Sunday, November 24, 2019

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: BLUE DEMON (1965) ***


Blue Demon makes his second screen appearance and has his first starring role in this fun Mexican monster movie.  A mad scientist (Mario Orea) is on the loose turning people into werewolves via injection.  Professor Carral (Jaime Fernandez) decrees he must be stopped and turns to the great luchador, Blue Demon for help.

What makes the monster scenes so much fun is that they blatantly rip off the old Universal monster movies.  The transformation scenes are a lot like The Wolf Man and the professor is clearly modeled on Edward Van Sloan’s Van Helsing in Tod Browning’s Dracula.  The filmmakers probably wanted their werewolf to resemble the Universal pictures, but it winds up looking more like the one in the 1956 flick, The Werewolf. 

Things kick off immediately with a great werewolf attack.  What I liked about the werewolves in this movie is that they revert back to human form not when they are shot by a silver bullet, but when Blue Demon body slams them.  That right there tells you it’s going to be a better than average werewolf flick.

The film contains two wrestling scenes.  The first one is pretty ordinary.  In fact, the camera is stationary for much of the time.  The second match is great though.  It’s here when the mad scientist dopes Blue Demon’s opponent with wolf juice and he turns into a werewolf right in the middle of the match, causing pandemonium in the arena!  

So what if things get a little dull whenever Blue Demon isn’t on screen?  That kind of goes with the territory when it comes to these things.  Besides, it’s hard to hate any movie that combines Mexican wrestling, werewolves, mad scientists, a haunted castle (that looks like it came right out of the bottom of a fishbowl), and a mob of angry torch-wielding villagers.  All I know is that when Blue Demon is body slamming lycanthropes, it’s damned good times.

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