Week 52: Santo en la furia de los karatekas (Santo in Fury of the Karate Experts, 1982)

      Well folks, here we are. This is it. The final official El Santo movie. We've waded through all the movies starring the original man in the silver mask. It feels like we've accomplished something. What that something might be, I have no idea, but whatever it is, it feels profound. There were times when I didn't think I'd make it, but I did, and since you're reading this, it means you did! Hooray!

NOT Courtney Love

         This week's movie is a continuation of last weeks. It's one of the few direct sequels in the Santo oeuvre. The only other set I can think of is the Strangler cycle, and the less said about those two movies, the better. The evil priestess and her glittery gold henchman from the last movie return to menace the Jungle Girl once more, now on her wedding day to Prince Chang, the titular "Karate Expert". Santo and Carlito parachute into action, literally. This time out, they decide to skip the endless travel involved in getting to this esoteric castle and just parachute in from a Cessna. 

Santo parachuting in.

And Carlito parachuting in...

     Some how the bad guys manage to steal the penis shaped space rock AGAIN, and use its magic to cause all sorts of trouble for Santo and his friends. I don't know how they keep getting their hands on this thing. You'd think after the events of the first movie, they'd put that shit under lock and key, instead of leaving it the open air temple they worship in. 

The bad guys, plodding. Get it? Plodding...?

       I'm not exactly sure why this is called Fury of the Karate Experts. The karate experts, or expert, since there's really only one in the movie, don't really do jack shit. Santo has to do most of the heavy lifting. The only scene where his skills come into play is a brief sequence where Santo is brainwashed by the evil priestess and sent to kidnap the jungle girl. Prince Chang is the only one who is a physical match for the 60 something Santo. The whole bit is an obvious plot device to get these two bruisers into a fight. The rest of the movie has Prince Chang sitting on the sidelines.

Santo's friends console him about the end of his movie career.

       The next time he comes into play is to be killed, that's right, killed, by a pack of killer apes, left as a trap by the bad guys. It's actually one of the more hilarious scenes in this, or any Santo picture, as the apes are obvious men in ape suits, and the entire fight scene erupts into a blood bath, with numerous heroes and villains being wasted. Just about all the heavy hitters show up for this scene, with most of the antagonists getting killed. The Good prietess' advisor, a man who spent the better part of two movies trying to convince the viewer that he's a zen master, hilariously pulls out a revolver and just starts filling killer apes with lead, until he's throttled to death by one of them.

Fun with Ape costumes!

      It's because of the hilarious and bizarre Ape filled re-enactment of the Wild Bunch, that I'm going to give this film a kinder rating than its predecessor, even though it pads out its own runtime by showing us the exact same Jungle Girl origin from the previous film. I would've liked for Santo's final feature to have been something grander, but I had a feeling, given how bad or forgettable some of the previous movies were, that the man wasn't going to go out on a high note. Still, however goofy this movie was, it at least gave him a grander villain than the run of the mill criminal types he started his movie career with. 

Enjoyment! 

Two and a Half Silver Masks out of a possible Five.

Coming Soon: My top five recommendations for those looking to start watching Santo movies, and my bottom five movies that I'll implore you to stay away from! 

Plus! The "official" Santo movie series might be done, but there's one more movie we have yet to watch! Stay tuned...

Week 51: Santo en el puño de la muerte (Santo in Fist of Death, 1982)

     So here we are, the penultimate Santo movie. It's been a long year, filled with masked latin heroes, silly rubber faced monster men, and big bazongaed babes of all shapes and sizes. This week, we encounter more of the same, in the vaguely titled Fist Of Death. That title might mean any sort of thing. One imagines Santo evading the fists of a grim reaper sort of character. Instead, the movie unravels a tale of strangeness involving good and evil twin priestesses, a star child, and a bunch of Mexicans pretending to be Chinese martial arts experts. 

"You didn't have to steal the table too..."

