Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #91: Six-String Samurai (1998)

Post-apocalyptic wasteland U.S.A, taken over by the Russians! Vegas is one of the only cities left standing, and if you want to make it anywhere, it'll have to be there. But it's tough to get in. Tougher to survive the walk. Our stoic hero is a rockabilly guitar-picker who's decided to make for his fame and fortune.

Packing little beyond his guitar, a torn umbrella to shield himself from the hot desert sun, and a fucking samurai sword to defend himself against Russian raiders, he sets out across the arid land. Oh, and Death is literally after him. Death and a bunch of his evil henchmen. This is a winning concept, but the ultimate result is a little on the underwhelming side. I found myself bored more than once, which usually means that I need a gang to watch the movie with, and some sake.

If you can set up that kind of situation, also be prepared for wretched acting, camp dialogue, breakout gypsy-punk sequences, and sword duels that sometimes manage to be pretty stylish.

So: Could have been the best movie ever, but doesn't too far along that track.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #89: Forbidden World (1982)

Hello Space Marine. Care to have space sex?

The innuendo
drips like the slime from
black meta-mutants

Another Roger Corman alien-ripoff oh shit we're stuck in a space lab movie! When will it end? Hopefully never, because it's like a beautiful dream.

I was smitten with Forbidden World from the start because it gives you this trippy opening montage where a robot wakes a guy out of cryogenic stasis with some Beethoven. While the ship is being attacked by raiders. That's how I'd do it.

This one's actually pretty cool. I'm pleased to say that there's an attempt to keep the camera interesting throughout most of the movie, since we get a pretty wide variety of shots of things from places you wouldn't expect, but not so many that it starts to look like an overenthusiastic student film wank. You will get gratuitous ass shots of women walking in high heels, though. Quite a few. They're made to walk up and down the corridors in what must be standard space lab attire: skin-tight silvery jump suits with low cut chests and high heels. There are nighties too, and many situations where the female characters feel the need to be topless. Babes will literally bump into the protagonist and introduce themselves by batting their eyes. As one scientist puts it, the women there are apparently starved for new faces.

I absolutely love how often people will stop to have sex when there's a killer mutant loose in their science facility. It's got to be a space fetish of some kind. There's this ridiculous and great sequence where a security guard, who is watching for the goddamned deadly mutant, watches the blonde scientist get it on with the dopey space marine protagonist instead. It's an amazingly creepy violation of security camera protocol. As he watches, he pulls at some kind of light up space yo-yo and sweats profusely. This is the greatest form of space sex innuendo possible.

The scene is extra funny because the security guard looks exactly like Tim Roth. We get some fantastic space porno music evidently coming from a token black guy playing a screechy clear plastic space saxophone. This all goes on for a full two minutes, and the song actually gets pretty darn catchy by the time they hit orgasm. Forbidden Planet has a genuinely cool soundtrack by the way, a very Goblin one.

So while watching, the guard catches a glitch on a sensor and decides to investigate. That, of course, is serious trouble. What I love about his cautious search for the alien is that every 25 seconds or so we get a split second of the scientist and space marine having sex in their room. At first I was confused - is this guy afraid he's about to die and is reliving the happiest moment of his life? The one a minute ago when he was watching space marine fuck that girl he probably wants so badly? Then I thought: no, wait, the monster is using psychic projections of her getting it on to lure him in, because every time he hears something or looks over, it cuts to a few frames of sex. By the time the monster hits it's clear that they were going for a sex and murder montage that actually turns out to be fairly effective. An orgy of blood! An orgy of love! Everything the viewer might want in a scene! We get a shot of a different scientist smoking a cigarette afterwards, and I feel in my heart that it was Roger Corman in spirit.

The lab facility has a space sauna, and in the morning the space marine gets it on with girl number two there. The actor's attempt to look seductive just looks really weird - this doofy smirk and wide eyed "Heh heh, eh baby?" expression that makes the guy wholly unlikable. This look of course works within seconds on girl two, who's boyfriend was killed by the monster the previous day. Incredible. Space marine walks in and 'EEEK GET OUT! LEAVE NOW LEAVE NOW!' and after that pervy look, switches to (and this is a quote) "Fair's fair, get naked."

After the mutant attacks them both, some guy actually bulldozes over the fact that there's a killer creature on the loose by asking "Hey you know what I wanna know? I wanna know what you and Tracy were doing in there dressed like that." Just so girl number one can add a catty comment. Clearly, what they were doing in the sauna is much more important than the fact that they were nearly transformed into a digestible food tissue by a vicious mutant, and somebody better damn well take care of it. Nobody seems to give a shit about the mutant until it's attacking someone.

