Summer of Santo: The Diabolical Hatchet (José Díaz Morales, 1965)

 After taking a well-earned break from Mexico’s cinema screens following his memorable visit to The Wax Museum, Santo, The Man in the Silver Mask, returned some eighteen months later to face an altogether more intractable problem in director José Díaz Morales’ ‘The Diabolical Hatchet’ (‘El Hacha Diabólica’, 1965).

Turning to my go-to source of info on Luchadore cinema, the late Todd Stadtman’s Lucha Diaries website, I learn that ‘The Diabolical Hatchet’ was actually one of a series of quickie, low budget pictures The Man in the Silver Mask made for producer Luis Enrique Vergara, following the completion of his prior contract with the slightly more up-market Filmadora Panamericana.

Now, I’ve previously had bad experiences with jumping blindly into these off-brand, Vergara-produced Santo movies (witness the listless Santo Attacks The Witches from '64), but rest assured - though its budgetary constraints are plainly evident, ‘The Diabolical Hatchet’ at least hits way above its class in terms of sheer weirdness - which is the main thing that draws us to these films in the 21st century, let’s face it.

In fact, this one actually turns out to be something of a crack-brained pulp masterpiece, compressing an epic tale of time travel, diabolism, hereditary super powers, atavistic hauntings, Manichean dualism and the cyclical nature of myth into 74 minutes and still finding time for both several extended wrestling bouts and loads of boring footage of people walking from one place to another.

Right from the outset, the film immediately wrong-foots viewers, as we see a procession of hooded, torch-bearing monks bearing a stretchered body toward a funeral service. As the solemn corpse-bearers progress through several moody shots, we gradually realise that the body they are carrying is that of none other than El Santo himself!

Furthermore, when the monks reach their destination, they lower our hero into a tomb bearing the legend, ‘Santo, El Enmascarado de Plata - Year of Our Lord 1603’.

What the hell is going on here?! I don’t know, but I bet you’re dying to find out, right?

After the chief monk has intoned a moving eulogy, declaring that the departed El Santo was “a man who knocked on our door many years ago, seeking peace and rest”, and who “fought against the dark forces which came after him and woman dear to his heart,” the brothers file out of the crypt, only to be replaced at the graveside by menacing figure clad in black boots, a black wrestling tunic and an executioner’s hood, wielding - yes - a bloody great hatchet.

“I won’t ever let you rest,” gloats The Black Mask (for it is he), “I will follow you through time until I carry out my vengeance!”

And with that, we jump forward to the twentieth century, where Modern Day Santo is performing some rather half-hearted warm-up exercises in his dressing room before the evening’s big match at The Coliseum. (I found it spiriting to observe that the champion’s routine actually resembles my own morning exercises - which are no grand spectacle, let me assure you, readers.)

Anyway, our hero’s subsequent bout is rudely interrupted when The Black Mask appears out of thin air waving his axe around, and basically begins trying to fuck shit up. Unfortunately, the villain proves a tough man to bring down, but the combined efforts of El Santo, his original opponent in the match, the referee and several members of the audience eventually prevail, forcing the supernatural blaggard to beat a hasty, spectral retreat.

Understandably spooked following a further incident in which the Black Mask attacks him at night in his bed (the curtains in his high rise apartment are lovely), Santo turns for advice to the latest in a long line of learned scientist-friends whose daughters he happens to be dating. (As his fans will be aware, El Santo’s passion for scientists with beautiful daughters rivals even that of Fu Manchu in those Harry Alan Towers-scripted movies.)

Evidently a man of wide-ranging talents, Santo’s scientist-friend (sadly I have been unable to identify the actor who plays him on this particular occasion) immediately confirms the titular hatchet (abandoned by its own following his night time escapade) does indeed date from the 17th century, and notes that it is inscribed with “a symbol of evil, the powers of Satan” (ie, a skull and cross-bones).

Moved by the doctor’s observations, Santo is seemingly prompted to begin making an absolutely astonishing revelation about his own origins.

