BARON BRAKOLA (1967) ** ½

The vampire Baron Brakola (Fernando Oses) rises from the grave searching for the reincarnation of his lost love Rebeca (Susana Robles).  Naturally, El Santo handily defeats the Baron.  Afterwards, El Santo’s professor friend tells him about the Baron’s past where centuries ago, he vied for the affections of the beautiful Rebeca with El Santo’s ancestor, The Silver-Masked Caballero.  

Seeing El Santo (though it might’ve been another actor entirely) wearing a Zorro-inspired outfit in the flashback scenes is enough to make this one memorable.  The sword fight scenes are kind of cool, although I much prefer the Mexican wrestling to the swordplay if I’m being perfectly honest.  I’m more about turnbuckles than swashbuckles, you know what I mean?  Generally, this wouldn’t have been so bad if the flashback didn’t take up half the dang running time.

Meanwhile, back in the present, Brakola returns and disguises himself as El Santo’s next opponent.  He almost bites El Santo in the ring, but luckily, the professor is there to scare him off with a cross.  El Santo then follows Brakola back to his mansion for the final showdown.

The cool opening scene set in a decrepit mansion where the undead Baron rises from his crypt sets the mood nicely.  It almost looks like they reused the set from Santo vs. the Vampire Women.  There’s even the same painting of Rebeca hanging on the wall! 

In addition to his big match with the Baron, El Santo’s other wrestling scene is a real slobberknocker.  It’s a tag team match where the fists fly furiously, and the body slams occur at a steady clip.  El Santo also has a great brawl with the Baron in an empty auditorium as the vampiric villain frantically trades lefts and rights with our masked hero.  There’s even a brawl during the flashback that goes on for quite some time.  (We get an obligatory dance number during the flashback too.)

There’s a good amount of action here, even if the fights that occur outside of the ring get a bit repetitive.  That’s mostly because El Santo is always battling Brakola.  Maybe if he had an army of henchmen for El Santo to go up against, it would’ve added some variety.  Still, for all its faults (the draggy middle section being chief among them), Baron Brakola contains all the rubber bats, lap-dissolve transformation scenes, cobwebbed crypts, and neck biting you’d expect from a Mexican vampire movie, and for that, I can’t completely write it off.  

AKA:  Santo vs. Baron Brakola.