     The evil priestess, with mammary glands the size of Texas, tasks her evil chief henchman, an unnamed luchador, to steal a glowing space rock from her goody two-shoe sister. Once he does this, the good priestess, also with a boob job so laughingly huge they could've seen these things from space, consults a suspiciously C-3PO like oracle, who summons Santo to aid them in their retrieval of the magic space rock.

Look! Boobs!

The Ewoks weren't his only worshippers.

   Seriously, look at that image. Its so awesomely shameless that they used a C-3PO halloween mask. Anyway, it turns out that the star child, known as "jungle girl", had come to the priestesses with the space rock long ago, and now that she is an adult, she is betrothed to a prince from, I guess, China, or at least some vague asiatic country. This prince arrives to collect his new bride, but has to throw into the mix of nonsense when the evil priestess and her luchador goon decide to sacrifice jungle girl to...whatever. None of this is ever really explained properly. 

It's a lovely day for a pontoon ride. 

      Santo and his sidekick Carlitos spend most of the movie commuting to the esoteric temples where all these goofy characters call home. They're in a swamp pontoon boat, and then an airplane, and then another boat, and then another boat, and another. I guess the producers decided to just film all the transportation details behind the scenes and add them into the movie. Santo does get a shockingly gory (for a santo movie) scene where he hurls an assassin into the propeller blades of said plane. 

Ouch!

    This is one of the stranger latter day Santo movies, and probably one of the strangest all around. There's all these weird, martial arts characters living out in a swamp someplace in a big stone temple. Who the hell are these people? Why are they living out there? Why do they all worship a big glowing salt rock shaped like a penis? Why does Santo never look around at all these goofy fuckers and ask "what the hell is wrong with you people?"

ENJOYMENT!

Two Silver Masks out of a possible Five

Fun Fact: Just a year after his retirement in 1984, Santo was a guest on Contrapunto, a Mexican television program. Without warning,  he removed his mask just enough to expose his face, in effect bidding his fans goodbye.[3] It is the only documented case of Santo ever removing his mask in public.[2] Santo died from a heart attack on February 5, 1984,  a week after his Contrapunto TV appearance.

Week 50: Chanoc y el hijo del Santo contra los vampiros asesinos (Chanoc and Son of Santo vs. The Killer Vampires, 1981)

The passing of Santo Mantle...

         So as we get towards the bitter end here, we come upon a bit of an anomaly with this week's movie. It features the Son of El Santo. Santo himself only cameos briefly in the opening prologue. He has a sort of passing of the torch moment with his son, who has become ready to don a silver mask of his own and defend the weak and put-upon. He's also saddled with Santo's latter day movie sidekick Carlitos, who's tells people he is the young man's guardian, even though son of Santo is old enough to grow a mustache and wear a speedo in front of grown women. Yup, we see his face.

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The most awkward pool party ever.

       As you can see by the title, the fruit of Santo's loins isn't even the top billed hombre in this. He plays second fiddle to some dork named Chanoc, who when not singing, runs around with a knife on his belt, telling people about how he wants to save the seals. That's right, Son Of Santo has to put up with the antics of some pseudo green peace nut who's primary goal in life is protecting the cute water rats that inhabit the Mexican panhandle.  Chanoc also has his own insufferable tool of a sidekick, some clown in a bad wig and mustache so phony looking, that I'm not going to even dignify him by finding his name for you readers. 

"AARP..."

      So what the hell does this movie have to do with vampires? Well, nothing really. You see, Chanoc is visiting with his seal friends, when he's clubbed over the head by smugglers and left for dead at sea, where Son Of Santo finds him. Son Of Santo is obviously not aware that the life you save is your responsibility from now on, and is saddled with this clown, who insists on investigating these smugglers further. So now does it have nothing to do with vampires, but the seals are out of it as well. A half assed attempt to include vampires occurs at the midway point of the movie, when our gang is informed of urban legends about vampires on the loose in Tijuana.  It's funny that the urban legends they hear from there concern vampires and not things like donkey shows. It turns out the smugglers are posing as vampires while moving their smuggled goods in and out of a graveyard hideout in Tijuana. 

Sweep the leg!