Hmm...maybe we should do something about this soon?

Now, you might have read my review of 1991's Dead Space. Turns out that Dead Space was in fact Roger Corman's remake of Forbidden World. Same plot. Same characters. Different names. At least three lines of dialogue that I noticed in Forbidden World found their way into Dead Space. The opening space battle in DS is lifted from the opening of FW, and I'm guessing that FW probably takes it from some even earlier Roger Corman film. Probably Battle Beyond the Stars, though it's been a while since I've seen that one.

So: You really have to watch any movie where characters hit computer keys with glowsticks. Standard, ordinary dollar-store glowsticks. Because fingers just aren't good enough.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #87: Dead Space (1991)

Think about your hungry children, Bryan.

Another Roger Corman Alien rip-off with people and monster trapped in an inescapable lab!

Beastmaster dude Marc Singer plays a han solo-ish space marine, and he's alright. His mildly sarcastic robot sidekick is pretty cool. That's about all of interest in this movie.

The lead actress is absolutely terrible, and every line she delivers falls completely to the floor and shatters into pieces of "Why the fuck am I watching this?" I'd guess that she got the lead role because she was the only one to agree to get topless during the space-sex scene. Any of the relatively much more talented actresses in the cast would have been a better choice, and would have made Dead Space an easier pill to swallow. Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston makes a solid appearance as one of the main scientists at the facility though, and while nearly as boring as the other characters, it's clear from the get go that as an actor he's doing his absolute best with the gig.

The fight scenes are hilariously bad. I know I usually use words like "hilarious" in my reviews of terrible films, but this time I really really mean it. I actually laughed out loud during a few sequences, and had to pause the movie so my brain could do a reality check and confirm that I was actually seeing what I was seeing. Dead Space probably has the worst fight sequences I have ever seen, and I've seen my fair share of shitty violence. Characters just run around, back and forth, aimlessly diving and rolling. From one side of the room and then back again. To clutch at someone they don't think can hold their own and then topple over in fear. And normally, when you have a monster in a movie, you don't just have your characters start shouting and shooting and then show the monster lurking by the fog machine, you give a hint that the creature is there by the fog machine, all misty and atmospheric-like, and then you can have the heroes react. But this movie is riddled with instances where the characters are reacting to a monster we haven't been shown yet - not because we don't know what it looks like, we do already. But solely as an editing choice. The monster shots come last, come separately, and in some cases, have been shot in totally different locations and then edited together. It's pretty clear that most of the special effects shots were done late in the game, and that's normally a relatively fine stratagem if the editing supports it. The movie seems not to care overly much though.

The carelessness of the movie manifests in other numerous, joyously funny ways. Characters will sometimes enter a fight scene as though they were already battling for hours and are ready to pass out, just to match the forced intensity of the movie's scuffles. A particularly lame and cowardly character enters a room with an enormous alien creature he's terrified of and actually takes noticeable time to just walk up to it (in perfectly sound mind) just to get close enough so he could get killed for us. All the while he's being shouted at: "What are you doing? Where are you going?? What are you doing!?" At points it almost seems like a character takes on the consciousness of the movie and expresses its confusion over why it's doing what it's doing. The aforementioned lame character filled that role earlier by asking questions like "Why is he going up there??" and "What is he doing? He's stupid." Those were valid meta-questions, though within the film he was just being a dick.

The space marine walks into a room and somehow doesn't see the same huge alien creature that couldn't have possibly been hiding anywhere. He doesn't notice it until a claw peeks into the frame and attacks. The best response of course is to push the person he's trying to protect, his new girlfriend, onto the floor in front of the creature. He then backs up and starts shooting bullets that have never once injured the creature during the course of the film. If a bear ever came at my girlfriend and I during a secluded camping trip, I know I'd toss her down in front of the bear and start hurling small stones. I guess there's not too much threat with the monster though, it kind of just stands around and waves it's arms.

Of final note, this movie has an awful synthesized orchestral soundtrack that sounds like the jaunty background music to some old medieval strategy game.

So: I barely got through it, but I'm eternally grateful that this movie exists.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #86: The Terror Within (1989)

I've been watching more Roger Corman ripoffs of Alien. Galaxy of Terror wasn't enough. Corman seems to be following a set up he likes for its relative simplicity: people are stuck in an isolated and inescapable lab facility with a monster that ripped out of someone's body. The monster picks everyone off one by one by working its way through the air vents.

The Terror Within takes that formula and places it within a post-apocalyptic setting where women give birth to mutants called Gargoyles. Where Galaxy of Terror had a maggot rape sequence, this time we get a Gargoyle rape sequence! Not nearly as graphic as its predecessor but just as ridiculous.

