SANTO AND BLUE DEMON VS. THE MONSTERS (1970)
aka Santo el enmascarado de plata y Blue Demon contra los monstruos
Article 3490 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-29-2011
Posting Date: 3-5-2011
Directed by Gilberto Martinez Solares
Featuring Santo, Blue Demon, Jorge Rado
Country: Mexico
What it is: Mexican wrestling monster mash

An evil scientist is resurrected from the dead, and gathers together an army of monsters to do his bidding. He also creates an evil duplicate of Blue Demon. Can Santo defeat the monster army and rescue the real Blue Demon from the scientist’s clutches?

I was fully expecting to be watching another Spanish language movie without subtitles, so I was delighted to find English subtitles popping up when I put this one into my DVD player. In the final analysis, though, I don’t think it matters. The movie doesn’t really have a plot; it has a premise, a resolution to that premise, and it fills the rest with typical Mexican wrestler movie scenes (there’s two wrestling scenes and a nightclub scene) and stuffs it to the gills with monster attack mayhem. The movie is a tribute to demented excess; the first clue I had to this was when I realized that the scientist’s assistant was both a midget and a hunchback. We have a vampire, a set of female vampire minions, a mummy, a werewolf, the Frankenstein (excuse me, Franquestain) monster, a bizarre furry cyclops, a short little monster with an exposed brain (this one seems to be for atmosphere; he does little but stand around), and a set of zombie hordes whose green makeup doesn’t quite go up to the actors’ hairlines. The opening credits sure make it look like this is the Santo movie to end all Santo movies. Questions abound. Why does Raul Martinez Solares, a child actor with no previous movie acting credits, get fifth billing when he does little more than run away when his parents are attacked by the werewolf? Does the Frankenstein (excuse me again; Franquestain) monster have a valid driver’s license? Why does the movie stop the action dead in its tracks so we can visit a nightclub where they’re putting on what looks for all the world like a Mexican version of AN AMERICAN IN PARIS? Did they have to keep changing the batteries for the Cyclops’s eye? Don’t worry; the movie moves so fast you’ll barely have time to think about these things. It seems to me that this is the movie that ASSIGNMENT TERROR and Al Adamson’s DRACULA VS FRANKENSTEIN could only wish to be. I can’t really call it “good” per se, but as an example of insane overkill, it’s hard to beat.