SANTO AND THE HOTEL OF THE DEAD (1963)
(a.k.a. SANTO EN EL HOTEL DE LA MUERTE)
Article #872 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-4-2003
Posting Date: 1-1-2004
Directed by Federico Curiel
Featuring Santo, Fernando Casanova, Ana Bertha Lepe

Beautiful women are being murdered at a hotel, and then the bodies disappear. Santo comes on the scene to investigate.

This is one of the Santo movies that never made it to the States, so I had to watch this one in an undubbed, unsubtitled print. I didn’t expect it to be as difficult to figure out as it turned out to be; the other Santo movies I’ve seen didn’t seem complicated. This one has a lot of elements that make it a little difficult to connect the dots; on top of the murders, there is a strange beatnik character who seems to be extorting money out of one of the other residents, and characters in cowboy hats digging in a cavern under the hotel. I’d really love to catch this one subtitled; it’s a lot of fun, and even given the plot difficulties, I could spot two surprising plot twists in the final moments in the film, since they’re done visually. And even though I’m not a particular fan of long wrestling sequences, I can say one thing for them here: they are kept to a minimum, and I had no trouble figuring out what’s going on during these scenes. Nonetheless, a subtitled version would definitely give me a chance to figure out the somewhat curious ending to this one.

And a warning to Santo; when you go driving off in your car, please pull your cape in instead of letting it flap around the wheels; I’d hate to have you pull an Isadora Duncan on us.