Really Awful Movies

Many a wrestler has taken a stab at Hollywood stardom to varying degrees of success. For every Roddy Piper in They Live there’s Roddy Piper in Hell Comes to Frogtown. Then there’s Hulk Hogan. The man responsible for bringing North American wrestling to a level of mainstream success heretofore unseen once seemed a natural for movie stardom.

Unfortunately The Hulkster and his 24-inch pythons could never manage to crack the Hollywood glass ceiling (maybe if he would have leg dropped it first, then…never mind). No Holds Barred did him no favors and Mr. Nanny and Santa with Muscles were out-and-out embarrassments that probably caused the orange one to lose the last remaining strands of hair he had left. Yet there exists another wrestler who stands headlocks and shoulderblocks among the rest. This grappler has starred in over 52 films, all wildly-successful, all south of the border. He’s Mexico’s most iconic Luchadore and ultimate technico (good guy): the one, the only, the incredible El Santo!

Santo’s wrestling career spanned a mind-blowing 48 years. During that time, he feuded with Black Shadow, Blue Demon, and Villanos I, II, and III in the ring and Dracula, the Wolfman, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Mummy on the screen. Forget I.R.S and Bob “Spark Plug” Holly; El Santo was the ultimate moonlighting wrestler. In film, Santo portrayed a suave superhero/James Bond hybrid of sorts who would go up against supernatural creatures, mad scientists and rogue secret agents all while driving snazzy cars, loving the ladies, wearing stylish outfits, and never, ever removing his trademark silver mask.

Santo Vs Frankenstein’s Daughter, his 34^th film, begins with an establishing shot of a variety of beakers filled with multi-colored bubbling liquids. Must be mad scientist territory. In this case Freda Frankestein, the daughter of the original modern-day Prometheus (although minus the second “n”) Freda has lived well beyond her years thanks to an anti-aging serum that she also administers to her red-shirted henchman, not one a day under 100.

Unfortunately for Freda, the serum just isn’t working as well as it once did. Sure, she looks decent from the neck up, but her arms resemble chicken gizzards. She determines that the secret to perfecting her serum flows through Santo’s veins, as his blood contains high concentrations of “the TR factor” (hey, whatever keeps the plot moving.) She sends her goons – including One-Eyed, a carbon copy of Charles Bronson who fittingly only has one eye- to kidnap Santo’s girlfriend in hopes that the masked marvel will come running to the rescue.

In addition to her geezer goon-squad, Frankestein has a pair of monsters living in her subterranean lair, both played by Gerardo Cepeda. There’s Truxon, the half man, half ape creature who is a virtual dead ringer for the monster Cepeda played in Night of the Bloody Apes (Gerardo Cepeda: the only actor typecast as hulking brutes with simian faces) and Ursus, a more traditional Frankenstein’s monster analogue, albeit quite the smartly dressed one in his tucked-in polo shirt and Jordaches.

Can Santo save his girlfriend from the diabolical doctor’s clutches in time for his scheduled bout versus the Japanese world middleweight champion? Will he be able to deliver his patented pre- finishing move “the crotch” (yes, that is what the announcers call it)? And why is the graveyard atop Freda’s cavern so darn foggy?

Santo Contra la Hija de Frankestein is goofy, kitschy fun. Santo makes for a great do-gooder hero; he refers to his tormentor as ma’am and literally gives the turtleneck off his back to Ursus to use as a tourniquet. The dialogue is wonderfully campy (“Our love has broken the chains of your hypnotic force!”) and save for some mild gore, the film has the feel of an old-fashioned kiddie Saturday matinee.

Santo Vs. Frankenstein’s Daughter. As the late, great Billy Red Lyons used to say, “Don’tcha dare miss it!”

*** (out of five)

“I bet you 500 you can’t go three minutes with Bruno.”

Them’s fightin’ words, literally, as the wager is issued to the sexy star of this “EROTIC KUNG FU CLASSIC,” Firecracker.

Bruno, heavy set and sporting a grey gi and giant pompadour, has just snapped an opponent’s arm in a no-holds-barred fighting match, held in what looks like a downmarket supper club. Unbowed, black belt martial arts instructor Susanne Carter (played by Jillian Kesner, who apparently has a karate background, not always a requirement for many of these films), cleans Bruno’s clock to much applause.

This captures the attention of local no-holds-barred champ, Chuck, a mustachioed cross between Wayne Gretzky and Larry Bird channeling Ben Stiller in Dodgeball who is as adept at dishing out punishment as he is sexual innuendoes (“I intend to” he coolly replies after a fed up goon says “Screw her!”). And when we say “no-holds barred” this seems to include being able to skewer your opponent with a guandao, a Chinese pole weapon (how Chuck was compelled to fight a pole weapon-wielding guy unarmed, is anyone’s guess. Perhaps the rules in this kind of fighting aren’t codified).

Chuck’s boss, the Dana White of Southeast Asia, is a sleazebag who shoots up and looks like the lovechild of Hugh Hefner and Anderson Cooper.

But it turns out Susanne is really in the Philippines to look for a lost sister and is often the case in these films, she STUMBLES UPON A HEROIN CARTEL! That’s the plot to hundreds of rock ’em, chop sock ’em Asian action movies but really it’s just pretense for kicking some serious underworld ass.

Part of Roger Corman’s Cult Classic’s Lethal Ladies Collection (see our review of Too Hot to Handle), Firecracker features a bar brawl that is one of the best in cinema history, rivaling any of the beat-downs in Patrick Swayze’s Double Deuce Roadhouse.

And compared with the tectonic plate moves of Too Hot to Handle, Jillian Kesner is a dynamo, using every flat surface as excuse to do backflips and reverse double kicks from tables as well as swinging from ropes. There’s also an absence of “swinging arm” martial arts like you see in TNT Jackson (the third member of the Corman trilogy).

There’s the ubiquitous tight-lipped sensei, stiff-as-a-board acting, streets punks who don’t know when to quit, some arnis stick-fighting and nefarious threats, backed up with a cobra.

And because this is exploitation cinema, it also goes by the title Naked Fist (for the love of all things holy, don’t Google that). Yes, you also get a bonus of a topless kung-fu fight sequence.

Hugely entertaining, with a climax in the ominous, Arena of Death. More fun than two pokes in the eye with sharp sticks, as it turns out.

*** 1/2 (out of 5, **** if you think Bloodsport was robbed at Cannes)