User Reviews

All I know about the cult of "Luchadore"/Mexican wrestling is what I gleaned from reading Gilbert Hernandez in "Love And Rockets" more than a decade ago, so when I happened onto this particular nugget via Mystery Science Theatre, it was disorienting. The idea of masked wrestlers as superheroes seems pretty out there. Still it actually makes some sense when you consider that El Santo and his compatriots a) wear tights, b) wear masks to conceal their identities and c) are tough muscular hombres with preternatural wrestling abilities. Who better to be street level superheroes? And before anyone in the States makes too much fun of this movie's sheer goofiness, remember that our culture is responsible for "Gilligan's Island", "Ozzy and Harriet" and Sid and Marty Kroft.

On to the actual movie.

As promised by the title, Samson (actually "El Santo") fights vampires to rescue a young lady from her fate as the new Queen of the Undead. Well, not so much "fights" as "wrestles". And he doesn't really fight the vampire women - he mostly tussles with their thuggish male assistants. (Vampires are apparently immune to bullets, but luckily they are susceptible to sunlight, crosses, and front suplexes.) The plot moves along briskly from scene to scene. This is so that you don't have a lot of time to think about some of the plot holes and inconsistencies...such as vampire cults that forget to put shutters or curtains over the windows of their castle to keep out the sunlight. And the way El Santo manhandles three vampires at once during several outdoor mêlées, but one of the three almost kills him during a one-on-one wrestling match (by 'using karate' on him). Or that Samson/El Santo pledges to protect the young woman, but can't be bothered to actually hang around, so he's always pulling up in a convertible at the last moment and leaping on the bad guys. (You think it would be easier and more effective to actually BE THERE with the victim when the vampires make their move). Or the fact that the vampires are proved to be EXTREMELY susceptible to the sight of crosses, but it never seems to occur to anyone in the movie to actually carry a crucifix.

I suspect that this was another case where K. Gordon Murray took a fairly decent (if cheesy) film and sabotaged it with a 'English version' plot and editing job that didn't mesh with the original, sapping it of much of its coherence and integrity. (admittedly, we're talking about a Mexican wrestler film here, not "The Man Who Would Be King").There is also some unfortunate voice dubbing - El Santo is OK (if somewhat stentorian), but the Professor in particular has a fruity baritone better suited to an animated cartoon character like Dudley Doright.

Still, this was a lot of fun to watch - there were some pretty good sets and lighting and camera angles, the women were pretty hot, the hero was noble and brave, and I can see how a young Latino audience would think that a masked muscle-man who drives his own sports convertible and travels around wrestling and fighting evil would be the shiznit. If I have a chance to see another "El Santo" film, I'll take it and see how it holds up.

The film begins and ends extremely well, but in between becomes a draggy police procedural in which the vampire women remain largely in the background confined to their lair while only their High Priestess Tundra goes out into the field to suck blood and stalk heroine Diana Orloff. Tundra's appearance at Diana's window sufficiently spooks her father Prof. Orloff to get on to his video link to Santo rather as Commissioner Gordon used to contact Batman on the batphone; with Santo himself resembling a sort of blue collar Caped Crusader who wears only the trunks and cape and nips about in a nifty little sports car.

In the hands of cameraman Jose Ortiz Ramos and production designer Roberto Silva it all looks good, especially Ofelia Montesco as pouting High Priestess Tundra - easily the hottest chick in a film full of them - and María Duval as the virtuous young heroine Diana, who gets disappointingly little screen time. Unfortunately there's far more screen time given to Santo - who we twice have to watch in the ring taking ages to floor his opponents - than to the vampire women; who Santo only takes on at the film's very conclusion. For the rest of the time Tundra is flanked by three beefy henchmen (one of whom turns out to be a werewolf!) who handle all the rough stuff instead of the vampire women themselves until Santo finally sees them off in their lair in a climactic vampire holocaust that justifies sitting through the talky preliminaries. (If Tundra and her girls had thought to put blackouts on the window of the crypt and kept track of the time as dawn approached Santo would have perished on the slab to which he'd been chained, Diana would now be leading the vampire women; and I for one would have been well satisfied at that outcome.)

One puzzling question remains. Was that a pair of spectacles the blonde vampire woman seated at Zorina's feet when she's giving Tundra a dressing down was wearing?

I've only seen a handful of the Santo films, but Samson vs. the Vampire Women is so far my favorite. It's a cheese-filled extravaganza. The state of Wisconsin is jealous of the amount of cheese on display in this movie. What do you expect when you mix Santo, the masked Mexican wrestler, with a bevy of beautiful vampires? I don't know about you, but I expect pure, delicious cheese.

Going through a plot summary or analyzing the positives and negatives seems a bit silly with a movie like Samson vs. the Vampire Women. Instead, I'll try to hit on some of the more fun, but bizarre, moments from the movie:

1. Even though he's called Samson by everyone in the movie and the title lists him as Samson, someone forgot to tell the crowd at the wrestling arena who seem overly exuberant in chanting "Santo!"

2. Apparently, Santo has a closed circuit television camera mounted to the front of his impossibly small sports car.

3. You simply must watch the dubbed version. The dubbing is so bad that it adds a whole other dimension to the movie.

4. Mexican vampire women are the hottest.

5. Santo has an uncanny knack of showing up just after the person he's protecting has been kidnapped. Why not just stay put and be there when the bad guys make their move?

6. Why does Professor Orlof ask the police for their help throughout the movie? They seem to be incapable of even the most routine of police activities.

7. Don't feel bad about fast forwarding through the incredibly long and dull wrestling matches. It makes watching Santo that much more enjoyable.

8. It's odd that Santo can do battle with three vampire goons and come out on top, yet when going one-on-one in a wrestling ring, he gets the snot beat out of him.

