Santo and Blue Demon Versus the Monsters

Buckle up, Santo and Blue Demon Versus the Monsters has the sort of title that lets everyone know, right up front, just what kind of picture they’re getting themselves into, and brother, it’s short and sweet and doesn’t disappoint. It has plenty of wrestling (as might be expected), and begins with said wrestling right up front; big hulking, masked Mexican hombres sweating and stinking and writhing all over each other like big hairy Neanderthals. Although Neanderthals didn’t have as much panache, dig?

Santo (“Samson”) is—or rather, was—a sort of Mexican movie comic book hero in a silver wrestling mask who drove a gold ragtop and made love to beautiful señoritas out under the pale Guadalajara moon. He starred in any number of barnyard South of the Border celluloid atrocities, typically opposite some guy in a rubber mask. But I bet the kids loved this stuff.

Here, Santo (played with rather Mexican wrestling cinematic gem-level aplomb by Santo himself) is paired up with vicious rival “Blue Demon,” who is kidnapped by the menacing and insane Dr. Halder (is there ever any doubt about these things?), who sleeps in a coffin and lives in a castle and has a mad dwarf assistant named Waldo (so he must always be asking himself: Where’s Waldo?)

Dr. Halder is obsessed with monster dudes that look like old fartknockers hired by the local Jaycees for their Halloween Haunted House. We have Dracula (naturally), the Mummy (of course), Frankenstein’s Monster (who has a mustache and looks like he just woke up from a three-day drunk), Wolfman (a pathetic, yet wonderfully hirsute Russian peasant shadow of his former self), and a couple of add-ons or Johnny-come-lately types, one of which looks like a walking Zuni fetish with one eye and a body covered in chia fur. Dig, baby, dig!

I have plastic D&D miniatures of all of these hojos, and, my god yes, I plan on a one-shot solo TTRPG wherein I play Santo battling all of these monsters. Somebody stop me! (From rolling a D20 for damage, that is.) For that purpose, it’s purrfect.

Getting back to it. Santo whoops up on Blue Demon in the ring, but Blue Demon is kidnapped by Halder and put in some mad scientist’s thing he lays in and is cloned, and then the Halloween store guys are let loose (Dracula looks like everybody’s favorite stereotype of the Whitechapel slasher), and there is a monstrously wicked big scene I love of a rubber head getting crushed under Frankie’s awesome, cruddy monster boot. Rewind!

And Dracula comes on like a rubber bat on a fishing line. The Cyclops gets a couple of close-ups cyclopsin’ out when Santo goes toe-to-superhero toe against these foul baddies. It’s action, action, action. Aye caramba!

There are problems here. There’s an extended musical number at some cantina or other that goes on far, far too long. Also, the movie is cheap, silly, and makes little logical sense. But it does feature the first Frankenstein Monster that has well-trimmed facial hair, and Santo manages to get it on with his blonde-haired, blue-eyed girlfriend without ever once taking off his famous Santo mask. (Did he ever peel that sucker off? I imagine not, señor. El Santo does not remove his mask!)

Other than that, if you can’t find it within your cold, loveless, still-beating-at-half-speed heart to love a movie full of monsters, madmen, music, and Mexican wrestling badasses, then, quite frankly, I feel sorry for you. You deserve to be put in a coffin with the demented Doctor Halder while Dracula, Frankenstein, and Wolf Man dance to a Mariachi band and howl at the moon. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want non-alcoholic margaritas, chips and salsa, and a side order of those little cinnamon twists made from deep-fried tortillas. I got arteries left to block, baby. (Also, this South of the Border Supernatural Unthriller has put me in the mood to go watch the undeniably superior Coffin Joe films again.)

Starring Santo as “Santo” (how did you ever guess?), Alejandro Moreno as “Blue Demon,” Ivan J Rado as Dr. Halder, Carlos Ancira as Bruno, and “Santanon” as the unfortunate dwarf Igor stand-in, Waldo. Directed by Gilberto Molinas Solares, and I reckon that’s it.

"Santo and Blue Demon vs the Monsters" English subtitles! 1970 movie HQ

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