Todd’s Serial Blog

For my last selection for Halloween, I’m going to go with a real action packed extravaganza, Santo and the Blue Demon vs Dracula and the Wolf Man, a fun and action packed Luchadores enmascarado film for lovers of cheesy horror and wrestling.  I know I had another film high lighted a couple of weeks ago that starred a masked wrestler, but since The Batwoman didn’t star a real wrestler and there was almost no actual wrestling in it, I don’t count it.

In this film when Count Dracula rises from his grave, Santo is contacted by a family who have been targeted by the king of the vampires due to an ancestor being responsible for his last staking. Santo immediately comes to their aid along with The Blue Demon (on screen friends, off screen rivals). After his minions have an unsuccessful encounter with the famous Luchadores, Dracula calls up his own tag team partner, Rufus Rex, the Wolf Man.

Getting crafty, Rex, in his human guise, manages to seduce a mmber of the family and get her into the woods on the night of the full moon.  After she is killed, Dracula raises her as an undead slave and uses her to lure her ten year old daughter to him so that he can sacrifice her to Satan and damn her soul forever.  In between wrestling matches and games of chess, Santo and Blue manage to track Dracula to his lair where they take on a score of vampires and werewolves, showing that they are no match for Santo’s Camel Clutch and Blue’s Octopus Hold.  In the final showdown, Blue defeats Rex and Santo throws Dracula into a stake filled pit saving the little girl and the rest of her family with enough time left over to get to the arena for that all important tag team match (shades of Phantom Empire anyone?).

This is the kind of film where you dn’t think too hard about what is really going on, you just sit back an enjoy the action as you see masked superheroes fighting monsters.  What more do you really need?

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This week I’m going to high light a film that is probably more familiar to movie fans than the last two, or at least to fans of grade z bad movies, Ted V Mikels’ The Astro-Zombies.  Government agents are investigating a strange series of murders where specific organs are removed. It is suspected that a discredited Nasa scientist, played by John Carradine, may be behind them, as his work dealt with creating artificial astronauts to fly space missions.  Also interested in his work are enemy agents led by the luscious Tura Satana.

Turns out that Carradine has actually perfected his Astro-Zombie, unfortunately it escaped and is the one commiting the murders.  Carradine is quickly trying to make another one to capture the first one. After several more murders and some encounters between the agents, everyone converges on the mad scientists lair, where both zombies attack good guys and bad guys alike in a surprisingly gory battle that ends with Carradine and Satana getting killed along with the zombies.

Okay there really isn’t a lot to recommend this film, it has a few good boo moments in it but except for a chase scene a round a pool where Satana takes out a couple of agents and the bloody battle at the end, there is little action in this action extravaganza.  It is an odd mixture of slasher horror, sci-fi horror and espionage that doesn’t quite work.  So why am I recommending it.  Did I mention it stars Tura Satana?  And that she is dressed in a low cut, skin tight evening gown slit up to her upper thigh?

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For my next selection of feature films a serial fan might like for Halloween, I’m going to go with one I found on YouTube, 1968’s The Batwoman.  No this is not the Jerry Warren knock off The Wild Wild World of Batwoman staring Katherine Victor, this  is the Mexican action film staring popular Spanish actress Maura Monti as a rich socialite who fights crime (and does some wrestling on the side) as the masked, bikini wearing Batwoman.

She is called in by a Mexican state police agent she is friends with, who needs her help investigating a series of murdered wrestlers in Acapulco, her reputation as a wrestler will allow her to investigate without drawing too much attention (apparently her crime fighting reputation will be overlooked by the criminals).  It doesn’t take long before she discovers a mad scientist on a yacht is behind the murders, extracting pineal fluid from their brains to create a fish man.

After he has created the fish man, the scientist decids the perfect specimen to be his creation’s mate is Batwoman, and it will also be revenge for her throwing acid in his face during an encounter earlier in the film.  After several run ins with the scientist’s henchmen and a couple of encounters with the fish man, Batwoman and her two sidekicks are kidnapped by the scientist, but the plucky crimefighter manages to turn the tables and the scientist is killed by is own creation while the heroes escape before the now burning yacht explodes.

A fun and campy film that has everything, a sexy crimefighter in a skimpy outfit beating the crap out of henchmen, a rubber suited monster stomping around and killing people, and a mad scientist ranting and raving about his plans to take over the world bwa ha ha.

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