There's not much to say about this one, apart from the fact that it's deliciously terrible and manages to satisfy my craving for post-apocalyptic movies, for the odd moment anyway. You'll get awful acting, macho heroes and pseudo-feminist "I want to fight too!" heroines, a guy in a rubbery mutant suit, and an ending with an explosive final move that doesn't make sense because it isn't necessary. It also ruins chances of future survival in case their rescue doesn't actually pan out.

That isn't a spoiler because the heroes don't actually use it save their butts. They do it because they seem fixated on blowing up their lab for some reason, and so that the lead male could say "Adios motherfuckers" when some Gargoyles, on cue, start to crowd around their dilapidated shack/secret entrance. This is of course for the sake of having an explosion in a movie that up until that point had none, and been relatively ok for it. I kind of like how afterwards, however, the two survivors just sort of wander off into the Gargoyle-infested desert with their dog, supposedly making for some other lab in just as bad shape, and the credits roll to haunting music. Chances that they'll make it? SLIM.

So: Chances that you need to watch this? SLIMMER. Unless you've got bad taste like myself.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #84: Galaxy of Terror (1981)

Hi kids. Captain Spaulding here, this time with CRYSTAL NINJA STARS.

This wonderful Gigeresque Alien ripoff is full of familiar faces. I was amazed to see Robert Englund, Ray Walston, someone from Happy Days but not who you're thinking, and Sid Haig, all milling about in a space ship together in a movie that looks and plays out like an issue of Heavy Metal. Here's why:

After a generic scene where a dude somewhere is running away from something scary and dies, the movie proper opens in a way I wasn't expecting. The movie decides to trip the hell out. We get a guy playing some kind of lasery table game with an old witch. He's called The Master, and he has a glowing plasma flame for a head. No face.

The Master, getting it done.

Him and The Oracle are apparently deciding the fate of the planet, and The Master orders a rescue mission, one that apparently needs to happen for reasons of Destiny, to a planet where something awful happened years ago. The dialogue in that scene is grandiose and striking, and I eat that crazy space opera/space fantasy stuff up like alphacentaurigetti.

Though it's mostly rushed thanks to its hour and twenty runtime, the movie works pretty hard to give each character some kind of bizarre distinctness, most fun of which, and most out of the blue, is Sid Haig's character Quuhod. He's an understanding and empathic warrior-type who "lives and dies by the crystal," meaning that as a master of these cool crystal throwing blades he can touch no other weapon. Sid Haig apparently, on reading the script, insisted that Quuhod be played entirely mute. He thought the lines were terrible and didn't suit the character at all, and given most of the dialogue in the film, was probably right. Famed producer Roger Corman heard his pleas and agreed. Quuhod's muteness, coupled with the movie's tendency to give you hints of back story and lore without actually telling you what any of it is, adds a wonderful mystique to the narrative that the movie really needed. I kind of want a movie just with Quuhod, hiking across the galaxy like the man with no name and dealing in blade wounds instead of gunshots. But this is a universe where dreams are shattered. This is a galaxy....of terror! Though it might be a Battle Beyond the Stars, since it uses enough stock footage from that previous Corman sci-fi.

I found myself liking this flick not just for its Corman-infused silliness, but its streaks of seriousness. As I mentioned before, much of the stuff you see seems like it could have come right off the pages of Heavy Metal Magazine. The movie possesses the same kind of weird, dark, and at times sexual space opera that I can't get enough of, though almost did when it came to the maggot rape sequence. Yep.

I wish I could say a maggot was raped when I write "maggot rape sequence," but I'm afraid an enormous maggot rapes a busty blonde in Galaxy of Terror, and that the scene was a big part of the movie's relative success. I'd forgotten up until that point that I was watching a Roger Corman flick. It will only make sense once you find out what an evil pyramid in the movie is all about, but not much sense.

Also, James Cameron was apparently second unit director and production designer. In the special features there's a handful of really interesting anecdotes about a smug and combative Cameron berating people for various silly reasons. The prosthetics department supposedly made a monster partially in the likeness of Cameron, though I couldn't see any similarities apart from the claws and slime. The special features on the disc are great, and Roger Corman's interviews always offer illuminating insight into the filmmaking business and its trends and turns.

So: Fair amounts of gore, a Heavy Metal magazine vibe, and a haunting ending I wasn't expecting. Cool stuff.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #79: Mystery Science Theater 3000: Santa Claus (1959, MST3K Version in 1993)

Forever at war.

Not sure what MST3k is? Read this first!

