. In any case, I can see why the whole Caballero story line was eventually abandoned by the Santo movies, since, for all his heroic trouncing about, at millennium's end the guy just looks like a chronic ball-dropper; I mean, what does it say about your allegedly noble lineage when your most famous ancestor's primary legacy is the legion of pissed-off, deathless supernatural foes he's left behind for you to deal with? For proof of his inefficacy, merely witness the considerable amount of time the Caballero spends in this movie getting his ass handed to him - most memorably in a scene where he, with great flourish, draws his sword against Brakola and Brakola simply elbows him in the face. Fortunately, things are done a little differently in the 20th century, and Santo gets to do a little ass handing of his own (okay that didn't really come out the way I meant it to, but you know what I mean). Of course, copious guy-on-guy grappling isn't the only manly thrill that Baron Brakola has to offer, as it also provides us with some female eye candy in the person of the winsome Mercedes Carreno. I'd call her adorable, but I already called Ana Bertha Lepe adorable, and I'm determined to gift each of the Mexican film actresses that I crush on with their own adjective (the adjective for Maura Monti, if I can figure out how to spell it, is that combined steam whistle/old car horn sound you hear in cartoons where a guy's head turns into a big wolf head and his eyes and tongue shoot out a foot from his face). It also features those unique charms - a stark, by-necessity minimalism and decidedly eccentric approach to set dressing, for instance - that only one of these Santo Vergara pictures can give us. Santo would part with the studio after this film, bringing to a close one of the most bizarre chapters in his screen legacy. And what better way to cap things off than by having a no holds barred slugfest with a bucktoothed, neck headed vampire.

The Santo, Blue Demon team-up Las Bestias del Terror has a feel somewhat similar to a 1970s TV cop show. In fact, though I couldn't see it, I'm sure that Santo and Blue were sporting perms and bushy mustaches underneath their masks. Unfortunately, Las Bestias is a pretty unremarkable entry, consisting largely of long scenes of people driving aimlessly through the streets of Miami. (This is, of course, better than watching people trek endlessly and uneventfully through the jungle, but not by much.) The efforts to tack some fantastic elements on to the otherwise standard cops-and-robbers plot seem a little listless, and the titular beasts are just a trio of Irish Setters who frolic happily with their victims as the soundtrack plays snarly, growly sounds. This was all a little sad for me, because Las Bestias was the last of the Santo and Blue Demon team-up movies that I had left to view, and I was reluctant to bid farewell to the series, as I had enjoyed most of them quite a lot. So, rather than focus on Las Bestias del Terror, I'd prefer to think of the good times. For instance, the time when, in Santo y Blue Demon contra Dr. Frankenstein, Blue Demon disguised himself in a surgeon's scrubs and mask, with his wrestling mask clearly visible underneath, in order to rescue Santo from the villain's lab. Or the time when, in El Mundo de los Muertos, Blue sacrificed himself to spare Santo the stock footage based torments of Hell itself. And who can forget the warm and toasty feeling we got watching Blue, Santo and their lady friends playing a friendly game of bridge by the fire in Santo y Blue Demon contra Dracula y el Hombre Lobo? Of course, thanks to Blue Demon's bad habit of getting cloned or hypnotized by the bad guys, there were those times when Santo had to beat the living shit out of him, as he did in both Santo contra Blue Demon en la Atlantida and Santo y Blue Demon contra los Monstruos. But, once the beating was over, the two were always willing to shake hands and be thankful for the lessons learned. It's an example we all could learn from. Because, as we all know, sometimes you simply have to beat up your friends. If they're mature about it, and you're friendship with them is worth the salt, they'll end up thanking you for it - and then go on to put their lives at great risk in order to rescue you from mad scientists and Hell beasts. As for Las Bestias del Terror, it's pretty light on life lessons. Though I did learn that biting your opponent on the stomach is not allowed in lucha libre, and that even an innocuous VW Bus can become a vessel of evil if it's driven by Fernando Oses. Valuable knowledge, to be sure, but I still think it's best to look toward better times, or at least in any direction other than Las Bestias del Terror.

