10 Outrageous Mexican Wrestling Films You Need To See
Step back, get out of the way - this is El Santo, he'll blow you away!
Masked heroes were popular in the 1930s, the decade that saw the introduction of The Lone Ranger, The Green Hornet and Batman. In Mexico, crowds flocked to see masked combatants wrestle each other into submission, with each luchador giving such a theatrical performance that audiences knew who was the tecnico (good guy) and who was the rudo (villain).
Most famous of all was El Santo, whose popularity inspired a comic book and, years later, a film series. Rodolfo Guzman Huerta, who portrayed El Santo in the ring, turned down an appearance in 1952’s El Mascadero De Plata (The Man In The Silver Mask), though he later relented and took supporting roles in Santo Vs The Evil Brain and Santo Vs The Infernal Men, initiating a franchise that lasted into the 1980s.
By the time of Santo Vs The Zombies (1961), the formula had been established: in between wrestling matches, Santo helped the police solve a mystery, rescued a kidnapped friend from a supernatural antagonist and then returned to the ring as normality resumed. Whether encountering vampires, werewolves or mummies, though, Santo never met an opponent he couldn’t defeat with one-on-one grappling.
The films were made quickly and cheaply, and while a modern audience is more likely to be reminded of Adam West-era Batman, they were successful enough to open the floodgates for Mexico’s luchadoras (wrestling women) as well as various imitators. Here are the 10 pictures you need to check out.
10. Santo Vs The Vampire Women
Confusingly, Santo was renamed Samson in this English dubbed version, which appeared on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 in 1995. If you’re familiar with the film at all, that’s probably where you first saw it.
Made in 1962, Vampire Women emerged during a peak in popularity for horror films in Mexico, so the film takes visual cues from the Universal and Hammer Dracula pictures and even throws in a Professor in the Peter Cushing mould. He’s not the hero, of course, just a supporting character who recruits Santo to save his daughter from an army of vampires.
In common with the Hammer films of the time, the female vampires are all astonishingly beautiful, yet the men are about as far removed from Christopher Lee as it’s possible to get. Impossibly muscular and about 100 years too contemporary to be believable, the actors look ill at ease in their cheap rubber capes and don’t really come into their own until they attempt to take Santo in a headlock.