Other yummy Mexican treats:
Directed by Rafael Romero Marchent
Written by José Luis Navarro, Rafael Romero Marchent
Starring Santo, Carlos Romero Marchent, Jorge Rigaud
Unrated • 1973 • 95 minutes
by Dr. Kobb
Olé! It’s my first Santo-movie viewing! Dunno what the rest are like, but this was like a big buncha wrestling scenes wrapped around a sorta crime/spy/mad-doctor thriller.
I fear that my comprehension of just what-all was afoot may’ve been hindered by my inebriation, and the movie’s bad dubbing and butchered editing.
The short-story here is that a master-criminal has sprayed formic acid on a priceless art masterpiece, while the painting was en route to the Spanish National Museum of Art. Santo is contacted by Interpol to follow the painting to Spain, where he is already planning to go for a World Title wrestling bout.
It’s amusing to see this silver-masked guy in a business suit walking through the airport, surrounded by camera-happy press and reporters. There’s no way in hell this guy’s going undercover on this (or any) assignment.
He meets a guy named Paul who is sent to help him with his investigation. Santo doubts Paul’s abilities, and then a split-second later, the hotel-room they occupy is swarming with bad-guys for an extended, ass-kicking fight-scene.
I should also note that thus far in the movie, I’ve already neglected to mention a wrestling match. There are entertaining choice scenes from Santo-matches sandwiching the plot throughout the movie.
So, Santo goes and wins the title match from the Spanish wrestling champ.
During this interlude and others, we are familiarized with the head baddies. One’s a filthy rich collector/artist/chemist (?) who looks alarmingly like Barnaby Jones’ evil twin, and another’s a blind-acting doctor (he did the spy-like break-in early on in the movie to ruin vandalize the painting). They live in a castle in Spain, and with their clout, actually have the painting sent there for safekeeping.
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Santo and Paul go to check in on the painting’s safety, and are run off the road for a crazy downhill outta control auto-stunt. This doesn’t faze Santo in the least, and they arrive at the castle and meet our bad guys. The collector is fond of painting nude women, and has a few staying there as paid guests. There’re rumors of girls leaving/disappearing mysteriously, and the good-guys enlist one of the girls to spy for them at the castle.
I think about here, there’s yet another wrestling match.
Turns out, through some bizarro plot-invention, the baddies need women to inject with a chemical that forms a tumor, which in turn supplies the ingredient for the collector’s special paint (?!?). They have an acid-bath for the women they no longer need.
Anyway, all of this is leading to a crazy great climax down in the depths of the castle. The baddies have booby-trapped the place with every cool secret-agent cliché you can think of, and then there’s a speed-boat chase-scene (with a helicopter thrown in for added measure) to finish things out.
All-in-all, a decent drunk-watch. The catacomb/secret-lab scenes were great, and there’s gobs of fighting and stunts to round things out.
Text © 2005 - 2008 by Kobb Labs.
All other material © 2006 - 2008 by El Topo Entertainment