LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE INCREDIBLE PROFESSOR ZOVEK (1972) ** ½

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on March 25th, 2021)

Zovek was basically Mexico’s answer to Harry Houdini.  Throughout his career, he performed incredible escapes and feats of astonishing strength and agility.  He died way too young at the age of thirty-one while performing a helicopter stunt.  This was his first and only solo starring vehicle. (He starred in Invasion of the Dead with Blue Demon the next year, which proved to be his second and final film.)  He’s kind of fun to watch too.  Sometimes he’s dressed like Tonto from The Lone Ranger.  Other times he’s gussied up like a caped superhero. 

Zovek stars as himself.  He gets a premonition of a plane crash and sends his chauffeur and girlfriend to investigate.  While Zovek is busy performing his act in a dinner theater, they are kidnapped by the bad guy.  (I guess the supposedly psychic Zovek didn’t see that one coming.)  It’s then up to Zovek to rescue them before the mad doctor performs a fiendish experiment on them.

The Incredible Professor Zovek is really slow to start.  It begins with long scenes of him yelling at people and hypnotizing women, which kind of plod on and on.  The version I saw didn’t have subtitles, so I had no clue what was going on in these scenes if I am to be completely honest.  When we finally meet the villain, things pick up considerably.  It doesn’t hurt that his secret lair comes complete with a giant hypno-wheel, an open BBQ pit, and a torture dungeon filled with caged Dr. Moreau-style animal men. 

I also dug Zovek’s nightclub act.  He gets brought out on stage and is tied and chained up by guys in Lucha Libre masks while sexy women wearing bikinis and executioner hoods kiss him on the cheek before dropping him into a tank of water.  It’s not exactly great, but after watching so many wrestling scenes in Mexican horror movies, it makes for a nice change of pace. 

The fight scenes are OK, but they aren’t up to director Rene (Night of the Bloody Apes) Cardona’s usual standards.  The close-ups of the faces of the caged monsters leering from their prison bars are effective though.  The scenes of the animal men chowing down on bones is pretty cool, and the brain surgery sequence (complete with an awesome shot of a woman’s pulsating brain) is the highlight. 

So, if you can get past the talky first act, you will be treated to some decent WTF Mexican Cinema.  The last reel where Zovek has a melee with a mafia of midget monsters and duels to the death with a deranged dog man… well…  That’s the sort of shit I live for when I watch these movies.