SANTO AND BLUE DEMON vs. DRACULA AND THE WOLFMAN (Santo y Blue Demon vs Drácula y el Hombre Lobo)

1973/ Director: Miguel M. Delgado/Writer: Alfredo Salazar

Cast: Santo, Blue Demon, Aldo Monti, Augustín Martínez Solares, Nubia Martí, María Eugenia San Martín, Wally Barron

A while back I got in a bunch of Santo and general Mexican horror films from Cinemageddon. I used up much of my precious ratio there to appropriate about a couple dozen films only to find out later more than half were not even dubbed or subtitled. I learned to read the little review section better after this. My ratio still has not recovered and I am sort of burned out with that place and how hard it is to maintain a good ratio. But they do have a great selection of Santos films and I even went back and got a few titles from the first batch over again and was careful to get them dubbed or subbed this time. One of the films I got in was the really great Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and the Wolfman. Blue Demon is Santo’s wrestling buddy and sometimes opponent in the ring, but always friend and equal in crime fighting and saving the world outside the ring. Both actors (who go by their wrestling names) are in their fifties in this 1973 film directed by Miguel M. Delgado and written by luchadora and Mexican horror veteren Alfredo Salazar. The version I have looks nice. It is shot in color but for some reason the later color Santo adventures look cheesier than the atmospheric ones from the 60’s. The old sets were reminiscent of early Universal horror films. Well with this film the fascination with Universal monsters has returned as Santo and Blue Demon face off against none other than Count Dracula (Aldo Monti who battled Santo in Santo and the Treasure of Dracula ) himself and his nefarious sidekick the Wolfman (Augustín Martínez Solares who also played the beast in Night of the Bloody Apes). Delgado would go on to direct the Santo and Blue Demon vs Frankenstein but I have not seen that one yet and not even sure if I have it. If I don’t I will have to get it (damn my CG ratio) and hope that it is as fun as this one was.

MORE SANTO AND BLUE DEMON WRESTLING WITH DRACULA AND THE WOLFMAN HERE >>

GLI AMORI DI ERCOLE (THE LOVES OF HERCULES or HERCULES vs THE HYDRA)

1960/Director: Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia/Writers: Sandro Continenza, Luciano Doria

Cast: Mickey Hargitay, Jayne Mansfield, Massimo Serato, René Dary, Moira Orfei, Gil Vidal

AKA:
Hercules and the Hydra
Les amours d’Hercule (France)

This film has the dubious honor of having remained in my draft folder the longest of any post draft ever. I would have to double check the date but I am sure it goes back to June or July. In fact the post was the last post I had made before my site was hacked back then and a three week nightmare began. I still have the PDFs and pics in a folder on my hard drive and tried to put the post back together and after I had finished this and a couple other posts lost during the hacker period I sort of forgot about them. The others have been completed and this is the last of the old posts that have been locked up in my draft folder since summer time. Another problem here is that I cannot find the movie file. It is burned on a DVD disc somewhere but I have so many I gave up looking for it for now. Typically I would prefer to fast forward through a film I have not seen in a while to refresh my memory before reviewing but in this case that will not happen. I will refer to the PDF files I made of reviews and my memory of the film, since it did leave and impression. In fact, I want to see it again as it is a fine camp classic and Mickey Hargitay’s beardless Hercules is one of the more unique Peplum/Sword and Sandal performances in the history of the genre. Couple that wit the fact that his co-star in the film is none other than Mrs. Mickey Hargitay herself, Janyne Mansfield, and how can a person go wrong if his inclination is to spend a lazy night on the sofa watching some fine Italian made cheese.

