Runtime: 87 minutes
Directed by: Miguel M. Delgado
Starring: El Santo, Jose Napoles, Kikis Herrera Calles, Alonso Castano, Ana Lilia Tovar, Sonia Cavazos
From: Cinematografica Calderon S.A
Yes, this is El Santo vs. LA LLORONA
Because of the Blumhouse movie from early last year that apparently was terrible-at least judging by general consensus-many more people are familiar with that Hispanic legend. To be brief, while there are variations the basics are that a woman drowns her children as revenge against her cheating partner, then she drowns herself due to grief. Subsequently, she roams around looking for her children... she drowns children that cross her path because they aren't her progeny. As the story has been around for hundreds of years, it shouldn't be a surprise that it would be used for a Santo movie... yet I still was when this was recently discovered. As typical for the past month or so, this was viewed on the El Rey Network last night.
A spin on the typical is that our man w/ the silver mask teams up with a boxer, Jose Napoles (who I understand is a legendary Welterweight pugalist) to assist a professor in finding a medallion that's around the neck of a lady who lived almost 300 years ago and is the titular La Llorona; this is done for family reasons... his bloodline is cursed, in other words. It's found but the actual villains are ruthless gangsters that want the huge treasure of doubloons also attached to the legend. Llorona is portrayed with at least a little sympathy as she had kids w/ a Spanish nobleman and due to circumstances she felt like she had to kill her children. For certain, the gangsters are seen more often than the walking corpse. This does not rise above average in most respects. At least there's some action and spooky settings; for some reason, the wrestling and boxing scenes were filmed in a TV studio that was supposed to have fans... but obviously didn't as they were never shown. What a visual to see fights with only a mauve background.
However, the music and fashion were most noteworthy to me. At times the score reminded me of The Harlem Shuffle-the original from Bob & Earl as heard in Baby Driver, not The Rolling Stones cover from the 80's during their lean years. Some of the clothing was hilarious: one of the two young ladies they managed to shoehorn in wore quite the set of duds for awhile: bright yellow pants pulled up almost to her boobs, a blue shirt with a giant frog on front, and a dark blue jacket. Santo and Napoles usually dressed like they were old men; some of their clothing might as well come from my late grandfather's closet. What was worn in the finale was incredible: Jose had on a proto-disco purple outfit and the man in the silver mask wore a peach-colored argyle sweater... hilarious clothing to have on when you're whooping ass on a phalanx of tough hoods.
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