Detective Fernando (Fernando Casanova) disguises himself as a cowboy to track down his journalist girlfriend Virginia (Ana Berthe Lepe) who is working undercover as a saloon girl to get the goods on the notorious Canales (Luis Aceves Castaneda, who also played the human villain in the Aztec Mummy series). Fernando’s partner is none other than El Santo, and whenever he gets in a jam, he can call the Silver Masked Man on his Dick Tracy-style watch and he arrives just in the nick of time to save the day.
Lepe makes for a fine leading lady. She gets a terrific introduction scene where director Federico (Santo in the Hotel of Death) Curiel’s camera follows her gyrating rump across the cantina dancefloor. Another great moment comes when the leering Castaneda makes her show off her legs against her will. Neither of these scenes are what we would call politically correct nowadays (especially the part where Casanova takes her over his knee and spanks her while El Santo is like, “Oh, whatever”), but she always leaves a memorable impression whenever she is on screen.
Part western, part Lucha Libre movie, and boasting a couple of musical numbers (including a mariachi number and a hilariously overly melodramatic love song), Santo vs. the Diabolical Brain has a little something for everybody. As with many early El Santo pictures, he often feels like a supporting player in his own movie. While this does prevent it from being one of his best, it remains an entertaining entry, despite the long El Santo-less stretches. He does get one wrestling match against an opponent named “Frankenstein”, and while it is a tad brief, it’s a well put together sequence with some strong camerawork and tight editing.
It helps that the fight scenes that take place outside the squared circle are more exciting than usual. We get a great nightclub brawl where even the knife throwing act gets involved in the fracas. There’s also a fun western-style barroom brawl later in the flick, and the scene where El Santo teams up with Casanova to lay the smackdown on some corrupt cowboys is slam-bang fun. I think my favorite fight sequence though was when El Santo came charging in on horseback like The Lone Ranger to save Casanova’s bacon and soon starts tossing numerous henchmen off a steep cliff, plummeting to their death.
The climax is equally exciting as El Santo prevents the bad guy’s plane from taking off WITH HIS BARE HANDS. In nearly all the other El Santo movies, he’s just as strong as normally he is in real life. I particularly enjoyed seeing this superhuman feat of strength from our hero and it makes me wish he did Superman shit like this more often.
AKA: Santo and the Diabolical Brain.
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