LAS LUCHADORAS VS EL ROBOT ASESINO (1969)
aka The Wrestling Women versus the Murderous Robot
Article 5038 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-3-2016
Directed by Rene Cardona
Featuring Joaquin Cordero, Regina Torne, Hector Lechuga
Country: Mexico
What it is: More Mexican wrestling antics

A mad scientist uses a robot to kidnap other scientists in order to force them to work on a project to turn people into human robots. Can the wrestling women and their police boyfriends stop him?

I found this one on YouTube without English dubbing or subtitles, so I had to get a few of the plot details from other sources. That’s not to say that the movie would have been impenetrable without those sources; if you’ve seen other movies from the wrestling women series, you know what to expect and this one doesn’t vary the formula a whole lot. In fact, it’s at least partially a remake of the first one in the series, DOCTOR OF DOOM. The wrestling women are different in this one (no Gloria Venus or the Golden Rubi), and the new ones aren’t quite as memorable. They still have police boyfriends, and one of them is still broad comic relief. The movie mostly consists of the scientist sending out the robot to kidnap/kill someone, and the robot goes out and kills/kidnaps someone. Nevertheless, this is about as entertaining as the series ever got. Oddly enough, this one is devoid of the musical numbers or nightclub scenes that were common to the form. Incidentally, the doctor also keeps a monster with an ugly face in a cage in the cellar, and this creature features prominently in the two dumbest scenes in the movie. In the first, a female nurse tempts the monster by hitching up her skirt and adjusting her stockings in front of him, then she unlocks the cage and turns her back on the monster. The second one has the scientist ordering the monster to break the chain holding him in the cage, which the creature easily does. This leads to the question – why lock up a creature with a chain that you know it can break?