Santo Vs. The Vampire Women (Mexico 1961)

Rating: **
Alternate Titles: "Samson Vs. The Vampire Women," "El Santo Contra Las Mujeres Vampiros"
Cast: Santo

Probably the best of the Santo movies, this one has a far more coherent plot and higher production values than the other Mexican wrestling movies and clips that I've seen. Not like that's saying much, though. Dubbed in English, legendary Mexican wrestler Santo has been ridiculously renamed "Samson," and he's been hired by a scientist to protect his daughter from a group of vampire women who want to do nasty things to her. Santo is always showing up late due to the lengthy wrestling matches that he's involved in, including a fight with a karate chopping vampire who turns into a werewolf when he's unmasked! Laughably bizarre. Other great gems include the professor trying to explain the corpse-like vampire women hanging outside of his daughter's window as "hallucinations from over-anxiety" or "they were probably just butterflies." The second in command vampire chick is pretty hot, but the rest of the vampire stuff in the movie is just downright silly. But taken in the context of a masked wrestler fighting them off and saving the world from the forces of evil, it doesn't seem so bad. There are far worse ways to spend an evening.