STEEL FRONTIER (1995) ** ½

Joe Lara stars as a harmonica-playing cowboy who rides across the post-apocalyptic wasteland getting into adventures.  Brion James is the evil leader of “The Death Riders”.  Along with his motorcycle-riding cronies, he goes around the wasteland, toppling small town governments and executing anyone who doesn’t join his ranks.  Lara doesn’t take kindly to that, and he infiltrates James’ ranks in order to free the town of his iron fist.  

Steel Frontier is an agreeable mix of post-apocalypse action and Spaghetti Western.  It gets off to a good start with Lara finding a guy with his legs cut off on the side of the road begging to be put out of his misery.  From there, it just sort of hops from one post-apocalyptic cliché to the other.  It’s not great or anything, but it’s a decent enough flick if you like these kinds of genre mash-ups.  The action is a bit better than you’d expect too as Lara’s motorcycle has more gadgets and weapons than James Bond’s car.  Since it’s a PM movie, lots of stuff blows up, so there’s that.  

There was no reason this had to be one-hundred-and-one minutes though.  It definitely could’ve used some tightening up in the second act, that’s for sure.  Still, there are little bits of amusement to be had.  I liked the way Lara awkwardly secured his hat to his motorcycle just before a big chase scene so it would match the second unit footage of his hatless stunt double.  I also thought it was funny that after about twenty minutes, James ups and decides that he doesn’t like the name Death Riders anymore, so he changes his faction’s name to “The United Regime”.  I guess he tested the name with focus groups who decided The United Regime sounded a little less threatening.  

The cast is fairly decent.  Lara is an OK hero and James is an ideal villain (although he basically disappears for the entire second act).  Bo Svenson has some good moments as his right-hand man who has had enough of all the killing and wants to settle down.  Kane Hodder and Adolfo “Shabba-Doo” Quiones have small roles too, but they aren’t given a whole lot to do.   

SHE-WOLVES OF THE RING (1965) ** ½

Lorena Velazquez and Elizabeth Campbell return as Loreta Venus and Golden Rubi in this third installment of the Wrestling Women franchise from director Rene Cardona.  This time out, a nasty faction of warring wrassling babes challenge the ladies to a wrestling tournament.  Naturally, these women are up to no good and will stoop to any low in order to win… including kidnapping Rubi to make Loreta to throw her fight!  

I guess the biggest problem with She-Wolves of the Ring is de-escalation.  The first two movies saw the Wrestling Women battling a mad doctor and an Aztec Mummy respectively.  In this one they just fight… other wrestling women?  It certainly seems like a step down if you ask me.  If this was the first film in the franchise, I might not have felt the same way.  However, without any fantastic content to speak of, the flick feels a little lacking.  Luckily, the series eventually went back to doing what it did best by having the Wrestling Women fight Panther Women and Killer Robots in subsequent installments.

The good news is the series’ war of the sexes aspect still works.  Not only does Elizabeth Campbell still have her short and nerdy boyfriend; there’s another Wrestling Woman who doesn’t take shit from her husband and she routinely slaps, body slams, and wrestles him to the ground whenever he gets out of line.  We know nowadays that domestic abuse in any form is no laughing matter, but these scenes are still pretty funny, and I’m sure it had them rolling in the aisles back in ’65.

Since the plot revolves around a wrestling tournament, that means there’s a lot of wrestling this time around, so that’s a plus.  In addition to the EIGHT matches (the final match is rather rousing), there are lots of scenes of the women practicing wrestling in their spare time.  I liked these moments because it showed the women’s work ethic.  You don’t become a Wrestling Woman overnight.  It takes practice.  

Even though She-Wolves of the Ring is the least of the series, it remains thoroughly watchable thanks to the presence of the two leads.  Unfortunately, Velazquez is saddled with a terrible wig in this one, but that’s only so her hair will match her obvious stunt double during the wrestling matches.  Campbell gets to vamp it up for all she’s worth and even manages to steal a few scenes this time out.  Fans of Velazquez and Campbell (and Mexican wrestling in general) will find something to enjoy, but fans of their horror-tinged efforts will likely be disappointed.

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. 

SUICIDE MISSION (1973) **

Suicide Mission is another one of those El Santo adventures that finds everyone's favorite Mexican wrestler doubling as an agent of Interpol.  This time, he’s after some Nazis who have been hiding out after the war.  The ringleader kidnaps a plastic surgeon and forces him to give him a new face so he can go out and conquer the world.  It’s then up to El Santo to rescue the doctor and stop the Nazis.