Apparently Santa was not in high standing in Mexico in '59. El Santo certainly was, but Santa and Christmas were, it was felt, a distinctly American tradition that had little place in the imaginations of Mexican children. How best to sell the Santa meme to Mexico? Why, the only way to properly bridge the gap is to put Santa in the service of god! You know, make him lock horns with satan and his minions! Kid movie stuff. The MST crew have a field day.

Santa lives in a cloud fortress made of crystal and filled with surreal anthropomorphic contraptions that monitor Earth. These contraptions were made by none other than fucking Merlin. Merlin lives in the fortress with Santa. Oh, and an army of 6 year old toy-making workers from every nation on the planet. These must be the purest child-souls to be found on Earth, to be working for god's newest general in a magic cloud city. The elves are nowhere to be found, and this will be a strange movie indeed. I can only assume that they, like the angels before them, grew jealous and rebelled and were cast down amidst the fire.

Soon enough we get a bizarre sequence with Santa playing organ and singing along with each nation's representatives in turn, and let me tell you, it is a badly dubbed buffet of racial stereotyping.

I'd have to say this episode possesses one of my favourite MST3K moments to date, a moment where the clockwork reindeer, having just been awakened from their year-long slumber, begin to laugh along with a merry Santa. Now, the reindeer's jaws open and shut in a jerking, string-pulled fashion and they can never blink. Their laugh grows into what I'm sure is an unintentionally disturbing cackle, a cackle the guys of course are compelled, in the evil spirit of Christmas, to join in on. It then becomes an unholy chorus of laughter akin to the scene in Evil Dead where Ash has his first true mental breakdown.

It's possibly the most offensive MST I've seen, and certainly one of the darkest. Given the subject matter of the film in front of them, the boys aren't afraid to make fun of every national culture they can think of in the name of fairness and in step with the flick, and poke fun at the rammed down your throat religiosity and fear of hell that this film tries to install into children.

So: Pretty damn awesome. Still with a bit a Hallowe'en in the brain yet ready for Christmas, this might be perfect for you sinners.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #78: The Mummy's Hand (1940)

Continuing my march into monster movie mania, The Mummy's Hand!

A lot of light comedy and not as much hammy horror as I had hoped. You do get a bit of it though - the sort where there's a slow-moving monster creeping closer and closer to a half-asleep love interest and EEEEEEEEK other love interest bursts in and BLAM BLAM but too late! Her dad is maybe dead but no he's just knocked out cold and she's gone! Oh noes! If only it had more of that and the lurchy dusty mummy responsible for the whole mess it might have been worth sitting through. We've seen the mummy before, we don't really need him saved up for a big reveal or final act. Turn it loose. Let the new Egyptian empire begin its ancient reign of terror anew! Bricka bracka firecracka' siss boom bah! Go Mummy Go, Amun-Ra-Ra-Ra!

Instead you'll have some dull character set-up that ends up accomplishing little by the time the curse hits home. A good chunk of the movie is spent on a magician character's various parlour tricks, or rather, the edits that make them work. A buffoony support character practices one of tricks throughout the first half of the movie so he could, I thought, use it at an opportune moment and save the day later. Turns out it was just filler. Like the stock footage they used from the first movie with Boris Karloff edited out.

So: Not terribly worth it.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #75: Mystery Science Theater 3000: Night of the Blood Beast (1958, MST3K Version in 1996)

I've probably made reference to MST3k in other reviews and explained its basic concept, but now that I finally come to review one of their many, many episodes I'll give your lovely heart a refresher.

Dr. Forrester is an evil crazy-go-mad scientist who has decided that he wants to rule the world. But to do that, he is certain that he must break the will of earth's populace. The most obvious way to do this is to force them to watch the most incompetent, most embarrassing, most boring films ever made by their own feeble human hands. Naturally, this procedure should be tested first in a controlled environment. So Dr. Forrester kidnaps his laboratory janitor, Joel, and jettisons him into the seclusion of his secret space station, the Satellite of Love. He sends Joel awful movies and monitors the man's brain - but what's this? He manages to stay sane somehow! The key to Joel's survival is that he makes fun of the cinematic shit he's sent with the help of two robot friends he constructed from satellite parts. In the series, you get to watch the awful films Dr. Forrester sends with Joel and the bots riffing and cracking jokes all the while. Its like watching a terrible movie with some hilarious friends, the sort that makes any movie experience ten times better.

