31 Days of Halloween, Day 1- Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monsters (1969)
Directed by: Gilberto Martínez Solares
Top 8 Cast: Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta, Alejandro Cruz, Carlos Ancira, Hedy Blue, Rafael Aldrete “Santanon”, Jorge Rado, Gerardo Cepeda, David Alvizu
Plot: When the evil Dr. Halder rises from the grave he’s out to make life hell for his hermano and sobrina and just maybe take over the world! Aiding the nefarious científico are the monsters: Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, a vampire or three, a handful of zombies, a cyclops, and the clone of Blue Demon! Can the luchadore hero in the silver mask, El Santo, save the day?
Response: Luchadores in three-piece suits. Drac’s prowling around biting virgin necks. Brawls are liable to break out at any moment. There’s a section, early-on, where Blue Demon, some green-skinned zombie beefcakes, and a hunchbacked dwarf recruit the classic monsters. Everyone walks over a foggy desert hill, one-by-one, like awww yeah. This happens at least thrice. There’s some great shots of watery sunsets. Some vintage cars get fucked up. Of the five classic monstruos, the Mummy’s given the least to do. Frankenstein’s got a wispy Fu Manchu and drives stick shift. Gloria, her man, and tio, smoke ciggies and watch a diegetic musical number. This movie’s got it all.
Background and Analysis: If you’re interested in film, its history and culture, then it sooner-or-later becomes as necessary to explore the Mexican Lucha Libre pictures as any other essential canon*. This was my first introduction to El Santo (I don’t count 3 Dev Adam or Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter), folk hero, luchadore, movie-star.
El Santo was the on and offstage public persona of Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta, who began fighting either in 1934 or 1935 and was engaged in professional wrestling for nearly forty years, still getting in the ring up until his early 60’s!
He fought originally under the names Rudy Guzmán and Murciélago II (in honor of “The Bat” Jesús el Murciélago Velázquez) but by 1943, following the suggestion of referee Jésus Lomelí he adopted the moniker of El Santo (The Man in the Silver Mask).
El Hombre de la Máscara de Plata began his career as a boo-hiss heel doing such atrocious acts as unmasking his opponents at live events, but eventually he lived up to the saintliness of his name. This might have been due, in part, to the persona of the character that was being developed in the best-selling El Santo comic book series by José G. Cruz. In the comic, El Santo had no alter-alias he was just El Santo, in and out-of-the-ring, a crime-fighting, monster-hunting super-hero. The El Santo in the movies and the El Santo in the fights came to adopt and extend these traits and stories.
Huerta would appear as El Santo in 53 motion pictures over-all, usually as the lead. Santo and Blue Demon vs. The Monsters is in fact his 23rd picture over-all and the second of five released that year! To say the character was popular is an understatement. Though we get whiffs of his legacy in Jordan Hess, Rob Zombie and Pixar pictures, and though the Lucha Libre imagery does travel, the Santo films are only lately beginning to get much of a following outside of Chicana/Chicano and LatinX communities in the United States.
This might have had something to do with distribution. In France, El Santo was known as Superman but here in the States, we only got two or three Santo movies released at all (until the glory days of the internet began) and all of them by the Illinois meat-merchant and illegal-gambling-ring operator, K. Gordon Murray, who bought up and repackaged Mexican and West German films for the Saturday matinee kiddie market. In the Murray dubs Santo was known as Sampson, and it was as Sampson that he was first experienced by the TV freaks who caught the Murray pictures on Mystery Science Theatre 3000.
Huerta famously never publicly removed his mask until 1984, a little over a year after his retirement, in an episode of the talk-show Contrapunto. He died one week later.**
The Santo films are best rejoiced for what they were, popular cinema. With titles like Santo vs. The Diabolical Brain, Santo in the Treasure of Montezuma and Santo in the Fury of the Karate Experts, they seem to play fast and loose with the most marketable tropes of the time. Santo himself, while being a thru-line character like the best Marvel or DC had to offer, may be more of a Scooby Doo-esque mystery solver in one film, or a James Bond-like super-spy in another. But he was always El Santo.
Judging from this one film; which packs in every monster, multiple wrestling bouts, horror kills, car stunts, dance and musical numbers; I would say the kinetic, kitchen-sink, maximalist aim-to-please approach finds it’s best contemporary corollary not in the MCU pictures but in the Fast and Furious franchise. Perhaps both, at their best, are interested in giving you the goods. It just happens that in the case of El Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monsters, there’s a lot of goods to give.
Scores:
Autumn Vibes: 3/5
Scares & Chills: 1/5
Cultural & Cinematic Importance: 5/5
Monster Action: 5/5
Second Opinions:
“The platonic ideal of a Santo film.” - online review I found but couldn't find again to credit
“This movie banged … As a wrestling freak, noticing some trends with camera cuts & the staging of the matches within the movie are still really foundational to wrestling now. I wish we got to see Santo & Blue Demon talk it out, since Santo was truly a bit heartbroken at the clone Demon possibly being his real friend…” - dyingsignals on letterboxed
“This was our MCU growing up!” - striklybidness on reddit
*The French New Wave, say, or Beach-party flicks, the Wuxia genre, Sirkean melodramas, Yugoslav Black Wave exemplifiers, hardcore gay pornos, etc..etc..
** Autobiographical details gleaned from Lucia Libre: The History of Mexican Wrestling (2025, Cerunnos Press), The Important Cinema Club podcast episode 355 & the El Santo Wikipedia page