It’s only seventy-five minutes, but Suicide Mission sometimes feels much longer.  The boring plot doesn’t do it any favors either and the talky set-up hobbles the pacing right out of the gate.  Stay with it though, because things improve somewhat in the second half, if only for the scenes where El Santo is jumped by random henchmen every ten minutes or so.  

Even when the movie looks like it’s going to turn itself around, it still manages to piss away its momentum.  Every time it introduces an interesting concept (like El Santo fighting a shark), it winds up feeling rushed and/or poorly executed.  Take the villain’s lair for instance.  He surrounds himself with an all-girl army of soldiers who spend their days practicing Kung Fu and… uh… volleyball.  The lethal ladies’ scenes look promising enough, but there is ultimately very little payoff.

The cheap production values are good for a laugh.  Some of the driving scenes are phony looking and the editing is often atrocious.  The scene where Lorena Velazquez watches El Santo wrestling is particularly odd.  She is seen sitting on some steps with some people cheering while shots of El Santo wrestling are hastily edited in.  The wrestling footage doesn’t match at all as it looks noticeably older with the print suffering from a lot of wear and tear.  To make things seem even more out of place, the spectators behind Velazquez are the same goons who just attacked her and El Santo in the very last scene!  It’s almost like they finished the movie and realized there wasn’t a wrestling scene in there, so they just stuck one right in the middle without much care or thought.  

On the plus side, the musical numbers are a lot of fun.  There’s a great song by a bubbly, busty babe in a spangled bikini named Pola Sanders who jiggles with gusto.  Velazquez also gets an energetic number, even though her wild gyrating sometimes seems out of step with the mellow song she’s performing.  While Suicide Mission isn’t El Santo’s worst movie, you know you’re in trouble when the songs are the best part.  (The surgeon’s final F-U to the head Nazi is pretty clever though.)  

AKA:  Mission Impossible.  

CHANOC AND THE SON OF SANTO VS. THE KILLER VAMPIRES (1983) * ½

Chanoc and the Son of Santo vs. the Killer Vampires begins in fun fashion with the origin of the Son of Santo.  El Santo (in his final film appearance) throws a smoke bomb at a guy wearing oversized sunglasses and a big porn ‘stache and when the smoke clears, he’s transformed into the Son of Santo!  If you tuned in just to see El Santo, turn it off now because he disappears as soon as the opening credits begin.  I’m sure you can probably guess it’s all downhill from there.

The filmmakers must’ve thought the Son of Santo wasn’t a big enough name yet, so they dragged Chanoc into all this.  Chanoc isn’t as famous stateside as his co-star, the Son of Santo.  He’s a fisherman/adventurer who was star of a popular comic strip in Mexico.  In 1967, the first Chanoc movie was released, followed by several sequels, usually with a revolving door of actors playing the title character.  This was my first Chanoc movie, and based on what I’ve seen here, I’m not exactly chomping at the bit to see another one.  

While relaxing in his boat, the Son of Santo notices Chanoc (Nelson Velazquez) and his sidekick Tzekub (Arturo Cobo) being tossed overboard by some nefarious evildoers.  He rescues them and they become fast friends.  Chanoc reveals the men were actually jewel thieves and the Son of Santo agrees to help capture them.  Oh, and those “Killer Vampires” the title refers to?  They’re just the bad guys wearing black robes and Halloween masks who try to scare people away from their hideout.  Real Scooby-Doo shit.

I think there was a conscious effort on the Son of Santo’s part to differentiate his screen presence from his father’s.  Unlike El Santo, his offspring is often seen out of his costume, but with his face still obscured by his sunglasses and cartoonish mustache.  Whenever there is danger, he puts on his wrestling mask and saves the day.  This Superman-type gimmick with the alter ego was quickly scrapped, and the Son of Santo resorted to being just another El Santo clone in his next movie, The Son of Santo in the Lawless Border.

One of the big problems is that both Chanoc and the Son of Santo have annoying comic relief sidekicks.  One of these guys would’ve sufficed.  Having two seems like overkill, especially when they are more annoying than funny.  The Son of Santo’s sidekick, Carlitos (Carlos Suarez) was also El Santo’s sidekick in Santo vs. the Television Killer, which at least helps give SOME semblance of continuity between this and the original El Santo series.    

Their antics become downright excruciating during the scene where they don the Son of Santo and Chanoc’s wrestling masks and decide to wrestle in their place, leading to a lame, fast-motion, comic relief tag-team match.  Luckily, the real Son of Santo and Chanoc (who wears a Blue Demon mask) show up for the rematch.  The fights that occur outside the ring are more Kung Fu-inspired than the traditional Lucha Libre flick.  While that helps give the Son of Santo his own identity, they aren’t exactly well-executed.  

