Santo
vs. The Vampire Women (Santo contra las mujeres vampire)
1962
Director- Alfonso Corona Blake
Cast- Santo, Lorena Velázquez, María Duval, Ofelia Montesco, Jaime Fernández,
Augusto Benedico, Xavier Loyá, Fernando Osés, Guillermo Hernández, Nathanael León
From Mexico
If
you’re not familiar with the Mexican sensation that is Santo, I’m not sure if
there is a cultural equivalent. Imagine Hulk Hogan, Wyatt Earp, and Superman
all rolled into one and that might come close. Mexican luchadore wrestler, El
Santo (The Saint). starred in over 50
films where he fought Martians, witches, mummies, martial artists and every
other nefarious thing that you can imagine. In this installment, maybe the best
known outside of Mexico, he fights a coven of vampire women.
The
first thing that you need to do in order to enjoy this movie is to toss out
your ideas about what a horror movie SHOULD be. Mexican horror takes
recognizable elements from European and Hollywood movies but also filters it
through its own unique culture, kind of like how The Day of the Dead is an
obvious analog to the Anglo-Saxon Halloween but has unique elements that set it
apart.
The
beginning of the film focuses on a coven of vampire women, seeking a successor
for their queen. Tundra (Ofelia Montesco) is the high priestess of the coven. She
awakes her sisters and their three male servants. The vampire women, before
they get blood are old, desiccated hags. After getting their nourishment they
turn in to toga clad beauties, each one glamorous and sexy. Their servants are
muscular men wearing what looks like wrestling tights with black capes. Even
though they have the typical vampire powers (hypnotism, turn into a bat etc.)
they get their victims by running up behind them and giving them a blow to the
back of the head like they’re getting mugged for their wallet!
After
securing nourishment, they revive their queen, Zorina ( real life Miss Mexico, Lorena
Velázquez who couldn’t look more glamorous if she tried). The coven serves
Satan and Zorina has a limited time on the Earth before she must go back to the
dark world from which she came (there is a really cool effect, where we never
actually see the Devil, we only see his shadow on the wall). Before her time is
up she must find a successor to be queen of the coven. They have their eye on
Diana (María Duval) a young woman who prophecy states should be their queen.
She even has a birth mark on her shoulder that looks like a bat!
Diana’s
father is a loremaster and knows the doom that awaits his daughter, so he
contacts Santo to aid the police in protecting his daughter on her 21st
birthday (the days she is meant to ascend to the vampire throne). The vampire
coven tries to stop Santo, including a scene where one of them fights him in
the ring, a scene which was homaged in the 2019 Hellboy film. They finally succeed in kidnapping Diana and Santo
must track them down and face the coven in their lair.
The
beginning of the film is as creepy as anything Unviersal put out in the 40s and
if you didn’t know what you were watching you’d think it was a straight up
horror film. The movie gets silly at times. I don’t think it was meant to make
sense as much as it was supposed to just be fun. Part horror, part live action
comic book, part wrestling, Santo vs. The Vampire Women offers an interesting,
sometimes bizarre, mixture of genres and imagery.
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