Todd’s Movie Blog

For my last suggestion this month I thought I would lighten the mood a little and highlight a little gem from south of the border.  Over the last few years I have been developing a fascination with masked Mexican wrestler movies, or as they are officially know as Luchodores enmascarado, there is just something about these odd films in which masked wrestlers run around in their masks fighting crime and destroying monsters in between wrestling bouts that really appeal to me (probably due to my love of both superheroes and cliffhanger serials).  And if you are going to high light a Luchador enmascarado, you have to go with the greatest of all time, no not Mohammad Ali, El Santo.

Santo and the Vengeance of the Mummy opens, as most of his films do, with the Peoples Champion, as he is constantly referred to by the ring announcer (take that Kurt Angle!), in a tough wrestling match that he eventually wins, but it was close.   Afterwards an old archeologist friend contacts him and needs his help in heading up an expedition into the jungle to discover the tomb of an ancient Indian warrior, seems there is a curse involved.  Being descended from a long line of mythical warriors whose destiny is to fight evil, Santo agrees.  Heading into the jungle with his friend, his friend’s secretary, a goofy absent minded archeologist, an engineer, a photographer, a jungle guide and his grandson, they soon discover the tomb and excavate the mummy.

While this is going on the photographer gets smitten by the man in the silver mask because, as she says, he is “muy macho”, and they start a tender romance.  Suddenly the curse goes into effect, the mummy disappears,  and members of the expedition end up strangled, even the goofy professor is killed, along with the guide, whose grandson Santo immediately takes under his wing.  With the party dwindling down to nothing, Santo manages to track the Mummy to his lair and engage him in a mano a monster fight, proving that reanimated mummy warriors are no match againt the Camel Clutch (santo’s famous finishing move). After defeating him, Santo discovers that the mummy is a fake and was the engineer trying to grab all of the glory and riches of discovering the tomb for himself.  Returning to Mexico City, Santo engages in another tough wrestling match, cheered on by his new girlfriend and his newly adopted ward.  Yaaahhhh!

A crazy movie I admit, but it is fun and there are some good scary moments in the latter half when the Mummy stalks and kills some of the party members.  Like a Universal monster rally film, you can’t take it too seriously, just sit back and enjoy.

My next film, Psycho a Go-Go, has had a turbulent history.  Originally made in the mid-sixties, the makers (Al Adamson and Sam Sherman) couldn’t find a distributor, so it went on the shelf while they made a few more films.  Thinking the film needed to be more commercial (and explain the lead character’s murderous tendencies), they added new footage with John Carradine as a mad scientist and titled it The Man With the Synthetic Brain and released it to TV in the late sixties.  A few more years pass and Adamson was having his usual trouble getting a film completed so he took major sections of this film and cobbled them  together with new footage for Blood of Ghastly Horror (which is the version I saw on TV in the late seventies).  But now thanks to DVD and fans of Adamson’s work, the original film is now out and proves to be the best of the three versions.

The plot concerns a botched jewel robbery where the loot ends up in the back of a contractor’s truck.  The group sends loose cannon Roy Morton (he killed one of the gang when the man got wounded by a security guard) to the contractor’s office to get his home address (the name was on the truck), where he kills the secretary.  Later they invade the contractor’s home, where Morton beats him up and then they hold him hostage, when they can’t find the jewels they figure they must be with the guy’s nightclub singer wife.  Morton heads over to the nightclub, but  she’s left town for a new gig.  Picking up a regular at the bar, Morton learns where the singer is heading and then kills his pickup when she won’t sleep with him.

While Morton heads for Lake Taho, where he kidnaps the singer and her daughter, the husband is rescued by his cop brother in law, who guns down the rest of the gang, and then they head for Lake Taho and the rescue.  When Morton can’t find the jewels, he tries to rape the singer but is stopped by by his mute sidekick.  Morton kills the man and then chases the singer and her daughter up into the mountains where he stalks and taunts them.  Morton discovers the jewels hidden in the daughter’s doll right before he is shot by the arriving cop and falls off a cliff to his death.

Okay, maybe not a great film, but it is a decent thriller and probably the best made of Adamson’s work, with a simple plot that is easy to follow, and some well crafted scarey moments. I am surprised that while Ray Dennis Steckler and Coleman Francis were able to get their less coherent work released, this better made product had to be inserted into a more jumbled concoction to see the light of day.  Psycho a Go-Go should have been a drive in staple , if for nothing more than Roy Morton’s performance, he is absolutely terrifying.

I have to give a little warning on this next one, it is not for everyone,and some may find it a disturbing picture that will leave the viewer unsettled for days after, while others may find it nothing more than ridiculous trash, but that is usual with the works of Jesus Franco.  The film I’m highlighting this week is She Killed in Ecstasy.

The movie stars Soledad Miranda as a devoted housewife to a research scientist who gets in hot water with the medical community for using human embryos in his genetic research (and this 1971) as way to cure all birth defects. The medical board that original funded him denounce him to the world, labeling him a monster and a criminal, destroy his lab and make it impossible for him to get any kind of work.  Distraught and broken, the scientist makes love to his wife one last time and then kills himself.

With her happy life and true love taken from her, she decides to exact revenge by seducing each member of the board, man and woman, and killing them in the middle of sex (just to add insult to injury I guess…or something).  After doing this, and with the police closing in, she loads her husband’s body into their car, she had been keeping it on their bed and talking to it after each murder (yeah think about that  one for a minute), and drives off a cliff so they can be reunited forever.

A short film, barely 75 minutes in length, it manages to pack in a graphic suicide, four graphic murders and copious amounts of nudity, but considering most it is shown during the murders it is the most unerotic nudity ever put on film.  Two stand out murders include a POV smothering committed with an inflatable transparent pillow so that Miranda can watch it, and a torture sequence featuring director Franco himself as the victim that must have been the inspiration for Eli Roth’s entire career.

As I said, it is not for everyone, but if you are interested in Franco’s work outside of his Christopher Lee vehicles, this is as good a one to start with as any because despite all of the kinky violence, it features a truly haunting performance by Miranda.