        As not exciting as any of this sounds, its even less so. A good deal of the run time is filled with the two sidekicks teaming up and getting into unfunny mischief. I'd say a good 45 minutes of the movie is filled with these two idiots bumbling around getting into trouble and being rescued by Chanoc and/or Son Of Santo. Son Of Santo acts more like his father did in his early movies, appearing and disappearing rather nebulously like Batman. He's a bit lighter on his feet than his old man, throwing in some martial arts moves for fun, but much like the early Santo movies, a lot of the fights scenes are shot from a static wide angle, with the action really far away. Throughout these 52 movies, there are a number of them I'd likely revisit someday. This is not one of them.

Enjoyment!

Silver Masks not applicable due to lack of El Santo. 

Fun Fact: Chanoc is actually a Mexican comic strip hero, whose origin is similar to Tarzan. 

Week 48: Santo en la frontera del terror (Santo at the Border of Terror, 1979)

     So here we are at week 48. These movies continue to be pretty terrible at this point, showing Santo well past his prime. In yet another recycled plot line, Santo finds himself entangled in the machinations of another mad scientist, who is harvesting human organs for the black market, or for dubious experiments, or both, who cares. 

Old ass Santo! 

     The unique spin put on things this time is that its an American scientist, preying on illegal Mexican immigrants. The film starts out with two hombres, Fernando & Gerardo, trying in vain to cross the U.S. border. After being unsuccessful, they go to a bar where Gerardo belts out a musical number. Then they go to another bar, where Fernando's fiance belts out another musical number. Two musical numbers in less than ten minutes. Thanks movie! It turns out that Fernando's fiance needs to get her kid sister an operation to fix her deteriorating eye sight. This is why Fernando is so eager to jump the border. He just can't make that bread for his squeeze's surgical needs here in their dumpy barrio town.

"Is that a south American coup in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"

    For no reason at all, Fernando and his friends are jumped by would be robbers. For equally vague and random reasons, Santo happens to be driving by, and stops to come to their aid. After chasing their attackers away, Santo decides to become their new best friend and benefactor, and agrees to pay for the little girl's surgery out of his own pocket. Fernando and Gerardo hop the border into the states anyway. Smart. 

"why don't we have shirts on again?"

Puma Man star Miguel Angel Fuentes

      It's here that Fernando and Gerardo quickly encounter the mad scientist who has designs on their livers and other vital organs. His enforcer is Monk, a hulking beast of a man played by Miguel Angel Fuentes, he of the Puma Man fame (if you an MST3K fan, you know what I'm talking about). Fernando and Gerardo are locked up inside a barn, where they wait in terror until Santo comes to free them. 

Looks like Santo's got himself in another pickle!

     Most of the movie makes it painfully obvious that Santo just wasn't up to snuff at this point in his career, and likely was mostly bored with this kinda crap. He has two wrestling matches early on in the film, and you can tell they've sped the footage up ever so slightly, so as not to show just how much Santo has slowed down with age, since he was in his 60s at this point. Even in some of the choreographed fight scenes, he doesn't really do much, and is mostly reduced to the sidekick character he played in his earlier films. Much hay is also made of the little girl's lack of sight, but no one seems to point out her irritatingly high, squeaky voice, which is just grating to listen to. This being the late 70s, there's also the introduction of a synth score that's so terrible, it made me long for the stock library music of the 60s films.

Enjoyment.

One Silver Mask out of a possible Five

Fun Fact: Gerardo is actually played by Mexican singing star Gerardo Reyes.

Week 47: Santo en el Misterio en las Bermudas (Santo in The Bermuda Mystery, 1977)

      So we're at week 47, and we've come to our final team up with Blue Demon. He and Santo may not have liked each other's company in reality, but in movie world, they had a pretty good run. Not all of their team ups were winners, but the batting average was generally on the positive side. It was usually only the later team ups that were clunkers, and that can probably be blamed on low budgets, or the age of the two men.

Not Three Amigos!