Blue Demon contra Cerebros Infernales (1966) !
(Blue Demon versus the Infernal Brains)
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Masked wrestling heroes seem to come up against brains a lot in these movies. In addition to this film, we have Santo Contra El Cerebro Del Mal and Santo Contra El Cerebro Diabolico. It would be too easy for me to assume that brains are the natural enemy of wrestlers, but, you know, I'm just saying. Blue Demon Contra Cerebros Infernales really lives up to its title in delivering the brains, too. Real ones, even. They look a little small to be human, so I doubt any people were actually dissected for the purposes of this film, but I'm guessing some farm animals weren't so lucky. These puny but powerful brains reside inside glass domes and testily bark orders at a team of furiously scenery chewing mad scientists who do their bidding with the aid of some mini-skirt clad female zombie/robots. I really like this movie. They were definitely going for a feel similar to the Batman TV show here, and the bright primary hues of the sets make some of the scenes look like they were filmed inside a pack of Jolly Ranchers. Everybody seems to be having fun trying to overact one another, especially the aforementioned bad guys, and the music seems to have been composed by someone who'd actually seen the footage they were scoring (unlike the "let's just play a free jazz album side" approach to scoring later luchadore movies) Blue Demon, in particular, gets a nice, snazzy theme that would be reused in some of his subsequent films. It's nice to see that Demon, despite his second banana status, was having some good, self-mocking fun in life while Santo at this time was often more grimly attending to his world-saving duties.

Blue Demon contra el Poder Satanico (1964)
(Blue Demon versus the Satanic Power)
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That title might lead you to believe you were going to get to see Blue putting a face-lock on Old Scratch himself. But, sadly, the Demon doesn't roll that way. For him, the only way to fight satanic power is with word power. So, when a diabolical killer rises from the grave and starts abducting and incinerating all the young women in town, Blue Demon heads to the library and hits the books. And when the killer sets his sights on Demon himself, he heads to the library and hits the books again. And again. These aren't wimpy little pocket books, of course, but imposingly hefty and ancient looking tomes. Still, while all these scenes of Blue getting his read on certainly provide a good example for the kids, they don't make for exciting lucha cinema. Fortunately, there are wrestling matches to provide a little action, and one of them even features Santo. Unfortunately, it's that same fight with Fernando Oses from Santo contra el Rey del Crimen... again! (In keeping with Vergara Productions' continuity standards, Oses shows up just a couple scenes later as Demon's sweaty police detective friend.) Afterward, Santo drops by Demon's dressing room to offer some words of encouragement. It seems like a nice gesture, but I think I saw Santo surreptitiously grabbing a handful of cold cuts from Blue's deli tray and stuffing them in his mouth before he made his exit. Anyway, Blue finally fills his head with enough book learning to confront his nemeses head on. And, when he does, he's so fat with knowledge that he doesn't even need to lift a finger to defeat him. This is disappointing not only because the film lacks plot driven action, but also because the villain, as played by Jaime Fernandez, is such a creepy little bastard, and his crimes are so sleazy and horrific, that you really want to see him beaten to a steaming pulp. Blue Demon contra el Poder Satanico is, as mentioned above, a Vergara production, and it's brought to us by the same crew who gave us two of Blue Demon's best adventures from the 60s, Contra Cerebros Infernales and Contra las Diabolicas, (both directed, like this film, by Chano Urueta, who also gave the world the insane El Baron del Terror aka The Braniac). However, it's low rent gothic atmosphere and murky black & white photography make it more similar to Santo's efforts for that studio than to those aforementioned ultra-mod camp fests - and it lacks the bizarre elements that made those Santo films so interesting. As much as I like Blue's films in general, I'd have to say this one is pretty pass worthy.

