I love this movie so much

This is How Movies Should Be Made

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

A high-camp slice of black and white Mexican wrestling action, this forgotten Santo epic has been thankfully given a much-needed DVD release complete with English subtitles: maybe the new millennium is worth something after all! Helmed by veteran fantasy director Alfredo B. Crevenna and starring a whole cast-full of oddly monikered wrestling "legends", SANTO VS. THE MARTIAN INVASION is Saturday morning level entertainment that fondly recalls the action-packed serials of the 1930s and '40s in its naiveness and simple charm. Sure, the low budget is evident throughout the movie and the plot is less than impressive, basically consisting of lots of talking in between some well-staged wrestling bouts, both in and out of the ring. It's hardly the most imaginative Santo movie there is to see.However, this movie becomes enjoyable through the sheer energy of it all. Santo is on top form as the efficient crime fighter-cum-wrestler and gives it his all as he tackles various Martians. The Martians themselves are more amusing than scary, deciding to disguise themselves as Greek gods at one point (why?) and using their "astral eyes" to vaporise people via a poor and unconvincing special effect. Dig the impressively shiny Martian costumes, polished silver with a high collar and designed to show off the well-proportioned bodies of the wearers. The voluptuous female stars are given a wacky dance routine, but otherwise their only job seems to be to hypnotise human beings and make them do their will. The rest of the time they just stand around and look alluring. Worth watching for is the steamy close encounter between an unmasked Santo (!) and one of the Martian girls that will set anyone's pulse racing.As for the male Martian members, they're also a funny yet impressive lot, led by fellow wrestler Wolf Ruvinskis as the stern and commanding Argo. Just check out the names of the co-stars: El Nazi, Ham Lee (the oriental Martian!), Beny Galan, even Natanael Leon Frankenstein! Despite being wooden actors, the fighters acquit themselves well with all the wrestling bouts that take place and are as fun to watch as ever. Other fun elements include the extremely poor wobbly flying saucer that appears at the beginning of the film; Santo racing against time to destroy the Martian ship whilst the Martians asphyxiate inside; the two-mask twist in the wrestling arena; the silly dialogue; and the benevolent scientist who burns away the bad guys. The rest of the running time is mainly taken up with prolonged and strenuous sweaty bouts of wrestling with the participants really giving it their all as they simulate being kicked in the face, punched in the stomach, and hauling opponents over their backs. This is a crazy, entertaining slice of slapdash Mexican cinema.

The ridiculousness of this film is very funny, what automatically makes it less bad than other awful movies.Though, even when you make a film with bizarre costumes, a silly story, and bad acting, at least one expects it to have internal logical consistency.This Mexican superhero film, though, contradicts itself too much seriously (for example, just a touch is enough to teletransport a human, but the Martians who wrestle against Santo cannot do it with him; besides that, the first alien to fight Santo has a disintegration ray but does not try to use it against him, although having the hero as a powerful opponent, and only uses it against people who do not offer any risk to them).Even the (excessively long) fight scenes are very bad (asslock, headbutt on the sphincter and other ridiculous attacks, with no visually impressive jump) and boring.

Having witnessed the failure of peacemonger Klaatu (Michael Rennie, in the original version of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL), the Martians decide to try a slightly different approach: teach Earthlings peace and brotherhood through pain and suffering. Not a bad strategy (let's not forget THE ARCHITECTS OF FEAR episode of the original OUTER LIMITS- nor the "shock and awe" approach to politics of the late Republican Reich). Unfortunately, the Martians make the mistake of starting with Mexico- the home of El Santo. SANTO VS. THE INVASION OF THE MARTIANS is superior Santo: he's on screen most of the time and, when he's not trying to outwit the invaders, he's stomping the crap out of them in some very well-choreographed fight scenes. In one of my favorite scenes, he is unmasked in the ring- but has a second mask on underneath the first. (In another scene, a dream sequence, he is unmasked by one of the femaliens- but it's clearly not Huerta himself; in fact, it looks like one of the guys playing one of the aliens.) Topnotch entertainment.

My introduction to the Santo cult proved to be a somewhat disappointing experience. Santo is not so much a Mexican Super-Hero as a Mexican Bruce Lee. Instead of kung fu, we are treated to wrestling. Mucho lucha. Demasiado lucha! It never stops. Santo cannot step into a room without stepping into the fray. I admit it was well staged, but the sound effects were overdone. I liked the girls best, especially Belinda Corell. On the other hand, the male Martians were totally unconvincing. Complete with ridiculously fake wigs, they looked about as much like men from Mars as refugees from Central Casting. Not that the rest of the players were much better. Only the always reliable Manuel Zozaya (who rarely received decent roles matching his abilities) as the professor and the impressively voiced "Picoro" (doing his customary stint as the ring announcer) stood out in a very mediocre cast.Production values were also second-class with ho-hum special effects that wouldn't gladden the hearts of a group of seven-year-olds; plus competently routine photography by Jorge Stahl (who did such good work on Henry Hathaway's 1954 Garden of Evil); and all topped off by capable but blissfully unimaginative direction from that veteran workhorse in Mexican cinema, Alfredo B. Crevenna (who helmed no less than 150 features between 1945 and his retirement at the age of 81 in 1995).Sci-fi fans will be hard pressed to find anything to cheer about in this effort. It's the sort of film that a quickie serial producer like Columbia's Sam Katzman would have been proud of, but it didn't strike many chords with me.