OPERATION 67 (1967) *** ½

I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me, but by the looks of things, Operation 67 is El Santo’s biggest budgeted movie of all time.  In most of his films, when he plays secret agent, it often looks like a poor man’s James Bond.  This is about as close to the look and scope of the official 007 series as you can get for a Mexican wrestling flick.  It would put many of the American and Italian Bond rip-offs of the era to shame.  

The opening is a little longwinded, but it’s a surprisingly strong and semi-plausible set-up (for a Bond knockoff).  The head of an evil international crime syndicate tasks his right-hand woman (the sultry Elizabeth Campbell) with an ingenious plan:  First, they swap out printing plates from the Mint with counterfeit ones.  Then, they print a mess of money, invest it, and watch it grow.  They let the Mint keep printing money, before eventually revealing that they’ve been printing counterfeits the whole time, thereby simultaneously crashing the economy, and increasing the organization’s assets exponentially.  Interpol calls in El Santo and his partner, Jorge Rivero to stop the insidious plot.  

Directors Rene Cardona Sr. and Rene Cardona Jr. (who would go on to direct the sequel, The Treasure of Montezuma the following year) do a good job at aping the look of the Bond series.  Naturally, since this contains Mexican wrestling, it’s automatically better than about half the legitimate Bond flicks.  The action is much bigger than your typical El Santo adventure.  The sequence where Rivero is chased in his sportscar by an airplane equipped with machine guns is first rate.  He also handles himself nicely during a lengthy and brutal hotel room fight against an assassin brandishing a cane that doubles as a sword.  Speaking of gadgets, Rivero uses a cigarette that acts as a motion detector and of course, El Santo gets to drive around in a car loaded with weapons (like a flamethrower).  Another cool gadget is a literal shotgun microphone.  I love it.

Even the usual elements of an El Santo movie are played up to cartoonish heights.  Take for instance his crime lab.  No longer is he content with your basic sub-Batcave set-up.  Now, El Santo has an enormous missile silo lair that would be worthy of a Bond villain.  

I also enjoyed the little touches that you only get from an El Santo movie.  Like when El Santo and Jorge first get debriefed on their mission.  What do they do?  Do they spring into action?  Hell, no!  Jorge goes to watch a stripper and El Santo heads straight to the wrestling auditorium for a match!  You’ve got to love it.  The second wrestling match is cut short for an ingenious reason:  Campbell has the lighting fixtures above the ring cut and the lights come crashing down.  Luckily, El Santo jumps out of the way in the nick of time.  Sure, you’ve seen plenty of luchador movies before, but have you seen one that rips off Thunderball AND The Phantom of the Opera?  I don’t think so.  

It should also be noted that while this isn’t one of the “hot” versions of an El Santo movie (versions that added in nudity for foreign markets), the Asian-inspired striptease sequence does feature a fair amount of nudity, which is certainly noteworthy.