There's tons of episodes, and each one is an entire film minus the 15 or 20 minutes trimmed for the sake of the MST3k sketches that pepper the show. Some episodes are a great success, some are not, since some films just are so terrible that the MST crew can't win. Night of the Blood Beast, though, is fantastic. It comes from season 8 of the series and is probably one of the best episodes I've seen. Night of the Blood Beast is a Roger Corman wonder, filled with lots of dull walking scenes, awful dialogue, sci fi pontification, and rubbery alien monsters. The boys are in great riffing form, and I ended up laughing out loud, or LOLing if you will, more than once. I tend not to LOL when watching comedies, and usually just smirk and chuckle ever so slightly. This is due to the terrible burden I carry, the alien shrimps gestating within me. I identified with the astronaut in Night of the Blood Beast completely.

So: Wicked-awesome. This one features Mike instead of Joel, who is, I think, my favourite of the two Forrester victims.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #73: Amazons (1986)

High adventure in progress.

This wildly entertaining sword and sorcery flick, like most of them, comes to us from the dark and time-fogged forests of the 1980s. Under the supreme command of dread mogul Roger Corman, a screenplay was commissioned to Charles Saunders, who based his script off a short story he wrote for an anthology called, coincidentally, Amazons!. So that Amazons! was apparently the first significant anthology of fantasy works using female protagonists and written by a mostly female cast of authors. You'd expect, then, that the Amazons under review is an interesting feministical text where warrior women fight for equality and independence in a harsh and largely masculine world, right? Well yeah you get that. Only with boobs. Lots of boobs. This is a film, after all, and it is common knowledge that only films with boobs do well. I remind you of Titanic.

If you've seen as many 80s sword and sorcery movies as I have, you might recognise these common links:

• There will be a scene where a woman takes off her top.
• There will be a scene where women are swimming naked in a river and are being watched by drooling pervs.
• There will be a scene with sex in it.
• It is made in Argentina.

We will not be given armour or be clothed against the elements.

Amazons is of course about a tribe of warrior women. They are under the command of a queen who rules over a kingdom currently under siege by an evil wizard named Kalungo. When I hear the name Kalungo I can't help but imagine a cute baby elephant, a born in captivity type that's maybe the result of a worrying but in the end rewarding pairing. Not so much a demon-enslaved lightning-throwing sorcerer. After doing some quick online digging, however, I find to my shame that a kalunga, or calunga, is a Brazilian descendant of runaway slaves. The word can mean many things, and is oddly enough used both as a derogatory racial label and as a byword for someone who is famous or important. Go figure. Charles Saunders is African-American, and I wonder if the link here is merely coincidence or some interesting subtext.

Oh, right, the movie. So anyway the amazons need to quite obviously find a magic sword since it's the only thing that can stand up to Kalungo's evil magic. Two amazon babes are sent on the quest, and it's hilariously wonderful. It's great fun to watch people use prop weapons they've never handled before. Especially when they haven't been given much supplementary training. You're basically given a bunch of calendar models who drill practice their spear maneuvers with 'What if I really hurt someone?' hesitance. A real winner's attitude on the mock-battlefield. Sword duels can sometimes look half-decent, but largely possess a 'What am I doing?' grace that lends the whole production metric ass-loads of charm.

So: A fantastic watch with friends. Can't get enough of this stuff.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #62: The Film Crew: Hollywood After Dark (2007)

Lovers of Mystery Science Theater 3000 rejoice. Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy graced our screens for a handful of films under the alias of 'The Film Crew.' And they certainly haven't lost their utterly unique charm. For those unfamiliar with MST3K, the concept is this: three friends watch a terrible movie together and poke fun at it as you watch along with them. I find few things in life more entertaining than this indestructible arrangement. So sticking pretty close to the MST3K formula, they give you a comically scrutinised and ridiculed B-film, peppered here and there with short asides where the guys gather together for lunch and tomfoolery.

Hollywood After Dark (1964) is their film under review this time, and stars the late Rue McClanahan (Blanche from Golden Girls). The Film Crew doesn’t let you forget that. The film itself is a warning to young would-be actors thinking they’ll find success in that dismal place second only to dread Mordor: HOLLYWOOD. Well, the two may in fact be the same place, since it’s dirty and people will betray you and do evil things. And the bigwigs have taken to dressing in black robes and riding matching black dragons.

There are a few others in the Film Crew series, and they’re all worth checking out. On top of that, you can visit www.rifftrax.com to see their latest project – downloadable commentary tracks to watch along with new DVD releases! Highly recommended.

So: Can't think of a better 'night with friends' kind of plan.

Pose Reviews A Movie. #29: The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001)

Bahahahahahahaha!!!

Sorry...just thinking about this movie in order to review it makes me laugh.

I can't help it. And if you've watched it, I'll bet you can't either.

The thing to know about The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra in order to enjoy it to its fullest is not that it's bad, but that it's bad on purpose.