     Also joining them once again is Mil Mascaras, or Thousand Masks. Apparently the movie is being told in flashback, a point I didn't realize until the end of the movie. A fishermen off the coast of Bermuda is telling a young colleague about his friend El Santo. He tells this tale of how Santo and his amigos Blue and Mil are conscripted to be personal bodyguards to the princess of a fictitious country, in Bermuda to work out a peace treaty with another fictitious country. Blue and Mil seem really put out by this good deed, as its forced them to cancel their upcoming European wrestling tour together. To hell with world peace! These boys need to make that money!

Blue and Mil, macin' on some ladies.

     Their issues are quickly put aside though when the three masked do-gooders meet some Latina cheesecakes who are vying for some steamy luchador action. All three get a bit randy, and a little rapey even at the site of these women. Of course their affections are superfluous, as it turns out their agents of the movie's big bad, who is determined to undermine these peace talks, and kill the princess. I need to take a moment to speak about this bad guy, "Godard", played by Carlos Suarez. This creepy bald headed dude seems to have taken the place of the previous "That Guy" that used to appear in a lot of the early Santo films. Like the previous "That Guy", he tends to play the heavy, or the sidekick, or a thug. Sometimes he's comic relief, and sometimes a genuine menace to Santo and company, and sometimes both. 

Carlos Suarez

     The titular Bermuda Mystery of the film is a bunch of nonsense thrown in to cash in on attention being given to the Bermuda Triangle phenomena at the time. It turns out that one of the three girls, who is Santo's love interest, has secretly infiltrated Godard's terrorist organization, believing him responsible for her father's disappearance. In the middle of a fight scene, two weirdos in chrome silver jumpsuits materialize out of thin air to whisk the young lady away to their underwater home off the coast of Bermuda. It turns out her father was clandestinely shuffled there to live among scientist elites. Wait, what? What the hell does this have to do with anything?! It's a seriously strange tangent the film takes, made worse by the fact that Santo, Blue and Mil never become aware of this place's existence during the rest of the damn movie! Making things even odder, is that after all is resolved, Santo and his friends take a boat headed back to Florida, only for it to be disappeared off the ocean's surface by magic undersea city machines that pop out of the water. Their boat is there one second, and gone the next, and we return to the fishermen who says the three luchadors were never seen again. Huh? 

The (not so) amazing undersea city!

    You might think I would penalize the movie for such nonsensical behavior, but on the contrary. I admire the movie's moxy, to throw something so totally deranged and off the wall into the storyline, a viewer can't help but laugh. The movie would've been another dull crime caper, with these three guys, two well past their prime at this point, bumming around and chasing tail. 

Enjoyment? 

Three Silver Masks out of a possible Five.

Fun Fact: Carlos Suarez was actually Santo's manager in real life. 

Week 46: Santo en Oro negro (Santo in Black Gold, 1975)

        Robots! Santo fights some robots! It's somewhat remarkable to think that its taken 46 movies for Santo to get around to fisticuffs with robots. He's fought so many other nonsensical adversaries in the 45 previous movies, that you'd think robots would've happened sooner. Alas, they have not.

Santo, sporting another incredible shirt.

      Saying Santo fights robots is a bit of hyperbole on my part. It makes it sound like he combats Transformers, or Terminators, or even Robby the Robot, but he does not. These are more of the Westworld variety Automatons. They're pretty fragile as robots go as well. One punch from one of Santo's mighty luchador fists is enough, in certain scenes, to cave one of these robot's head in like a rotten pumpkin. Shit, C-3PO can take a hit better than most of the robotic hombres in this movie!

Robot brains! Ewwwww...

     Santo is once again a charitable mercenary for children, as he's hired to put a stop to these automatons who are trying to blackmail their way into the crude oil business. A couple of "Big Oil" types offer to pay 5 cents from every barrel they sell to a children's charity of Santo's choosing, in return for his protection services, and thus, Santo's hat is thrown into the ring, so to speak, and he starts smashing robotic doubles to pieces.

Santo is a master of disguise.