Blue Demon contra las Diabolicas (1966) !
(Blue Demon versus the Diabolical Women)
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It's another slam bang Blue Demon adventure! This one is a companion film to Blue Demon contra Cerebros Infernales, filmed at roughly the same time as that film with largely the same cast and many of the same sets. Because of the title, I thought it might also be a thematic companion to Blue Demon contra las Invasoras, and as such would cement Blue Demon's place as defender of mandom against the evil designs of other worldly, predatory females. Turns out this wasn't the case, however, since the Diabolicas of the title turn out to be a team of female wrestlers who are just one component of the diamond smuggling ring that Demon tackles here. In any case, like Cerebros Infernales, this is another hugely satisfying entry, perhaps even surpassing Cerebros in terms of colorful, campy nonsense. Other films in the genre go for this type of comic book feel, but Las Diabolicas really nails it. As a result, we get plenty of candy-colored pop arts sets, energetic and fairly well staged brawls, and an overall sense of exuberant silliness. As a big bonus, we also get - thanks to the swinging nightclub setting of the smugglers' operation - copious frugging and watusi-ing by a bunch of mop-topped Mexican teens. (To compliment this go-go action, the same brassy score from Cerebros Infernales is augmented by some twangy beat combo numbers by the orange-suited nightclub act El Clan.) Blue really throws himself into the physical action here, and in so doing makes some very dramatic entrances and exits. This is a man who clearly feels that using the front door to enter a friend's home is not a matter of courtesy but rather a failure of imagination. Once the guns are put away, everyone will agree that somersaulting in through an open window was the way to go. And when it's time to leave? Well, let's just thank goodness that all of Blue's friends live on the ground floor. Las Diabolicas also includes the earliest appearance of an evil double of Blue Demon that I've seen in one of these films. This device turns up so frequently in later films that I've got to wonder if Blue Demon's intended role in lucha cinema was to serve as a symbol for the duality of man. If that's the case, he here externalizes that inner conflict by going mano a mano with his doppelganger in the film's climactic ring battle. All in all, this is one of my favorite films in the genre. Demon looks great and appears to be having a good time, even perversely toying with the police at one point by suggesting that he might be responsible for the murders the evil double is trying to frame him for. It's a credibly super heroic performance on his part. For all that, however, I fear that even he may be helpless to prevent the pixie-ish Ana Martin from being crushed under the weight of the enormous hairdo she wears here.

Blue Demon contra Las Invasoras bravely puts its worst foot forward by opening with one of the most outrageously haphazard space travel sequences I�ve seen. I�m tempted to make an Ed Wood comparison here, but while the sequence in question certainly makes the hubcap flying saucers in Plan 9 look like the height of cinematic spectacle, to do so would miss the point. What makes those scenes in Plan 9 so excitingly, compellingly bad is Wood�s legendary enthusiasm, the fact that we suspect that he thought those saucers looked fantastic, that he was really doing the absolute best that he could do. The makers of Blue Demon contra Las Invasoras could easily have made a more special special effects sequence than the one that they gave us, they just didn�t bother. They knew that their movie�s major special effect was its star. Blue Demon was going to get people in the seats regardless of what else was on screen, so, when it came time to show the female invaders landing on Earth, blurry shots of a marble sinking in an aquarium would do just fine. The English title of this one could be �Cooties from Space�, as it concerns some horrible girls who come to Earth to turn all the men they kiss into zombie slaves. It�s a great plot for the seven-year-old boys in the audience, and for dad we have the mini-dresses and pneumatic builds on the invasoras themselves. Of course, a couple of these alien women eventually succumb to the charms of our strapping Earth studs and turn on their leader (none of these studs is Blue Demon, however; I guess this was still before he was allowed to get a girl of his own in his movies). The set up, simple as it is, takes a good while, and Blue Demon doesn�t show up until about halfway through the movie, but this is still good, campy fun. I�ve now watched so many of these movies that I�m becoming comfortably familiar with the recurring props. In particular, there�s a pedestal mounted, round control console inside the invader�s spaceship that I�ve seen, with different paint jobs, in probably a dozen of them now.

