... aka: Santo y Blue Demon Contra Drácula y el Hombre Lobo
Directed by:
Miguel M. Delgado
"Never trust a hideous monster from hell!"
Words to live by.
It's been seven sun eclipses and seven moon eclipses since monster hunter / alchemist Cristaldi put Count Dracula and the werewolf to rest and, since that whole eclipse business has now passed, the famed bloodsucker and his equally esteemed hairy pal are good for another resurrection and terror spree. Their scar-faced hunchback disciple Eric ([Alfredo] Wally Barrón) knows this and, using the Book of Kabbalah, pleads to Satan for their return. However, he first needs the blood of one of Cristaldi's descendants to complete the ritual. Soon after, the elderly Professor Luis Cristaldi (Jorge Mondragón) receives an anonymous letter threatening him with death and warning him that he and the rest of his family will soon have to pay back their debt. The letter brings to mind a passage in a 400-year-old book passed down from generation to generation in the professor's family. It tells of an unholy alliance between Dracula and the werewolf, who'd joined forces centuries earlier in order to "dominate humanity" along with their army of "beast men." Now, the professor, his daughter Laura (María Eugenia San Martín) and his nieces; teenager Lina (Nubia Martí) and the youngest, little Rosita (Lissy Fields), may all be in peril. The book also points out that the fiends won't be content with just killing them, but instead want to turn them all into zombie slaves.
You may be asking how Santo factors into all of this. Well, he just so happens to have dated into this family. No, silly, he's not dating the professor's daughter, Laura. Santo is a star after all, so he's instead hooked up with the teenage niece! Doing a little quick research, that pairs the 55 or 56-year-old "Saint" up with the 18 or 19-year-old Martí; a whopping age difference of 37 years! Santo also happens to be 18 years older than the actress playing the "middle-aged" daughter, who still looks just fine but is portrayed like some spinster who sits around knitting and bemoaning her lost youth and looks all the time.
Eric, who's descended from Transylvanians, chloroforms and kidnaps the professor, drags him back to his crypt hideout and then explains his plans. Already entrenched in the criminal underworld, Eric's basically hoping to get rich by having Dracula reveal the whereabouts of some gold. The professor warns there may be consequences to his actions but Eric proceeds with the ceremony, anyway. He hangs the professor upside down over the opened stone graves, cuts his throat and has him bleed all over the skeletal remains, which start smoking and regenerate. The debonair and well-dressed Dracula is played by Aldo Monti (who'd already played the count once before in SANTO IN THE TREASURE OF DRACULA), while the Werewolf, wearing a gold lamé pirate shirt and given the horrifying name Rufus Rex, is played by Agustín Martínez Solares of NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES fame.
The monsters quickly get to work kidnapping people and transforming them into vampires and werewolves. After all, if you plan on taking over the world, you're gonna need a little help, right? Due to the disappearance of the professor and others in the area, the police ask for Santo's help. He immediately gets into contact with Blue Demon, who's more than glad to assist his pal. Meanwhile, Rufus Rex transforms back into his handsome human form, gets cleaned up and buys some new duds in hopes of trying to seduce Laura. He makes a great first impression saving her during a (staged) attempted kidnapping using a couple of members of a bald mob bosses goon squad, but soon his true motives are revealed.
Colorful, breezy and (often intentionally!) humorous, this fun Santo horror adventures thankfully tosses out the wall-to-wall repetitive fight scene format of some of the other entries for a more straightforward Gothic horror story. With only small amounts of blood and no sexual content, this is something that can be enjoyed by kids of all ages. Well, granted the kids in question have a thing for schlock! We get lots of great turtlenecks, miniskirts, suits and over-sized sweaters in every color imaginable, rubber bats on strings, spear-wielding werewolves, giant telephones, vampire ladies in sheer red nightgowns, sacred daggers, secret passageways, precursors to Apple watches, zombies, flame-shooting golden bat heads and lots more. Our heroes have to fight a bunch of werewolves during the big finale, which is set around a giant spike-filled pit used to dispose of interlopers and traitors.
This is my tenth Santo film review so we're hitting a little milestone here at BPOH. Now just, er, eh, about 30 more to go until I finally have the legendary Mexican star's horror-ography under wraps! As per usual, there are several lengthy grappling matches squeezed in to please the wrestle-hungry Mexican public, with Santo (also one of the producers) squaring off against Angel Blanco, Blue facing Renato the Hippie (?) and Santo and Blue in a tag team match against Angel and Renato.
Unlike most other Santo offerings, this was given a U.S. VHS release by Million Dollar Video Corp. way back in 1987. A beautifully restored print with a brand new English dub is now being distributed by VCI Entertainment and Peter Hamilton Films.
★★1/2
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