Santo vs. The Vampire Women

Santo vs. the VampireWomen (Santo vs. Las Muerjas Vampiro) (1962)

Runtime: 89 minutes

Directed by: Alfonso Corona Blake

Starring: El Santo, Lorena Velazquez, Maria Duval, Jaime Fernandez, Augusto Benedico

From: Several Mexican companies

This was something I've seen before, but this was the first time it was in English without the MST3K treatment. Recently, the El Rey Network started showing old Mexican movie starring wrestlers... not just El Santo. Henceforth, last night I saw this and the Santo movie they played at midnight; the latter will go up in a few hours. To briefly explain Santo, he was the biggest star in the history of lucha libre (Mexican wrestling); his popularity transcended wrestling, and they take it much more seriously there anyhow. He starred in more than 50 movies, had a comic book that existed for decades and when he passed away in 1984, it was one of the largest funerals in the history of the country.

I saw the American dub from back in the 60's done by the infamous K. Gordon Murray where he was known as Samson. The content was otherwise the same, including the two wrestling matches where hilariously the latter has Santo wrestling a masked man who is soon revealed to be a werewolf. What an odd case of lycanthropy as only his head was changed... then again it then turns into a bat so... this is a movie where the hero always wears his wrestling tights and sparkly robe, including while driving a MG A convertible; too much thought being put into this would be in error. Both the werewolf and a masked man in a convertible are great visuals.

The plot concerns the titular vampire women and some henchmen rising up after 200 years to find the descendant of a woman who eluded their grasp all that time ago. That descendant is needed for a ritual, you see. That's really all you need to know. While I wish there could have been more Santo, this at least is alright and has plenty of campy charm... especially with its English dub. Credit will be given to the spooky house the villains resided in; it had cobwebs and the other accouterments you'd expect of such a setting. Who knows how many movies I'll see starring the lucha libre legend, or even if all will be in English-note that I hardly know any Spanish... not that the dialogue will likely ever be that critical-but there should be some in the near and far future.