Blue Demon Destructor de Espias (1968)
(Blue Demon, Destroyer of Spies)
IMDB

When you don't understand what the characters are saying, you tend to become acutely aware of just how much talking there is in a movie, and Blue Demon Destructor de Espias has quite a lot. Which is not necessarily a criticism. After all, spying is all about the exchange of information, and Destructor de Espias is a spy movie - so it may just be that Destructor de Espias is an especially realistic spy movie, certainly more so than crap like 24. In any case, it was inevitable that Blue Demon would make a spy movie, and not just because Santo had made one, but because it was the late 60s and pretty much everyone else had made one. The thing that makes Blue Demon a perfect candidate to be a spy is his ability to blend seamlessly into any environment - or, at least, any environment in which a bare chested man in a blue cape and wrestling mask would not be out of place. In other environments, it's probably best to team him, as the producers have here, with serial Mexi-spy star and all around suave bastard Carlos East and sleek Italian import Maura Monti; then people will be too busy looking at them to notice him anyway. Anyway, because of the aforementioned language difficulties, I can't really relate much of the plot of Destructor de Espias other than that it involves the typical international rogues typically harassing and kidnapping the typical scientists in order to get the typical secret formula. But that won't matter to you if you're that imaginary person who I see as being the target audience for The Lucha Diaries, because that person would not care about a film's plot, but would rather ask, "Does the movie have a racist, go-go dancing puppet in it?". And the answer in this case is, "Why, yes it does". To explain: The action in the film's third act is set in San Francisco's Chinatown - a glamorous change of locale that is accomplished through stock footage, that plinky-plonky xylophone music (because xylophones are a Chinese instrument, right?), Hispanic people in Fu Manchu make-up, and people mentioning the fact that they're in "San Francisco" as much as is humanly possible (as in "Will you, in San Francisco, please pass the salt of San Francisco to me, also in San Francisco?"). During this section of the film, all of the principals visit a swanky nightclub whose star attraction is a Chinaman marionette that go-go dances with a Latina in a Suzie Wong outfit. (Because, aw yeah, bitches, we know how to pawty in San-to-the-mother-fuckin-Francisco.) I must also mention that this marionette has a disturbingly erectile neck which extends lewdly in reaction, I'm guessing, to his dance partner's more seductive moves. This sequence happens in the last ten minutes of the movie, so if you happen upon it, don't give up on the film before you've seen this part. Other than that, I'm afraid that Destructor de Espias compares unfavorably to it's sequel Pasaporte a la Muerte, mainly because Pasaporte a la Muerte features a cool underground lab and an android that shoots cartoon rays out of its hands. I will say for Destructor de Espias, though, that it does afford Maura Monti the opportunity to flip and judo chop people Emma Peel-style much more than in Pasaporte a la Muerte, though still not in a leather catsuit. Oh, well. Here's some more pictures, 'cause I know you want to see the damn puppet:

Watch a clip on YouTube! (No audio)

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Blue Demon: El Demonio Azul (1964)
(Demonio Azul: The Blue Demon)
IMDB
Available from Mexicine DVD