So, as it turns out, El Enmascarado de Plata’s iconic mask and cloak were actually bequeathed to him by his father, and are made of a mysterious, indestructible material which also helps charge him with energy in times of need. Sewn into Santo’s mask is a triangle inscribed with repetitions of the word “ABRACADABRA”.

“The word abracadabra comes from the name of a wise man who practiced the science of good, called Abraca,” the doctor informs us, rather questionably, after consulting one of inevitable dusty volumes of occult lore.

This disconcerting discussion of El Santo’s metaphysical origins is interrupted however when, right on cue, lightning strikes, and a female ghost whom Santo is inexplicably able to identify as “Isabel” (played by his frequent co-star Lorena Velázquez) appears, warning our hero that he must destroy The Black Mask, a feat which can only by accomplished by removing said mask and laying bare the evil-doer’s face.

She also says this, which is kind of cool:

How to solve a problem like this then, eh? Well, waiting until the bugger next shows up and pulling his mask off would seem like a satisfactory plan to me, and, clearly conscious of the fact the movie has another 45 minutes or so left to run, the doctor has an alternative suggestion for getting to the bottom of things.

“I can send you into the past, Santo,” he announces within seconds of the ghost’s departure, “you can solve the mystery.”

Naturally, the big man is up for the challenge, and, if you were wondering what that weird machine which looks like a radio set with a kind of modernist wind vane sticking out of the top of it in the corner of the doctor’s under-furnished lab is, well… guess what;

Back in ‘the past’ (presumably the late 16th century), we’re treated to a series of murky, rather poorly staged vignettes concerning a romantic rivalry played out between two Zorro-esque masked caballeros - one of whom of course wears a white mask, the other black - who are competing the affections of the still-very-much-alive Isobel.

These scenes seem to be attempting, rather shoddily it must be said, to replicate the feel of a contemporary historical melodrama, but, even here, high weirdness abounds.

Spurned by Isobel, the Black Caballero retreats to his taxidermy-strewn subterranean lair, where he… kneels before the altar of a moth-eaten bat god named Ariman, apparently.

Considerably upping the ante on his conflict with The White Caballero, the bad guy pledging his eternal soul to his diabolical master, in exchange for possession of Dona Isobel. He is, of course, swiftly transformed into The Black Mask, and heads off, axe in hand, to kidnap his beloved. Returning to his regulation gothic horror dungeon, he then attempts to win her heart by chaining her to the wall and waving piles of the jewels in her face whilst gloating like a fiend, the ol’ charmer. 

Not to be outdone, the Good Caballero responds to this provocation by hiking out into the desert and consulting a benign, white-haired hermit / wizard man who lives in a poorly wrought polystyrene cave. This is, of course, a descendant of the aforementioned Abraca.

“You will never use weapons to fight your enemies,” the hermit tells his visitor, “for that would destroy your strength and eclipse your heart’s kindness. You will fight against the forces of evil for generations to come. You are now Santo, the Man in the Silver Mask.”

And thus, our hero is born - well over three hundred years earlier than was previously assumed to have been the case.

It’s difficult to convey just how bizarrely off-kilter this hastily bolted on origin story feels, over a decade into El Santo’s real life career as a wrestler and public figure. 

Drawing comparisons is difficult, but… let’s just say that it’s as if you went to see the latest James Bond movie, and Bond suddenly revealed that he was actually part of a lineage of smarmy establishment thugs dating back to the crusades, and that the thread of his tuxedo had been blessed by Merlin the Magician, or somesuch. Unexpected, to say the least.

Given that the spirit of 20th century Santo has travelled back in time to observe the heroic rebirth of his noble ancestor, you would think the natural next step would be for the filmmakers to raise the implication of what happens when he bumps into his outwardly identical 16th century forebear, but… mercifully perhaps, the possibilities arising from that one are skipped over. In fact, I think the implication is that Santo and his scientist-friend have merely returned to the past ‘in spirit’, helpfully allowing them to view a bunch of pre-edited flashbacks.