Paradoxically, this bad-on-purpose-ness is what makes it really, really good. And incidentally, the sheer magnitude of this bad-on-purpose-ness is what also makes it very, very funny.

To explain, let me use the example of Plan 9 From Outer Space. Plan 9 has endured the test of time and continues to be beloved of current generations because, simply put, it's so bad it's good.

Fans of Plan 9 will know what I'm talking about--you don't love the film because it's great, you love it because it's great despite its awfulness.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra takes this concept even further. It capitalizes on the endearing quality of films like Plan 9 From Outer Space because it possesses the same "vintage terrible" quality, only on purpose.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra was made in 2001--however, it's designed to look, sound and feel like a sci-fi film from the 1950's.

The film's humour, then, is derived not just from the atrociously corny aesthetic, but also from extremely clever (though equally corny) writing of Larry Blamire (the director and leading man).

So, with this one-two punch of hilarity, you end up with a very funny movie about a mad scientist, a less-mad, more-normal scientist, and two space aliens who are all trying to locate a fallen meteor in the remote woods of rural America to acquire the coveted element "atmospherium" that lies within it.

I highly recommend The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra since it's such a unique and effective parody of a genre that's already pretty funny--namely, relic science fiction classics.

So, if you liked classic Zucker Abrams Zucker parodies like Airplane! and Top Secret!, or the great but oft forgotten Loaded Weapon 1 from National Lampoon, you're likely to enjoy The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra as much as die-hard Plan 9-ers.

And if you're already a die-hard Plan 9-er, you've probably already started watching The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra before even finishing this review.

(And if you haven't...well...you probably should be.)

"I SLEEP NOW!"

Ryan Watches a Motion Picture #27: Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dr. Frankenstein (1973)

Having taken care of Frankenstein's Daughter already in a previous film, Dr. Frankenstein must now be dealt with. Dr. Irving Frankenstein, that is.


After a snappy title sequence with a swingin' and funky soundtrack we're shown a city where beautiful women are vanishing and returning as zombies to murder their friends and family in their homes. It's clear to authorities that this is the work of Dr. Frankenstein, and true enough, it's the good doctor's attempt to garner fear and respect, which clashes quite a bit with his want and need to live in secret and conduct his dubious research. He is of course attempting to unlock the mysteries of immortality, and thus far, his greatest Frankensteinian work is in Golem, a tall and ripped black man immune to bullets and to the screams of his victims. He's powerful, but he's slow and not very bright (such a racially sensitive film!), and Frankenstein surmises that to create the ultimate reanimated warrior he will need the superior brain of El Santo. Both Santo and Blue Demon aren't quite going to give him what he wants. Interestingly, Blue Demon actually has to come to Santo's rescue at one point, finally proving to be more than just El Santo's sidekick. He seems much more like his own entity in this film, whereas before he was more like an extension of Santo's good will.


Of the Santo films I've seen, this one has the most action, as it seems to be chock full of car chases, gun play, and thugs in dark warehouses and on dark streets just asking for a pounding. In addition, as always, we're given awesome introductory wrestling matches between Santo and Blue Demon and their various lucha libre opponents. Which reminds me: something I really like about this Santo installment is that more than any of the others I've watched, you're reminded the most frequently that Santo and Blue Demon are professional wrestlers, and have wrestling careers to maintain when they're not tangling with the evil forces of Mexico. The plot actually ends off at a wrestling auditorium with a wrestling match between the disguised and remote-controlled Golem and Santo and Blue Demon in the fucking ring. Way cool.

That's right, just sign here and this strangely familiar and massive horror will kick your ass in the ring, Santo.

So: A really fascinating Santo flick. Lots of cool action and wrestling sequences, and a Blue Demon with a bit more attitude.

Ryan Watches a Motion Picture #26: Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and the Wolfman (1972)

I told you I'd be back Santo. I brought a friend.

Here it is, my favourite of the Santo films that I've seen. If you're going to deny yourself the heady pleasures of El Santo and indulge only in one of his films, let this be the one.

While it doesn't have the degree of characterisation that Frankenstein's Daughter (also directed by Miguel M. Delgado) holds, for sheer cool factor you really can't beat Santo and Blue Demon teaming up against monster heavy-weights like Dracula and the Wolfman. The only thing that could propel this movie to the tip of the Olympus Mons of b-movie greatness would have been to put Dracula and the Wolfman into an actual tag team match against Santo and Blue Demon so that they could wrestle out their differences on the mat with the dignity befitting a luchadore. We don't get that. That bubble burst, on with my praise.