This week I'm reviewing the debut movies of Blue Demon and Mil Mascaras. I don't have particularly high expectations of either film, but that's okay, because I harbor a boatload of goodwill towards these guys, thanks in large part to my happy experience of the decidedly favorable winners-to-clunkers ratio in each of their limited filmographies (especially in comparison to, you know, that third guy). Blue Demon, for one, fronted a couple of my all time favorite lucha movies, the campy live action cartoons Blue Demon contra Cerebros Infernales and Blue Demon contra las Diabolicas, and his team-ups with Santo are among the few of Santo's films from the late 60s and 70s that are actually entertaining. I'm conveniently choosing not to hold him responsible for the Los Campeones Justicieros movies - which I'm beginning to feel I may have a completely irrational hatred for - but, those aside, the only real suffering I've done at the altar of Blue Demon thus far has been at the hands of El Hijo de Alma Grande and, to a much lesser extent, La Mansion de las Siete Momias. The qualities that make Blue so appealing for me could well be the result of his number two status; he exhibits the kind of game doggedness you might expect to see in someone fighting to prove himself in the Santo-shaped shadow of a more widely recognized peer. It might also be possible that I'm just projecting my lame underdog fantasies onto him. In any case, I have rarely felt that a Blue Demon performance, as one-note and stick figure basic as it might be, was phoned in, and never have I considered that I might be watching a stunt double when watching any of his fight scenes. The guy just always gives it his all, and you can't help rooting for him because of it. Anyway, before this starts sounding like some kind of big gay love letter to Blue Demon, I should probably discuss the movie at hand. Blue Demon features Blue Demon series regular Jaime Fernandez as a mad scientist who, in his efforts to create a superman, just ends up turning a bunch of guys - including himself and Fernando Oses as one of his wrestler henchmen - into werewolves. These werewolves are notable for 1) being particularly mangy in appearance, with the growth on their hands and faces looking more like patchy clumps of moss than hair and 2) for the fact that their werewolfism seems to only affect their extremities, as evidenced in a scene where a bare chested Oses transforms during a match against Blue and remains baby butt hairless from the neck down and wrists up. Blue Demon, obviously Mexico's first line of defense against werewolves, is called in as soon as the first beast makes it's appearance, which actually takes place in the very first scene. This early introduction of both a classic monster and our luchadore hero has Blue Demon hitting all the right beats fresh out of the gate. The movie definitely plays it safe by simply recycling successful elements from preceding Santo movies, but, while it doesn't show you anything you haven't seen in a lucha movie before, it never really drops the ball either. The result is a solidly engaging, if not particularly outstanding, wrestler vs. monster movie, one that serves as a perfectly respectable screen introduction to El Demonio Azul. (Yes, that title, translating to Blue Demon: The Blue Demon, is the most redundant film title ever - at least until the release of my directing debut, Motion Picture: The Movie!) I especially appreciated the filmmakers' conspicuously conscientious efforts to make sure they included absolutely every existing spook show clich� within Blue Demon's running time. In one extended scene, in which Blue explores a seemingly deserted old mansion, one carnival haunted house trope after another is rolled out - a fake scare from a projectile cat, eyes peering out through holes cut in a spooky portrait, a near miss from a dagger tossed by an unseen assailant, a cobweb covered skeleton moving it's head to follow Blue as he passes, a tarantula attack, a bat attack - until the whole catalog is completely exhausted. It's interesting and oddly impressive to see such meticulousness put in the service of basically making sure that a movie is as derivative as possible, but, in any case, it makes for a really fun scene. After all, the beauty of Mexican wrestling movies is that, the more familiar elements they place around their bemasked protagonists, the more their very oddness is highlighted. So Blue Demon actually ended up exceeding my admittedly modest expectations - and the forgiving attitude I brought to it proved to be entirely unnecessary. Because, in watching it, I achieved the near-complete suspension of judgment, taste, intelligence and credulity that is the ideal state you're shooting for when you tuck into one of these things. Now here's hoping that Mil Mascaras' debut will be an equally smooth ride.