MORE OF MICKEY HARGITAY AND JAYNE MANSFIELD IN THE LOVES OF HERCULES HERE >>

TODAY’S TANTILIZING THRILLER:

MESA OF LOST WOMEN

SEE WHAT HAPPENS ON THE MESA OF LOST WOMEN HERE >>

THE NEANDERTHAL MAN

1953/Director: Ewald André Dupont/Writers: Aubrey Wisberg,
Jack Pollexfen

Cast: Robert Shayne, Joyce Terry, Richard Crane, Doris Merrick, Beverly Garland, Robert Long, Tandra Quinn (as Jeanette Quinn)

I had heard about The Neanderthal Man for awhile and refrained from seeing it even after I had gotten it and burned it to disk a couple months back. I just figured it would be Z-movie fodder for a commentary here and nothing more. Well it is not only that but it was a pretty enjoyable slice of cheese. The acting is pretty bad but with some decent moments (Beverly Garland plays the waitress Nola), the monster makeup by Harry Thomas (Missile to the Moon, Frankenstein’s Daughter, The Mole Men, Killers from Space and some Ed Wood Jr. classic like Plan Nine from Outer Space and Night of the Ghouls and loads of TV shows including The Munsters) is some of the worst of the man’s career and yet is perfectly campy and likable, and the scientific explanations are golden. I have long been planning an ‘audio excerpt’ style posit here and have done a few experiments and I am sure that the lecture given by Professor Groves to his incredulous colleagues will wind up there eventually. The film was produced and written by the team of Aubrey Wiseberg and Jack Pollexfen who either separately or between them churned out, as writers and producers, some of the greatest horror/sci-fi B-movie classics of the 50’s and 60’s. True classics  like The Man from Planet X, Daughter of Dr. Jekyll, Captive Women, and The Atomic Brain (Monstrosity) and many more.

MORE NEANDERTHAL MAN HERE >>

MESA OF LOST WOMEN

1953/Directors: Ron Ormond and Herbert Tevos/Writer: Herbert Tevos

Cast: Jackie Coogan, Allan Nixon, Richard Travis, Lyle Talbot, Paula Hill, Robert Knapp, Tandra Quinn, Dolores Fuller, Angelo Rossitto

I will agree somewhat with what one reviewer said about Mesa of Lost Women in that it seems to be more fun to read about it and the myths and legends surrounding it than it is to actually watch. Even seasoned cheese lovers seem to have a hard time with this film. I as well have a hard time with it though I have seen it a few times. The film is pretty short, only about 70 minutes, so considering you watch it in two parts it is not that much time out of your life really. The part of this movie, for me, that really makes the experience difficult is the infamously bad film score, but more on that in a moment. The film is often said to look like something Ed Wood Jr. would have created but I am not sure. I have long felt Wood was cast as the worst film director f all time and when a bad film (and Mesa of Lost Women is a bad film) comes along it sometimes is said to look like something Ed Wood Jr. would have done. I have long felt that Wood was a better film maker than the film world in general gives him credit for. But that may be a topic for a special post some other day. Mesa of Lost W omen however does have some connections to Ed Wood Jr. in an indirect way and those tenuous connections have led to speculation that Wood was involved with the project in some way or that he and Ron Ormond worked together. Maybe we can have a quick look at some of those before moving on.

MORE MESA OF LOST WOMEN HERE >

CAT-WOMEN OF THE MOON

1953/ Director: Arthur Hilton/ Writers: Al Zimbalist, Jack Rabin

Cast: Sonny Tufts, Victor Jory, Marie Windsor, William Phipps, Douglas Fowley, Carol Brewster, Susan Morrow, Suzanne Alexander