Anyway, after a bit more uneventful scrapping on the one bit of suitably old looking street which the filmmakers were able to shoot their 16th century segments on, The Black Mask finds himself arrested by the inquisition, who naturally take a dim view of him marauding around the place calling upon the powers of his diabolical gods and suchlike. Thus, we’re treated to one of the stranger reiterations the famed opening of Mario Bava’s ‘Black Sunday’ (1960) you’re ever likely to see.

As 16th Century Santo calmly looks on, the black-clad miscreant is burned at the stake, vowing infernal vengeance against his opponent’s descendants, before - in a winningly peculiar twist on the formula - he escapes the flames by transforming into a particularly scrappy looking, rather overweight bat and making his wobbly, wire-bound exit, accompanied by a deluge of traditional bad guy cackling.

Once 20th century Santo has returned to the present day, back story duly filled in, fight fans in the film’s original audience may have been forgiven for assuming that ‘El Hacha Diabólica’ was finally about to settle down into a pattern of more traditional, down-to-earth luchadore business, as our hero inevitably sets about breaking the curse by removing his supernatural antagonist’s mask in the manner which comes most naturally to a seasoned grappler.

And indeed, several extended, fixed camera bouts between El Santo and The Black Mask do follow in quick succession, but, even here in its final stages, ‘Diabolical Hatchet’ is still determined to be as weird as hell.

In particular, I enjoyed the plot point which sees Santo determine that he must lay to rest the spirit of Isobel, by tracking down the location of the basement in which The Black Mask imprisoned her. Excitingly, The Champion of the People achieves this goal by sitting at his desk, studiously consulting an enormous reference work cataloguing colonial-era buildings.

This pursuit obsesses him to such an extent that, when his latest girlfriend (the daughter of the professor, of course) calls late at night to let him know that, “something terrible is happening here,” as lightning strikes and shadow of The Black Mask looms upon her wall, instead of nobly rushing off to save her as we might reasonably expect, Santo takes an uncharacteristically cynical approach, merely calling the police and informing them that a woman has just been murdered at a certain address, dutifully promising to take his revenge upon the killer, before returning to his reading! 

(“Just tell your boss Santo called,” he growls down the phone line, briefly turning the movie into some kind of morbidly surreal film noir.)

In technical terms, it must be said that ‘The Diabolical Hatchet’ is no great shakes. Though the extensive nods to Poe-derived gothic horror are a nice touch, we're a far cry from the era’s more lavishly appointed Mexican gothics. Morales’ direction is pretty perfunctory, largely comprising awkwardly-framed, point-and-shoot medium shots, whilst the sets are threadbare, the performances muted, and… oh boy, all those extended scenes of people walking from one place to another really become intolerable after a while.

The most egregious example of this phenomenon is a sequence at the film’s conclusion in which, having finally discovered the ancient house in which The Black Mask’s historical depredations were committed, our hero proceeds to walk around every inch of it very s-l-o-w-l-y for six solid minutes… right at the point at which any sensible action-adventure movie would be gearing up for its rip-roaring finale! 

Admittedly, Santo walks like a boss, but still, it is rather perplexing to see this kind of blatant padding employed to such an extent in the midst of a film which, as I think has been demonstrated above, contains enough crazy ideas to keep the wheels spinning for hours, if only the filmmakers had bothered to explore them properly.

Once again though, it is the sheer, shameless weirdness of ‘El Hacha Diabólica’ which makes it worth seeking out. From wantonly assigning a previously unguessed at mystic / supernatural origin story to an otherwise earth-bound franchise character, to creating its own highly specific yet totally random mythology of demons and wizards, to the callous murders of several major characters at the hands of the gloating villain…. its total refusal to give a fuck about the continuity and conventions governing pop cinema storytelling make it feel more like a story written by an imaginative eleven year old than a professional screenwriter.

Three months after ‘El Hacha Diabólica’s release, Santo was back on solid ground, taking on ‘The Strangler’ in René Cardona’s ‘Santo vs El Estrangulador’; must have been a relief after this caper.

I mean, I can't absolutely say for sure, but what’s the betting that, in the course of his myriad subsequent adventures, Santo never again deigned to mention that he and his ancestors were gifted with magical powers by the descendent of a wizard named Abraca, or that his mask and cloak date from the 16th century and convey protective and restorative powers?