Watch a clip on YouTube! (No audio)

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Now this is the stuff: A whole team of colorfully costumed, masked wrestlers (on motorcycles!) battling super powered midgets in matching super hero outfits, a mad scientist, lots of cut-rate action set pieces, etc. At least, it should be the stuff. Though I enjoyed this movie, my experience of it didn't match up to what I was seeing on the screen. And what I was seeing on the screen should have added up to absolute lucha cinema nirvana. I just couldn't get past the musical score here. Instead of the traditional approach to creating a film soundtrack, where someone is paid to actually watch the film and create different pieces of music that are appropriate to the different scenes as needed, it sounds as if the producers here just decided to put on a sub-par west coast jazz album and let it play through behind all of the action. This might not be so distracting if the "broken clock" rule could be applied and the music was appropriate to at least some of the action, but it just isn't. As a result, every bit of screen business - be it Mil Mascaras hurling a midget or Blue Demon staring blankly at a cue card - carries the same dramatic weight. This isn't the only film I've seen from this genre that commits this sin, but it's the most potentially enjoyable one that's damaged by it. I watched this movie the same day that I watched the Kommissar X film "Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill" and I noticed that both prominently featured as a prop that old 60s toy gun that folds up into a transistor radio. Weeeird, man.

This Mil Mascaras vehicle features a couple scenes of mildly S&M tinged violence, placing it firmly on the kinkier end of the lucha cinema spectrum. This hint of decadence doesn't seem too out of place, though, because it compliments the relatively rock star-ish aura that the flamboyant Mil Mascaras projects (I mean, the whole "thousand masks" thing is a bit Bowie-esque, isn't it?). It's because of that bad boy glamour of his that I feel Mil really comes down on the wrong side of the conflict in Los Canallas, which for me boils down to a battle between the cool kids and the dorks. The cool kids here are a bunch of black clad hipsters who smoke and hang out in dank basement nightclubs, dancing lasciviously to steamy lounge exotica - just like cool kids in the late 90's, but without irony. Sadly, the cool kids really don't like Mil Mascaras, and they take the first opportunity to express their dislike by chucking smoke bombs at him and running him off the road in his sports car. On the other hand, there are a bunch of dorky square john kids who like Mil Mascaras a whole lot. They like him so much that, when they go see him wrestle, they lead the crowd in a pep rally style cheer for him - Mil Mascaras! Mil Mascaras! Ra ra ra! The film isn't subtitled, so I can't give you a literal translation of any of the other things that the dorks say, but basically they're saying things like, "Gosh, Mil Mascaras! Those cool kids are smoking!" Or, "Gee, Mil Mascaras! That cool girl's jeans sure are tight! Let's all go pray!" This isn't to say I'm not glad that Mil Mascaras has someone in his corner; I just firmly believe that, if the cool kids decided to let him hang with them, Mil would drop the dorky kids faster than he could face-lock a midget. Another thing that makes the cool kids so cool - aside from the black wearing, the smoking and the dancing lewdly to Nicola Conte music - is that they're lead by Regina Torne, who is hot in the way that only crazy, mean, revenge-obsessed girls can be. But, alas, all of the good ones are taken, and here Torne's character, Kadena, is taken by lucha film renaissance man Fernando Oses, who communicates with her from prison through a plastic toy piano. Given that Mil Mascaras isn't given a whole lot to do outside the ring here, Torne's performance is definitely the high point of the film. A runner-up high point is a pagan ritual that comes off like a cut-rate version of one of the production numbers in Showgirls. This is Mil Mascaras' first color feature, and it has a similar flavor to the first color efforts by Santo and Blue Demon (Operacion 67 and Blue Demon contra Cerebros Infernales, respectively), which also came out in 1966, though it's not quite up to the quality level of those two. Nonetheless, it's still reasonably entertaining. Those kids sure are dorks, though.

