SAMSON VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMEN (1961)
Article #434 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing day: 5-23-2002
Posting day: 10-16-2002

When a man discovers that his daughter is under a curse to be taken away by vampires, he calls up Santo to protect her.

Forget that the name Samson is in the title; this is no sword-and-sandal togafest. Samson is Santo, the masked Mexican wrestler. There are four types of scenes in this movie; firstly, there are the creepy and quite effective scenes of the vampire women (and their rough and tumble wrestling vampire men) in their crypt; then there are the dull, static exposition scenes, which largely consist of people sitting around talking; then there are the wrestling sequences (which can be even duller than the exposition scenes if you’re not a fan), and finally, there are the scenes where Santo, the Vampire Women, and the plot all come together for action; these scenes would be more effective if the plot didn’t seem cobbled together in the first place. Still, it has some fun with vampire lore; I like the scene in the restaurant where our heros identify the vampires by noticing how old and decayed they look in their mirror reflections (instead of not being able to see themselves in mirrors, maybe they just don’t like how they look in them). Nonetheless, these Mexican wrestler movies, though silly and sometimes dull, can also be a lot of fun; these guys don’t even have superpowers to compensate for the fact that they’re running around in tights. And don’t miss Santo’s wrestling bout with a werewolf (and did you know that the hair grows only on their faces?)