      A lot of the film takes place in Puerto Rico, and it looks like there was a great deal of location shooting there. In particular, there is some funny night time beach, sexy stuff for Santo and one of his female co-stars, Gilda Haddock. He also has a fairly entertaining tag team match, alongside Puerto Rican wrestler Carlitos "Rocky" Colón, that is staged in a Puerto Rican baseball park. The bad guys also manufacture all their robots inside a prison in Puerto Rico, which Santo infiltrates of course, disguised as a priest. 

Santo and his Mid-life crisis mobile.

     My biggest complaint with this one is that the villains are lame. These criminal masterminds can create near perfect robot doubles of people and instead of replacing leaders of industry and heads of state with robotic doppelgangers, they decide to hassle a few Caribbean oil companies? Talk about some weak shit. Still, Santo's female co-stars, Gilda Haddock and Rosy Mendoza are easy on the eyes. 

Enjoyment.

Two and a Half Silver Masks out of a possible Five.

Fun Fact: This film is also known as La Noche de San Juan, or A Night in San Juan.  

Week 43: Santo y Blue Demon contra el doctor Frankenstein (Santo and Blue Demon Vs Dr. Frankenstein, 1973)

         So Blue Demon is back again. This is his penultimate team up with dear old Santo. I wish it were a better team up. It seems that when it came to these final team ups with these two guys, less money was spent to give them a proper film to team up in. Maybe their star status was waning, or maybe most of the budget was eaten up by both men's salaries. Who knows such things. 

"Why aren't you wearing a shirt?"

      The movie is more or less a toothless rehash of Santo  vs. Frankenstein's Daughter. Instead of our boy dealing with a wayward offspring, they're supposedly tangling with the family Patriarch now. With the addition of Blue Demon, you'd think they'd want to go big and have all sorts of guys in crazy monster make up, but no. It's all pretty standard, hum drum fare. This is also from the same director as the previous Frankenstein film, so you'd think some of the weird, kinky, creepy shit might carry over, but none of it does. 

Blue Demon visits the set of the Andromeda Strain

    Somehow, Dr, Frankenstein has wound up in Mexico, doing deranged brain transplantation experiments on people. It's never explained how or why he came to Mexico, nor is it explained how he created such a massive underground laboratory that looks like an interior set from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Like his daughter in the previous movie, Frankenstein has developed a blood serum to keep himself from aging. While his daughter's serum had the fatal flaw of causing its users to develop a resistance to it over time, Dad Frankenstein's serum will cause him to age rapidly if he suffers any sort of physical trauma. He's also assembled a number of hulking, mindless henchman, and his plan for world domination is to put the brains of great athletes like Santo into them. He brags that an army of twenty such "super soldiers" could help him conquer the world. Huh? Even if these guys each have the strength of twenty men, (another fact Frankenstein brags about) will that make them impervious to being run over by a tank? What about napalm, or Atomic weapons? It doesn't strike one as the most well thought out world domination plan. Some brain surgeon he is...

The girl in the foreground never wears pants, ever.

        One of the things that's always amusing about the team up movies between Santo and Blue Demon is knowing that these two disliked each other off set, and in the ring. In most of the movies, they're portrayed as equals who respect each other, and are of late, a tag team in the ring. They even go out to fancy dinners with their respective new squeezes. One watches and wonders what exactly their facial expressions are under those luchador masks. What's also interesting is that neither wrestler is involved with the plot in any significant way until about 30 minutes into the movie. The first half of the movie is mostly padded out with Frankenstein explaining...his plans...and achievements....veeery.... slooowly. I'm pretty sure I folded some laundry while he was babbling on. 

Santo & Blue, smashing through a window.

        I had somewhat high hopes for this latter day entry in the Santo franchise. I thought the addition of Blue Demon meant it would be promising, but alas, its just another low budget entry in a franchise that was seeing diminishing returns at the point this film was made. It's not as terrible as some other entries of late, but its not so great either. 

Enjoyment...?

Two Silver Masks out of a possible Five

Fun Fact: In the ring, Blue Demon's signature finishing movie was the "octopus hold", in which he'd use his own weight to pin an opponent in a bent over while standing position.