Aldo Monti reprises his role from Treasure of Dracula and takes up the vampire's cape once again, this time recruiting a master of seduction - the Wolfman - to finally achieve his big dream. His big dream is, of course, to cover the world in satanic darkness. A dream we all share.

Waiting for Satan's forces to attack.

But this is more like a problem for Santo. You see Santo has a hot new girlfriend named Lina, and this girlfriend is a descendant of the wizard that stopped Dracula's machinations in the distant past using some ancient weapon called the Dagger of Boidros. The same Dagger of Boidros sitting on Lina's dad's shelf. Her dad knows that shit's about to get real, so he tells her to get Santo involved. Santo, no doubt knowing that Dracula and the Wolfman are serious business, promptly recruits his old luchadore friend the Blue Demon to help keep Lina's family safe.

The game of luchadores.

A few words about Blue Demon. Where El Santo is a boyscout, and friend to all children, Blue Demon is more like Thor, and friend to all children. He's less inclined to show mercy to two-bit thugs, and would care little for the due process of law if it weren't for Santo's guiding moral sensibilities. Also, his mask is cooler, his body more sculpted, and, quite frankly, his wrestling prowess greater than Santo's. In fact, the two luchadores didn't like each other outside of movie-making, and when pitted against the other in some films would be notorious for laying the punches on a bit thick. They were rivals, and Blue Demon was no doubt unhappy about the strange and enormous gap between Santo's popularity and Santo's wrestling skill. Blue Demon starred in a number of his own films, but was known by the public by and large for being a sidekick of El Santo.

Let the Wolfman seduction begin.

So an evil hunchback has reawakened Dracula's forces, and more than any of the characters in the film, presents the most interesting bit of character drama. There's a touch of ambiguousness to him, and he's not altogether when you'd expect. Our two heroic luchadores defend the family from both him, the seductions of the Wolfman, and the hypnotic power of Dracula, but fair poorly. People are taken, and Santo and Blue Demon must take the fight to Dracula's lair. You'd think they'd use the Dagger of Boidros, but Chekhov's famous rule is ignored and a much more ridiculous strategy is used to defeat the monsters. You really must take great care when designing an evil lair.

So: B-movie awesomeness. Get some Mexican drinks and some pizza and some friends.

Ryan Watches a Motion Picture #25: Santo vs. Frankenstein's Daughter (1971)

What gives El Santo, "the multitude's idol", his amazing power? How is he able to get up so quickly after being thrown down so violently? How can he recover so expertly after a receiving a flurry of strong blows? The answer is in his blood, and Dr. Frankenstein knows it.

The daughter of the famous Dr. Frankenstein, alive today because of an age-stopping serum she has developed, needs Santo's regenerative blood to perfect the now failing potion before she ages and dies. She'll get him by nabbing his hot girlfriend and using Truxon to defeat him when Santo comes to the rescue. Truxon is this big half man half gorilla monster created by...well...by injecting gorilla blood into a man. That's really all it takes, people.

It's gorilla time.

So I was amazed to find that there's actual character development in this film, and interesting character development to boot. That utterly blew my mind. Frankenstein's Daughter possesses villains that are actually interesting to watch, who don't serve instead as mere fodder for El Santo's panther-crushing arms. They demand pathos, they suffer, and merely seek to stay alive. Even what's usually just a host of generic henchman are sympathetic and interesting - they live in fear of Dr. Frankenstein's power, and are presented as individual people with differing personalities. The lead henchman seems to have genuine concern for Dr. Frankenstein, and may in fact be in love with her. A more memorable example is the eye-patch wearing henchman that can't take part in Frankenstein's plot to send a freshly hypnotized girlfriend to claw out Santo's eyes. He can't guard Santo because he can remember what it was like to lose his own eye when he was young. It's indicative of the effort that was put into this Santo installment, and it really works to produce what I consider the best kind of B-movie - the sort that takes itself seriously enough to garner emotional investment from its audience.


Most interesting for me was Ursus, a frankensteinian monster that poses a terrible threat to Santo and his compatriots when the gorilla-man Truxon fails. The interesting part is that after Ursus takes a terrible wound and is left for dead, Santo finds him again later, suffering horribly and near death. Santo takes pity and uses his shirt to bandage the monster up. Santo tells the monster that he'll come back for him when Dr. Frankenstein is defeated, and when Santo can't seem to move the heavy gravestone that hides the entrance to Frankenstein's base, the monster, in terrible pain, does it for him. He secretly follows Santo and his companions and gives more aid at an integral moment, at the cost of his face. You'll see why. When Frankenstein's base starts to collapse, Santo doesn't want to leave the monster, but realises that his suffering must come to an end. Fantastic stuff.