Well, modesty is one of the Champion of the People’s many virtues, I suppose. He probably wouldn’t want to shout it from the rooftops, would he? I’m sure a few bewildered kids who ended up stuck in front of this one at the Saturday matinee had a few tales to tell the playground about Santo’s secret origin story, and I’m sure they wished they’d never bothered, as the strange tale of Ariman and Abraca and Santo’s distant Caballero ancestor faded into (probably quite justified) obscurity. 

 

October Horrors 2019 # 8: Santo Attacks The Witches (José Díaz Morales, 1964)

 (Or, ‘Atacan Las Brujas’, if you prefer.)

It’s about time for our annual October visit to the weird & wonderful world of vintage Mexican horror cinema, and boy, this relatively early Santo flick certainly throws us in at the deep end.

Voiceover narration from a woman we see tied to a sacrificial slab immediately informs us that she has been KIDNAPPED by the forces of evil!

Thunder crashes and theremins shriek (as they will continue to do throughout this film), as a variety of grisly taxidermied animals fill the screen, but our heroine (for such I suppose she must be) has two rays of hope in her darkest hour – firstly, her fiancée Arturo (hi Arturo), and secondly, El Enmascarado De Plata himself, the one and only El Santo!

We cut directly to Santo, who is busy infiltrating the Witches’ hacienda (yes, we’re in Mexico here, so the witches have a hacienda – get used to it), reaching an upper balcony where he instigates an epic (and, it must be said, extremely underlit) brawl with three anonymous, black-clad guards.

The Witches, it transpires, are led by Mayra, an ancient sorceress executed 300 years ago, who has recently returned from the grave as a result of the coven’s activities, co-ordinated by her second in command, the arch-seductress Medusa. They plan to use a curvy ceremonial knife to sacrifice both our narrator AND Santo to ‘The Lord of Shadows and Abysses’, as represented by a man wearing a fantastically gnarly ‘Devil Ride’s Out’ style Big Satan Head (although in truth, whenever he appears, I can’t help staring at his creased, baggy shorts, which stand out brightly against his otherwise all-black outfit – a catastrophic costuming decision and no mistake).

Whilst all this was going on, I found myself wondering whether this movie was actually the second half of an on-going serial, or whether my sub-titled bootleg of the film had mysteriously begun playback halfway through or something, such was the jarring effect of this immediate descent into credits-free, context-free action. But no – turns out this is actually all a dream sequence, albeit one that basically establishes the imagery and sequence of events which the remaining ‘waking’ part of the film will spend its time endlessly reiterating.

And so, we join Ofelia (María Eugenia San Martín) as she awakens from one of her regular, witches-vs-Santo related nightmares, perhaps inspired by the crumbling old mansion in which – so she has been told – her late parents will requires her to live for one full year, in order to claim her inheritance.

She has been informed of this by her icy sister Elisa (Santo regular Lorena Velázquez), who has recently appeared out of nowhere following a long period of estrangement to inform her that she is an orphan. Needless to say, Big Sis is the same woman who turned up as Mayra, the Queen of the Witches, in Ofelia’s dream, and, given the amount of time and expense which was clearly invested in the dream sequence, we already know that it was basically all true (and presumably cobbled together from footage we’ll be seeing again later), so – UH-OH.

Understandably frustrated by his inability to persuade Ofelia to marry him until all this eerie business is sorted out meanwhile, Arturo (Ramón Bugarini, whose other credits include ‘The Hellish Spiders’, ‘The Curse of Nostradamus’, ‘Bring Me The Vampire’, ‘The Incredible Face of Dr B’, ‘Sex Monster’ and ‘Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy’ – Mexican cinema, I swear) has the good sense to consult his good buddy El Santo – a meeting which takes place in the latter’s surprisingly drab-looking office/apartment, located on the upper floors of a Mexico City tower block - and The Man in the Silver Mask agrees, something here is clearly amiss.

Always up for a bit of breaking and entering based on flimsy, dream-based pretexts, Santo jumps into his nifty little convertible (as ever, I love the way he spreads his cape over the backseat as he drives) and roars over to La Casa de las Brujas to see what’s up.