There are more, but you get the idea. Watching Santo is best done with an open mind and the notion that nothing is to be taken seriously. If you do this, you're bound to have a good time with Samson vs. the Vampire Women.

Known as Samson vs. the Vampire Women in the U.S., this is one of four Santo films that were dubbed into English and released north of the border. Blame K. Gordon Murray, a distributor of Mexican films whose movies mainly played children-friendly weekend matinees or late night TV thanks to American-International TV.

A coven of vampire women awaken in their crypt after two centuries of sleep. Their leader, Queen Zorina, just wants to go back to Hell with her husband Lucifer - man, I love this movie - and to get here there, Tundra makes a vow to take the granddaughter of a woman who escaped her evil grip.

The only person that can save her is Santo, as his grandfather once saved the day all those years before. To get there, he's going to have to fight a werewolf and then all of the vampire women, who decide they need to see Santo's face, but the fun comes up and they all explode into flames. The silver masked man jumps in his convertible and drives away, satisfied with killing monsters for today.

This film is from Mexico and features the fan favorite wrestler Santo. So of course, this movie is going to have people saying that this film is good, we Americans just do not understand it and blah blah blah. Some seem to think that just because it is foreign it is somehow good, but let's face it, this film is the equivalent of one of those horrible Hulk Hogan films we make. Sure Santo may be popular in Mexico, but that does not mean a film he is in is good or that he can act or the story is somewhat tolerable. The only thing tolerable in this wreck of a film is the vampire ladies after they get all pretty. For the most part though when the film is not plodding along it is showcasing Santos' wrestling skills which for me is even more boring than the plodding along!

The story has a coven of vampire women and their three wrestling vampire men plotting to kidnap a woman and making her the new vampire queen. They still have the old queen, but a new one is needed because I suppose the old one gets bored of being queen or something. Well a professor wishes to protect his daughter, who is the next in line. He asks for an inspector's help and promptly dismisses the man several times during one conversation. Meanwhile, the coven has chants and this and that and about halfway in the movie Samson shows up (Santo). Why one would want a wrestler to protect them is questionable against vampires, but I suppose it makes sense seeing as how the vampire men are all wrestlers. Well Santo is not very effective, mainly able to just flip people away, but he somehow manages to get ahead in the game and burn all the vampire women alive as they close themselves into their caskets...basically helpless.

So the main problem is the pacing. The film is so slow and when there finally is action it is simply people being flipped around. This does not make for a good movie no matter how you slice it. It is laughable that a wrestler can match up with a vampire, and even more laughable how he burns the women vampires alive at the end. Wow, how heroic of you, Samson..er Santo, or man in silver mask. We are even treated to a wrestling match during the film, we do not need to see this in the middle of a vampire film! Mexican wrestlers are hailed as heroes in Mexico and perhaps a little kid from that country can see the appeal, but I do not as I do not like wrestling and do not hail them as heroes.

So the film is mainly a bore. The only thing making this film a two instead of a one is the very attractive vampire women. The one doing most of the work is the best one, reminding me of that girl in the Roger Corman film, The Undead. I find it funny how they kept acting as if the girl they were after to become the next queen was super beautiful, when she was okay, but not nearly as cute as most of the vampire women. So if you are into Mexican wrestling and can enjoy a very pointless plot and non epic final showdown, give this one a look see. However, I would advise you look away if you ever see it on.

The third of the Mexican wrestling movies picked up by K. Gordon Murray for US television (the others being INVASION OF THE ZOMBIES and SAMSON IN THE WAX MUSEUM), SAMSON VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMEN is more atmospheric but even less action-orientated than the other two, trading numerous run-ins with henchmen for an extremely slow pacing, with lots of lingering pans across creepy, cobwebby rooms, dark crypts, and cheesy rubber bats flying about on strings. As such, the film is only for the die-hard Santo fan. Anyone else watching from a modern perspective might well find it dull, clichéd, and utterly predictable.

This time around the villains are a bunch of sexy female vampires, who lurk around looking through windows and occasionally transform into ugly old hags (surprisingly efficient make-up effects are utilised here). They also have a couple of male zombies (including one weird alien-looking bald type) to do their bidding, which is mainly kidnapping and strapping prone victims to stone slabs and then draining them of their blood. Unfortunately the viewer must wade through dozens of minutes worth of exposition, badly dubbed dialogue about nothing in particular, some excruciating musical numbers and some minor characters being offed before he gets to the good stuff, which is almost worth waiting for.

We first meet Santo about thirty minutes into the picture. Amusingly, our doctor protagonist attempts to call him on one of those flat television screens all Mexicans seemingly have in their homes, only to find that Santo is away at a wrestling match! Later, the vampires send an undercover agent in to attack Santo, and a lengthy match ensues before the bad guy turns into a hairy werewolf and runs amok in the audience. After numerous encounters with the villains, the admittedly strong finale is set in the vampires' crypt, where a devastating ray of sunlight turns most of the bloodsuckers into burning ash, at which point (the coolest moment in the whole film) Santo runs in and finishes off the rest of the evil ones with the help of a fiery torch.

Sadly, the film offers little flair or excitement for one's money and the deathly slow pacing never seems to pick up until the very end. On the plus side, the set design is of a good standard, especially with the vampire's crypt which is very atmospheric. Sadly the low budget means that this is the only detailed set in the whole movie, with the rest of the action taking place in parks, wrestling rings, and people's houses. The human characters lack interest and the film spends far too much time concentrating on their activities when a look at the vampires and Santo himself would be far more interesting. As for Santo, he proves to be reliable as ever although his presence is sorely lacking in the opening stages and he needs far more screen time in my humble opinion. As such, this curio is for collectors only, and if you've never heard of Santo my opinion is to not bother.