Oh, and something I think I keep forgetting to mention is how awesome the soundtracks are in Santo movies. Swingin', ultra groovy tracks that usually kick the film's mood off accompanied by colourful opening credit sequences that really encapsulate the era they come from. Frankenstein's Daughter provides no less.

So: Another really cool Santo film, and the first directed by Miguel M. Delgado. Probably the best of the ones I've watched, though Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and the Wolfman (also Delgado) comes a very close second for sheer awesomeness.

Ryan Watches a Motion Picture #24: Santo in the Vengeance of the Mummy (1970)

Now in colour! Except not this photo.

Influenced heavily by Death Curse of Tartu! (1967), the Hammer horror films, and El Santo being a demigod, Vengeance of the Mummy features Santo joining an expedition into the wild jungle to locate the tomb, and the treasure, of an Olpache prince. What they find of course is a mummy, and a serious bout of vengeance.

Oh, great. A mummy.

We get the mummy's story in flashback, and it's actually done really well. Good costuming and set work that actually surprised me. In it we learn that prince Nonoc, who refused to let his love be sacrificed at the altar, makes a fateful run for it. It's that classic story we all know and have seen ourselves at some point in life: boy meets girl, girl is scheduled to be sacrificed to the gods, boy is unsure he approves of that business, boy elopes with girl, girl is killed, boy is entombed alive in a cave by his pursuers. All awfully romantic.

This is definitely a jungle, friends.

And in general, Vengeance is all pretty thoroughly entertaining. When you note that Santo is actually wrestling - I kid you not - a real fucking panther, you have to acknowledge that you're watching something fairly special. The poor cat ends up getting choked in the air by Santo and thrown, by the neck, a good distance. The panther sensibly flees after that, realising that in the great natural food chain Santo is listed just below 'utah-sized asteroid.' Santo's actually pretty uncharacteristically harsh in this film, as he genuinely threatens to kick the asses of the hired village folk who, legitimately afraid for their lives, want to abandon the expedition after the first mummy-related death. Santo aside, there's a good deal of murder going on in this movie. Old men getting murdered, women, mercenaries, assorted village folk. Everyone's at the mercy of the angry mummy and his decrepit arrows. The Olpache prince's vengeance and the presence of Olpache descendants among the village people actually partially hints at a political significance that bobs up to the surface just barely, one poking a finger at the white man's Imperialism, which lends Vengeance a gravity that most Santo films lack.

So: Good fun, the first Santo film I wholly liked, annoying bumbling professor aside. Ends off with a lame twist for an added bonus.

Ryan Watches a Motion Picture #23: Santo and the Treasure of Dracula (1968)

Santo! I will return again in El Santo y Blue Demon vs. Dracula and El Hombre Lobo!!

For those unfamiliar with the El Santo phenomenon, you can either read about it in depth here, or read my brief sum up here: The man who would become El Santo, the most famous masked luchadore of Mexican wrestling, began wrestling in the mid 1930s. In 1942 he answered the call of his famous Silver Mask, and his popularity grew until it became a genuine cult phenomenon. This was largely fuelled by a penchant for being presented as a peasant hero, fighting against other wrestlers embodying corrupt politicians, drug lords, and American imperialists. After a bout of successful comic books, he took to the Mexican B-movie screen in 1958 with Santo vs. The Evil Brain.

I've devoured all of the El Santo movies Gen X has in stock - which is a reasonable 6 or 7 out of an astonishing total of 52 film appearances - in chronological order. The first on my delirious journey into lucha libre was Santo and the Treasure of Dracula. As Campy as I could have hoped, but a little on the dull side.

It's the spiral what does it.

So basically, in addition to Santo being a star wrestler, he is also a brilliant scientist capable of building a time machine that lets people time travel into a past life of theirs. So he builds one. He tests it out on a woman who ends up being one of Dracula's victims in the distant past. This lasts for half the movie, and that would be fine if we got more of Santo than his worried looks at a monitor every 20 minutes, reminding us that he's watching through time, in the comfort of his lab. Once Dracula is dealt with by a helpful doctor Van Roth, Santo manages to pull the woman back to the present, and the rest of the movie can begin. A masked enemy who had been secretly watching Santo's progress in the lab decides to find a treasure revealed by Dracula before Santo does, but instead of finding a treasure, enemy thugs decide to awaken Dracula again.

You only fool yourself, young upstart.

While the first half is a bit boring, this film does introduce you to the Santo formula pretty well - Santo creeping around in tombs, beating up thugs, saving girls, and getting into wrestling matches to settle scores.

So: Not the best in Santo's saga, but seeing him as a prominent scientist is a hilarious wonder.