10 Outrageous Mexican Wrestling Films You Need To See

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.