Santo vs. the Zombies (1962)
Masked luchador "Santo" fights against an evil doctor and his zombie army.
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For those that are unfamiliar with Santo and his films, he was a Mexican wrestler of tremendous popularity that starred in countless of movies starting in the late 1950’s up to the early 1980’s. He’s considered one of the greatest Mexican luchador that became a folk hero and symbol of justice to the Mexican people thanks to the films and comic books.

Santo contra los zombies was his third film but the first one in a starring role. His first two films, Cerebros del Mal and Hombres Infernales, he was a sidekick to somebody else.

This film establishes some of the common elements that will be consistent throughout his films, Santo moonlighting as a superhero, fighting evil and defending the innocent. There…

Horror Hunt #36 (June 2021)

22. Foreign language film

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Mexican folk hero El Santo returns and this time he has to fight off some mean old zombies who are being controlled by some evil fellow wearing a black sack over his head. It all has a distinct comic-book feel to it.

So basically I skipped the second Santo film, Santo vs. the Infernal Men, and jumped straight to this third part in the series. That was mostly because it seemed damned near impossible to find a copy of the second film with English subtitles included, and with how dialogue-heavy these films are the subs are necessary unless you understand Spanish. Seems like I made a good call regardless of…

Santo's third movie and one of the best I've seen so far. Just like some of the other Santo films, this sports that very charming, old-fashioned aesthetic in which you can really see the influence of older movie serials. Santo is more a crime-fighting vigilante than famous luchador in this, with his own secret lab and the tendency to mysteriously appear, beat up the bad guys, then disappear before anyone really has time to speak to him. I guess an imperfect but suitable comparison for early Santo and later Santo might be with the Batman of '39 through the early 40's with the Batman of the 60's tv show. There are some regular wrestling match scenes, though, some of which…

After two crime movies shot in Cuba in which he played supporting roles, El Santo made this entertaining monster movie in Mexico. As you may have guessed from the title, the masked wrestling hero battles zombies! Directed by Benito Alazraki, the fight scenes are not very good, however, and at least four times, a gunman fires all his shots, raises his empty gun to throw it, and is pummeled unconscious with his arm in the air.

A mysterious hooded madman is reviving corpses electronically and using the zombies to rob a jewelry store. Seems like the military would pay a lot more for that technology than you could make robbing stores, but what’s the fun in that? The police ask…