Las Momias de Guanajuato is considered a classic of lucha cinema. As of this writing, I have not seen that film, but I believe that I have seen all of its disappointing sequels. One of the reasons that Las Momias de Guanajuato is so beloved is that it marked the first time that Santo, Blue Demon and Mil Mascaras, the three greatest names in Mexican wrestling, appeared on screen together. El Castillo de las Momias de Guanajuato, the film I�m reviewing here, stars Superzan, Blue Angel and Tinieblas. I�m guessing that the eighties Hollywood equivalent of this would be following a movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis with a sequel starring Steven Seagal, Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. Of course, if you�re a big eighties action film fan, you would probably think that a movie starring those three would be pretty great, so I should just shut up. I�m trying to make fun of this movie and I just ended up making it sound kind of cool. Since starting this diary, I have pledged to myself that I�ll write these movies up within a day or so of seeing them, while they�re still fresh in my mind. Unfortunately, I watched this one before I started this diary, so now many of its finer details � and many of its broader ones, also - are lost to me. The fact that I was able to hold so little of it in my mind - along with the vague feeling that watching it again would be a mistake - doesn�t speak well to me of El Castillo de las Momias de Guanajuato. I do remember scenes of Superzan driving everyone around in a VW bus. And there were mummies. The mummies here are not mummies as we in the U.S. understand them, though, but are rather a bunch of hash-faced zombies with the conveniently plot-advancing power to make women faint instantly at the sight of them. Furthermore, the mummies in the Momias de Guanajuato films don�t generally commit evil of their own volition, but only under the control of a third party � say, a mad scientist. Now, let�s see� mad scientist means� midget henchmen! Yes, there were those, too. Okay, I think you get the picture. Time to move on to El Robo de las Momias de Guanajuato.

It's debatable whether this movie belongs on this site. Or it would be, if the matter was open for debate, but, since I love this movie - and this is my site - we can consider the matter closed. Cazadores de Espias only concerns masked wrestling to the extent that it's one of numerous aspects of Mexican genre cinema that get spoofed therein, as the film is a broad and careening parody that recklessly throws together seemingly anything its makers thought would stick. The story - to the extent that there is one (or, I should say, to the extent that there is just one) - concerns a couple who inherit a building and can't agree on whether to turn it into a wrestling arena or a go-go club, so they do both. The result is pretty much what you'd get if you dropped a wrestling ring down in the middle of the Hullabaloo set; you'll see a match between a masked luchadore and a robot, cheered on by screaming girls in mini-skirts and go-go boots, followed by Maura Monti shaking a tailfeather to a live performance by one of Mexico's mod-est pop combos. Adding to this stew is the fact that, unknown to the couple (who are played by Eleaza "Chelelo" Garcia and Leonorilda Ochoa), the area beneath their property is serving as the subterranean lair for a nest of enemy spies with super villain uniforms and accoutrements so ridiculous that they make the trappings of the Kommissar X movies look like those of a staid John Le Carre adaptation. These baddies in turn necessitate the appearance of Carlos East, playing a suave secret agent whose scenes, for the most part, are played so straight that they almost seem like they came from another movie. Oh, and as I mentioned before, there's also Maura Monti, who basically eats the movie whole from the moment she's introduced on screen, in a scene where she feeds live puppies to her pet carnivorous plant.

So, do I really need to tell you at this point why I love Cazadores de Espias? I didn't think so. And I haven't even told you about the music yet. In addition to it's insanely catchy Mexi-Spy theme music, the film features onscreen performances by a couple of real bands. One of these bands, Los Rockin Devils, plays an appealing 60s style rocanrol, while the other, The Shadow of the Beast, is a psychedelic band so outr� that they make The Monks sound like the Monkees. (While I was able to find a website for Los Rockin Devils, I couldn't find any information at all on The Shadow of the Beast - seriously, has David Byrne heard of these guys?) Lastly, though the attempts at comedy in lucha movies generally make me seize up into a defensive fetal posture, I actually found Cazadore de Espias funny, and even laughed out loud at a couple of its goofy sight gags. It really made me wonder what I was missing for the lack of a translation. In fact, this is one of the few movies covered on this site that I feel really needs, in order for it to be properly enjoyed by gringos like me, to be released on an English subtitled dvd. It just rocks. Anyone?