It doesn’t help that there’s a lot of padding.  There are two nightclub performances, a comic relief dance sequence, and Chanoc even belts out three love songs (two while backed by a mariachi band, and one while on a double date with the Son of Santo).  This, coupled with the lack of wrestling, not to mention the lack of El Santo, makes Chanoc and the Son of El Santo vs. the Killer Vampires one of the worst El Santo flicks of all time.

THE TREASURE OF MONTEZUMA (1968) ***

The Treasure of Montezuma is a direct sequel to Operation ’67.  This time out, an international crime ring is out to steal the titular treasure.  It’s up to secret agents/wrestlers El Santo and Jorge (Werewolf) Rivero to bring them to justice.  

Directed by the legendary father/son team of Mexican cinema, Rene Cardona and Rene Cardona, Jr., The Treasure of Montezuma is yet another El Santo flick that was riding on the coattails of the success of the James Bond films.  There’s a Bond-style opening credits sequence, silly gadgets (like a freezing gun, exploding earrings, and lapel pins that double as cameras), and sexy women aplenty.  (Including a set of twins!)  While it never quite kicks into fourth gear, it’s consistently entertaining throughout.

Rivero looks like he’s having fun as El Santo’s womanizing partner, and you can’t blame him for having fun when the woman he’s womanizing is the always alluring Maura (The Batwoman) Monti (who would’ve made an amazing Bond girl at the time if given the opportunity).  He brings a different energy to the role than say, Blue Demon would’ve as he makes for a solid romantic lead.  (He kinda reminded me of Erik Estrada at times.)  Rivero also does a credible job in the wrestling ring as his tag-team match with El Santo is one of the highlights.  (El Santo also gets a solo match against an opponent known as “The Bear” later in the picture.)  

The rest of the action is fairly strong.  It helps that El Santo seems to get into fisticuffs with random henchman at the end of nearly every reel change, so at least the pacing is steady.  One memorable tussle occurs at a bullfight where El Santo tosses a goon into the bull pen, and he is promptly gored by a charging bull.  There’s also a big (well, bigger than usual) action set piece involving exploding airplanes and boats, although the ensuing climax isn’t quite as satisfying.  

Overall, The Treasure of Montezuma isn’t as out-and-out nutty as some of El Santo’s best films, but it should fit the bill for fans of both low budget Bond knockoffs and Mexican wrestling cinema.  

THE DIABOLICAL AXE (1965) ***

The Diabolical Axe hits the ground running with a great opening scene in which a funeral procession lays to rest the body of everyone’s favorite Mexican wrestler, El Santo!  Luckily for his fans, we learn from the date on the tombstone that it’s 1603, so it was really the body of his ancestor.  We then fast-forward to the present where a black-masked executioner named Black Hood (Fernando Oses) attacks El Santo in the ring mid-wrestling match and tries to chop him up with a big axe.  Thanks to a silly-looking machine, El Santo is able to visit the past and learn how his family’s feud with Black Hood began.  This knowledge just might be able to save not only El Santo’s life, but the soul of his past-lives lover (Lorena Velazquez).  

El Santo has a much more pronounced role in The Diabolical Axe than he did in many of his previous entries.  In most of those films, he was coming to the aid of other substitute heroes, but here, he’s front and center for much of the running time.  The screenwriters also concoct an elaborate backstory for El Santo, which is simultaneously longwinded and amusing.  It’s important to note that his origins are similar to The Phantom as his mask (and wrestling skills apparently) is passed down from generation to generation.

The long flashback sequences kind of feel like a forebearer to the time traveling scene in The Vampire and Sex.  Although some of the period scenes are enjoyable, they sure do hog up a lot of screen time and threaten to get in the way of the fun at some junctures.  However, there are still enough oddball touches (like the fact that a Merlin-like wizard is the one who imbues the first El Santo with his mask and powers) to keep them from derailing the proceedings.  

I guess it goes without saying that the present-day scenes of El Santo going toe to toe with Black Hood are a lot more entertaining.  The wrestling scenes are fast-paced and fun too, especially when Black Hood sneaks into the ring.  Later, he possesses El Santo’s opponent, leading to a terrific two-out-of-three falls match that features some fun super slow-motion aerobatics. 

El Santo is as fun to watch as ever, but sadly, the ever-enchanting Velazquez is sorely underutilized.  The film really could’ve used more of her incomparable charms during the sometimes-sluggish flashbacks.  On the plus side, unlike many El Santo flicks, there aren’t any musical numbers to further drag things down.  

AKA:  Santo vs. the Diabolical Hatchet.  AKA:  The Diabolical Hatchet.