an accomplishment well worth seeking out. A cast-autographed edition is also available for $15 from
www.puphedz.com.
SANTO AND
BLUE DEMON VS. THE MONSTERS
Santo y Blue Demon contra los monstruos 1969, Alter Films/Veracruz, DD-2.0/ST/+, 82m 8s, $14.95, DVD-0 By Bill Cooke
Mexican masked wrestlers Santo and Blue Demon team-up and square-off in this cheerfully cheap attempt at a Universal monster rally. Resurrected by his dwarf assistant and green-faced zombie thugs—in a scene that could have been traced from a 1950s horror-comic cover—mad Dr. Hadler (Carlos Ancira) swears vengeance on his relatives, as well as “the man in the silver
mask,” and orders his evil dupli- cate of the captured Blue Demon to assemble an all-star legion of monsters, including the mouse- eared El Vampiro (he sticks to walls like Spider-Man), Franken- stein (wearing Don Post’s Glenn Strange mask with a glued-on goatee!), the Wolf Man (why waste time applying yak hair when you can hire a guy with a real beard?), the Mummy (look- ing like an old wino in surgical gauze), and a rubber-suit Cy- clops that seems to be standing in for Universal’s Gill Man (both it and an unexplained big- brained alien hail from 1959’s SHIP OF MONSTERS). Director Gilberto Soláres is either might- ily impressed with this motley crew or just trying to waste time, as he endlessly parades them over the same smoky hilltop be- tween frequent (and hilarious) fisticuffs with the masked one. When he isn’t fighting, Santo
reads newspapers, makes out with girlfriend Gloria (Hedy Blue), and relaxes at a night club, where the musical num- bers are obviously spliced in from an older, higher-bud- geted production. Strangely, Alejandro Cruz (aka Black Shadow) receives credit for playing Blue Demon, though it certainly looks like the real deal on screen. Perhaps he plays the “evil” Blue?
This standard ratio import offers removable English sub- titles and is pictorially compa- rable to the domestic efforts of Rise Above Entertainment, if a bit more colorful. Spanish-lan- guage extras include biogra- phies (including the monsters!), a gallery of wrestling holds, and three trailers to Mexican com- edy-dramas that force-play ev- ery time you load the disc. Available online from CD Uni- verse (
www.cduniverse.com).
Watch as El Santo makes mincemeat of the Cyclops with a well-placed karate chop—in SANTO AND BLUE DEMON VS. THE MONSTERS
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