Before long, Ofelia’s dream comes true, as our hero finds himself laboriously duking it out with those three beefy, black muscle-shirted coven enforcers, and, probably on about the third occasion on which two of them hold his arms behind his back whilst the third one pummels his exposed belly, I began to realise just what a bad idea this film’s decision to mix a ‘Satanic witches’ plot-line with the demands of an action-packed lucha libre movie actually was.

The problem here you see, is that the villains in this movie are women, and, whereas they achieve their evil ends through sorcery and deception, genre convention demands that our hero must fight back with, well, if not his fists precisely, then the physical impact of his muscular torso, at the very least.

With the best will in the world, the social mores of the 1960s ensured that we were never going to see The Champion of the People inflicting headlocks and body slams on a bunch of defenceless dames, so… basically, we’d better get used to the idea of seeing him grapple with these three anonymous dudes in what essentially look like filmed training sessions, because it’s going to be happening a lot.

It could at least have been fun to see him dusting it up with The Lord of Darkness (let’s see how those horns play out in the ring!), but sadly, this was not to be – which brings us neatly to this production’s other major drawback; namely the scriptwriters’ utter failure to come up with any ideas whatsoever to expand upon the basic premise.

Basically, we just keep seeing Santo arriving at the witches’ place, fighting with the anonymous blokes, getting captured and chained down on the sacrificial slab whilst the witches do their thing, then breaking free and escaping. Then Ofelia and/or Arturo get captured and chained down on the slabs, so Santo goes back to rescue them, and one or both of them escape, then they go back to Santo’s place to recuperate, then head back to the witches’ place again, and fight the dudes, and get captured…. it just goes on and on. The sheer repetition is mind-numbing, especially given that the film made a point of beginning with a long sequence in which we were already shown all of this stuff.

(I did however enjoy the moment when, after Arturo is captured at one point, Santo and Ofelia return to Santo’s office, where he reaches for his rotary telephone, and declares that he will call Arturo’s parents to inform them of the situation. Sadly, the scene cuts at this point, but I would have loved to have heard that call – “Hi, it’s El Santo here, yes that’s right, the famous luchador and folk hero. I’m just calling to let you know that your son has been kidnapped by a coven of evil witches, but don’t worry, I’m on the case..”, etc.)

On the plus side, as is usually the case with Mexican horror, the general sense of spook-show excess here is great, with the opening dream sequence alone mixing eerie close ups of toothy, moth-eaten stuffed animals with flashing strobes, super-impositions and so on, whilst later on we get lots of great, shadowy lighting, some wildly expressionistic compositions, flappy bat silhouettes, dust-choked sets, voluminous Satanic ranting and an atmosphere thick as congealed treacle.

Another unexpected highlight is the film’s obligatory wrestling sequence, which, unusually, is slotted in more or less at random at the one hour mark. The filmmaking here is far more accomplished and exciting than any of the actual in-story fights in ‘Atacan Las Brujas’, and it’s difficult not to get caught up in proceedings, as Santo takes on a furious, maskless bad-guy wrestler known as Lobo Negro, who pushes our hero to point of defeat again and again (he even punches the referee at one point), until Santo finally ploughs back into the contest at the last minute and flattens the blaggard, to the wild delight of the crowd. Phew!

I mean, I’m no connoisseur of wrestling, Mexican or otherwise, but even I can tell that this was one great bout. It certainly did a good job of waking me up from the stupor brought on by the endless cycle of capturing and escaping and so forth, anyway.

[Since watching the film, I’ve discovered that this wrestling footage was actually stolen in its entirety from an earlier Santo movie, ‘Santo Contra El Rey Del Crimen’ (1961), so the makers of ‘Aracan Las Brujas’ can take no credit – oh well.]

Back to the fight against the witches meanwhile, and the film’s final twenty minutes does at least up its game a bit with the appearance of that old stand-by, the Pit of Spikes (not as cool as the one in El Mundo De Los Vampiros admittedly, but still), and a defiantly Catholic conclusion oddly reminiscent of the 1960 gothic horror classic ‘City of the Dead’, in which Santo takes care of business with a *big fuckin’ wooden cross*, which roasts all evil in its path with purifying fire. Take that, sinners!

