The Man in the Mask of Silver strikes back.

 You can think of some movies as neglected primitives and some as expressions of misunderstood cultures but there's now doubt about Mexico's Santo, the Man in the Mask of Silver. His vehicles are trash made by people of basic competence but no imagination for the audience looking for juvenilia - or pornography or both.

Despite this, I keep on finding find myself watching them across a range of situations - researching their monster content for "The Seal of Dracula" my exploitation movie book, seeing them in European Fantastic Film Festivals or in the New York Hispanic cinemas and Paris Art Houses where they are equally at home. I once baled up Oliver Stone, who said he'd concealed the Mexican location shooting of Salvador, by pointing out a prominently displayed Santo poster. I got a much better interview after that. 

Even with an inherited swag of Santo movies on DVD I keep on coming back for more, this week in the Spanish Film Festival where Santo & Blue Demon Contra el Dr. Frankenstein was served up with some good natured live local masked luchadores as a warm up act - at standard prices.

Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta was born in 1917 and took an interest in sports as he grew, settling on Luche Libre, the Mexican version of wrestling which was brought across the American border in the mid thirties. Like all pro-wrestling this was more theatre than athletics, despite the fitness required of participants. Jules Dassin's 1950 English Night & the City has this at its center.

Rudolfo became possibly the most famous participant, always appearing in his silver mask in the Santo character, variously rendered as Superman, Samson and The Saint, in the dubbed versions that would circulate through late night US TV and in Spanish diaspora screening. His popularity was enhanced when comic book artist Jose Guadalupe Cruz circulated his exploits  over a thirty five year period and, after an initial resistance, Santo went into the movies in the early sixties, filming in pre-Castro Cuba with phenomenal and enduring success which critics, particularly English language ones, never chose to recognise.

The man in the mask of silver Santo contra el doctor Muerte 

The tone and  style of the Santo movies varied and became more conservative when moving to Eastman color pushed the budgets up. Our hero was to be seen in the company of mad scientists, Martians, little boys, vampires, the Wolf Man, naked women and the descendants of Frankenstein along with fellow luchadores including Blue Demon, Mil Mascaras and other and lesser mat masters.

Though other wrestlers rushed to the Mexican screen, Santo remained their star performer. Blue Demon was put out when, after having done such a good job overcoming the Mummies of Guanajuato, the characters and their writers felt it necessary to summon the Silver Masked Hero for the big finale.

In the festival show was Miguel M. Delgado's Santo y Blue Demon contra el doctor Muerte, a quite sedate Santo adventure with strip 'toon exploits delivered straight faced with routine competence by Delgado and his team but with a minimum of the dotty flamboyance that enlivens the best of these.

The plot was derived from Rene Cardona’s 1964 Las luchadoras contra el médico asesino / Rock  'N Roll Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Ape. The later version opens with Lina Michel fresh from wardobe & make up (everyone looks like they come from the same department store catalogue as the furniture) being followed down the foggy street by kidnappers (close up of a black man’s eyes) who deliver her to Dr. Jorge Russek (in a couple of Peckinpah movies) the hundred year old grandson of the original Dr. Frankenstein. He seems to have taken on board Yeux sans visages or maybe Abbot & Costello Meet the Ghosts, switching the brains of the girl victims (“trepidation”) to perfect the operation which will restore his wife now in suspended animation and who we promptly forget about. The failed subjects of his operation go home and murder their intimates, who have reported them missing to the police commissioner, who in turn calls in Blue Demon and Santo, flat-sharing when not tag wrestling.

The staged matches with their stunt throws and an energetic commentary are the only part of this film that are clever.

The doctor has a master plan. His black strong man Golem already has the power of twenty and is controlled by a transistor inserted in his brain, but he lacks Santo’s intelligence, agility and skill, so what more logical than to steal the brain of the man in the mask of silver? His associate has recruited a couple of brain surgeons who Russeck rejuvenates to assist him. This is getting very La piel que habito / The Skin I Live In.

His ruffians make off with Santo's squeeze Sasha Montenegro. She goes on double dates where the Man in the Mask of Silver and Blue wear their masks and two piece suits to the up market restaurant surrounded by unsurprised diners.

With a match where Blue discovers Russek in a red mask, directing Golem via a microphone from the sidelines, our heroes pursue them using their lock picks to enter the doctor’s secret lab which looks like a TV quiz show set set doing double duty. They sort out the henchmen, Golem and medicos already in their scrubs and Russeck reverts to his true age - one dissolve to a made-up close up. Happy end. 

Outside the lucha libre, the only fun is to see the leads going about their business among locals un-fazed by their masks. It’s good for a laugh but no fair trade for the monsters and space men that enliven these.

We’re told it is a classic of Mexican cinema and has accordingly been subject to the OK restoration we are seeing.

    The Mummies of Guanajuato

 

Barrie Pattison - 2022