For this double feature I decided to write about two pretty good old time sci-fi flicks that are almost identical in their storylines. I even fear I am going to accidentally muddle the two together if I am not careful and wonder now if just one review for both films would suffice. But there are a couple differences that make these two moon mission films unique from one another. The theme is a familiar one for the 50’s and 60’s. A group of men, with maybe one female in the gang, are stranded somewhere, an island, lost civilization on the far side of a secret mountain or a planet like Venus or even the earth’s moon, and there they encounter an all female race of something similar to Amazons. The race may or may not be dying off and what men there are, if any, are kept as slaves and the occasional stud service. Some similar films would be Abbot and Costello Go To Mars (they actually went to Venus in the film) Invasion of the Star Creatures, The wild Women of Wongo, Mesa of Lost Women and quite a few others. The plots are usually the same and some recurring themes would be a young and cocky guy who is fast with the wisecracks who feels he has died and gone to heaven and hits on anything that breathes, a greedy opportunist who wants to pilfer the wealth the Amazon type women horde and a romance between the queen and the group leader. The virility of the male leader awakens feelings in the queen she has not felt in a long time and clouds her better judgment which usually dictates she execute all the outsiders. There is usually a power struggle as well within the female society between the old school led by the queen and a group of usurpers who are simply wanting for the right moment to strike, such as when the queen is weakened by her feelings of love for a big hunk of man. Both Cat-Women of the Moon and Missile to the Moon contains almost all of these essential ingredients and despite being cheese fare they are actually well made and enjoyable movies.

MORE MOON MOVIES HERE >>

COLOSSUS AND THE AMAZON QUEEN

A brief mention here about this remarkably odd movie called Colossus and the Amazon Queen (La Regina delle Amazzoni) directed by Vittorio Sala who also co-wrote the script with six other writers. If you brave this piece of cheese you may wonder why it took a total of seven men to scramble this story up. The general gist of the story is about a couple heroes named Pirro (Rod Taylor from The Birds) and Glauco (body builder Ed Fury) who wind up being tricked into becoming house boys on the island of the Amazons. The woman of the island are led by the lovely Amazon Queen herself (Gianna Maria Canale) and her bevy of beauties (Dorian Gray and Daniela Rocca among them). The warrior babes are supplied by cunning rogues with unwitting men who eventually evolve into effeminate acting house slaves. Clashes develop between some of the gals over who will be queen and who get what man, especially hunky Glauco whose presence has set the cold Amazon hearts all a flutter. The usually macho acting Rod Taylor has one the strangest roles of his career here as he plays the prissy acting brains of the duo. His voice is dubbed by another English speaking actor who makes him sound like a real sissy boy.

MORE AMAZON QUEENS HERE >>

HERCULES UNCHAINED (Ercole e la Regina di Lidia)

1959/Director: Pietro Francisci/Writer: Ennio De Concini/Cinematography & Special Effects: Mario Bava

Cast: Steve Reeves, Sylva Koscina, Sylvia Lopez, Gabriele Antonini, Primo Carnera

Also Known As:
Hercule et la reine de Lydie
Hercules Unchained
Hércules e a Raínha
Hércules encadenado
Hércules y la reina de Lidia
Heracles y la reina de Lidea
Hercules and the Queen of Lydia
Hercules and the Queen of Sheba
Herkules ja Lyydian kuningatar
Herkules und die Königin der Amazonen
O iraklis kai i vasilissa tis Lydias

Boy, I’ve been waiting to start this new sword and sandal category for a long time. Also called peplum or pepla as a term that covers the entire category, the Sword and Sandal genre is one of the most ridiculed and maligned in the whole film division of cult cinema. The overly harsh criticisms range from everything like worst movies of all time, inept and amateurish to just downright being ‘homoerotic’. It is as if a film being homoerotic means it will be a bad film. I have seen plenty of great homoerotic films but maybe we can go into that another day. Well, who knows, maybe all these criticisms are true to some degree or another but I have found these films to be some of the most entertaining low budget B-films, long with old serial westerns, I have ever sat down to watch and I have seen quite few. Lately I have been able to locate scores of these online and have around a dozen or so queued up for viewing. I actually began watching these as a wee lad in the late 60’s on Saturday afternoons, at about the time the movement was losing its steam to new genres like Spaghetti Westerns and spy films. They were shown on a afternoon show that was called The Mighty Sons of Hercules and I can still hear the macho theme music in my head as I type this. We had a crappy b/w TV with ‘rabbit ears’ back then and I never saw any of these films until only recently in color.

MORE OF MARIO BAVA AND HERCULES HERE >>

TODAY’S FAR OUT FEATURE: TROG

SEE TROG MENACE JOAN CRAWFORD AND MICHAEL GOUGH HERE >>