Whilst it has its charms, ‘Aracan Los Brujas’ is definitely not top tier Santo, and would indeed make an extremely poor introduction to Lucha cinema, or to the richly rewarding field Mexican horror movies as a whole. Frankly, the whole thing feels as if it has been slapped together from a few days’ worth of shooting with very little care or attention, leaving it feeling almost surrealistically repetitive and incoherent.

Whilst watching, I had assumed that these deficiencies were perhaps a result of Santo’s regular crew simply succumbing to exhaustion, having (by my count) knocked out around twelve vehicles for the big man in the space of six years. Subsequently however, Todd Stadtman’s estimable Lucha Diaries site has helped clue me in on the fact that ‘Aracan Los Brujas’ was actually one of a quartet of films produced during a brief period in 1964-65 which saw Santo desert his usual collaborators, instead signing a contract with one Luis Enrique Vergara, a notorious low budget operator who placed him a number of projects which were, well, somewhat below the level of our hero’s usual fare, shall we say.

Given that four films of the quality showcased in ‘Aracan Los Brujas’ could conceivably have been knocked out in a couple of weeks tops, I’m assuming that The Man in the Silver Mask saw the light and placed his film career back in safer hands pretty damn quick, but in retrospect I suppose, his dalliance with the bottom of the metaphorical barrel at least allows us a sneak preview of what was to follow in the early ‘70s, when the lucha genre as a whole fell down a rabbit-hole of lunatic, cheap-jack craziness, never to return.

October Horrors #6: Santo in the Wax Museum (Alfonso Corona Blake & Manuel San Fernando, 1963)

Ah, El Santo! Despite my occasional fondness for Mexican luchadore movies, it occurs to me that I’ve never actually written about any of them on this blog, so, ‘Santo en el Museo de Cera’ from 1963 should prove a pretty good place to start, right?

Well… as it turns out, I actually found the first half of this one a bit of a chore, sad to say. The Wax Museum Owner Guy – Dr Karol, played by Buñuel regular Claudio Brook - is initially more of a self-regarding blowhard than a scenery-chewing villain, banging on endlessly about how unfair it is that the police dare question a man of his stature about the assorted murders that have taken place in the vicinity of his establishment. He even goes so far as to recruit Santo to try to prove his innocence by “catching the real killer”, or somesuch. (I know this is relatively early in his crime-fighting career, but shouldn’t ‘El Enmascarada de Plata’ be dedicating his time to something a little more socially improving than clearing the name of some entitled asshole? Or punching some mummies, at the very least?)

Moreover, the wax museum itself seems like a bit of a shoddy affair too. Despite its owner’s grandiose claims, it is neither as grotesque nor as atmospheric as one might have hoped of a wax museum in a ‘60s Mexican b-movie. Furthermore, there is precious little action to be found between all the overly respectful yakking in the first 45 minutes here, unless of course you count the several lengthy wrestling sequences.  

[I’ll readily admit that these are never a big selling point for me, beyond marvelling at all the flagrantly illegal moves that seem to have been allowed down in old Mexico. I don’t think that Greco-Roman purist chap from Dassin’s ‘Night And The City’ would have approved.]

But, this being a Santo movie, there are of course also some welcome eccentricities to enjoy along the way – not least the fact that Santo and his Important Scientist Friend apparently share an innovative piece of technology that allows them to “tune into” each other via giant TV sets in their respective laboratories, giving them a view of what the other is doing at any time of the day or night, even when they are nowhere near any kind of camera or receiving device.

Leaving aside its obvious technical implausibility, you’d think this arrangement might raise some questions about the nature of the relationship between Santo and his Important Scientist Friend, especially given that, to my knowledge, ISF appeared in no other Santo movies and is promptly killed off in this one, but… I’m sure we have better thing to do here than get bogged down in snarky over-think, so let’s just accept it and move on.

As Todd Stadtman observed when reviewing this film on his old Lucha Diaries site, poor old Santo actually cuts a rather lonely figure in this movie, and, aside from his televised chats with Scientist Friend, his life seems to revolve entirely around wrestling engagements, investigating crimes, and knocking about forlornly in his conspicuously empty and heavily shadowed lab. (No high-flying associates or glamorous lady-friends for our hero here.)

At this comparatively early stage in his movie career in fact, Santo’s parallel roles as wrestler and superhero don’t really seem as neatly integrated as they would later become, and, at several points in ‘..Museo de Cera’, he – adorably - says things like “I have some important new evidence that may reveal the identity of the killer, but, I have to go and wrestle now – I’ll tell you in the morning.”

Also of note here are the Wax Museum Guy’s hired goons, who command a great deal of screen-time, and perhaps justifiably so, as they are rare paragons of their much-maligned profession. Not only do the two turtleneck-clad heavies carry out their boss’s commands with remarkable efficiency and determination, they even manage to best mighty El Santo in hand-to-hand combat, stabbing him and leaving him for dead after a lengthy outdoor slugging match. Of course, he gets better, because he is Santo, but still – whatever Dr Karol was paying these two, it wasn’t enough.

They get their just desserts though of course, with one of the two getting dunked in a huge feeding trough of molten wax during a confrontation in Dr Karol’s secret underground lair – a welcome addition to the film’s final act that more than makes up for the longueurs earlier in the picture via the tried-and-tested means of going absolutely bananas.

Though the museum’s living mutant monsters may be a bit of an after-thought, they do become a little more interesting when we realise that – somehow or other – Dr Karol seems to be in the business of creating ‘Island of Dr. Moreau’ styled animal-men (he even gets a whip out at one stage to keep them under control, ala Charles Laughton in ‘Island of Lost Souls’).

None of this is really explored in much detail, but it certainly adds to the fun to have it all kicking off when Santo (finally) busts in on a nocturnal rescue mission to free the movie’s entirely unremarkable happy young couple from the depredations of Dr Karol, who by this point has happily dropped his earlier patina of uppity respectability and emerged as the ranting maniac we always knew he could be.

Much as you would hope, the villain’s secret lab/waxwork creation facility/whatever-the-hell-it-is is pretty awesome, complete with a towering gantry, steaming trough of molten wax and all kinds of quasi-Frankensteinian equipment, including what looks like a Tesla coil and a strange modern art type installation made of piled cylinders with circular lights fitted inside them.

As Santo, the aforementioned hired goons and the animated animal-man wax-monsters all start throwing down for the finale, this whole joint is trashed with great gusto, as Dr Karol meanwhile rants feverishly at the screaming heroine he has strapped to his operating table, pushing a film that has already upped its game to the level of ‘uproariously entertaining’ into the hallowed realms of pure delirium.

In the course of his ranting, Dr Karol reveals that he is in fact a survivor of the Holocaust, who, driven insane by the trauma of being subjected to Nazi tortures at Dachau, now seeks vengeance against the entire human race. “You may have heard about it, but you didn’t THINK about it”, he chides his victims. “Human beings are monsters,” he declares. “Those who tortured me proved it. I want your face to reflect what is in every human soul. I want to create a world of physically deformed beings, where one can see the face of the Apocalypse!”

So, uh… good grief.

Mere minutes of screen time later, Santo leads his two young charges unharmed from the smouldering ruins of the Wax Museum. Outside, the police have arrived just in time for an awestruck officer to exclaim, “Truly you are an admirable man, Santo!”

“I just believe in justice and fair play”, our hero curtly replies, before jumping into his convertible sports car, waving goodbye to everybody and disappearing into the Mexico City suburbs as the sun rises on the horizon, leaving the remaining mess of congealed wax, charred half-human corpses and malfunctioning electrical equipment behind for somebody else to deal with. God bless you, El Santo!

(Please note that all dialogue quoted in the above review is taken from a set of fan-subs, so it’s possible that it is not 100% reflective of the original Spanish, but I’m confident that it at least gives us the general idea.)