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It's 1603: Santo, the silver-masked hero) has just died, but at his
grave, a black masked figure with an axe looking like an executioner,
Black Mask (Fernando Osés) appears out of thin air and swears to have
revenge on his descendants.
Flash forward to now (this being 1964): Santo has a wrestling match,
when out of thin air, Black Mask appears and tries to kill Santo with his
axe. When he fails, he disappears again just like he appeared in the first
place, and the axe disappears with him. Later, Black Mask makes another
attempt on Santo's life, but this time the axe stays behind when he
disappears again and a woman, Isabela (Lorena Velázquez), appears (need I
say, out of thin air) and even though he has never seen her, Santo seems
to know her.
Santo now asks his friend Professor Zanoni (Mario Sevilla) for help,
who for some reason has cracked the secret of (Spiritual) time travel and
he lets Santo relive his past life, that which ended in 1603: Back then
there were two aristocrats, one good one evil, fighting for the affections
of Lady Isabela (yup the one from above) using rapiers, and in a duel, the
good one wins out. The evil one however is a sore loser and contacts some
demon to give him supernatural powers in exchange for his soul and turns
into Black Mask. Then he tries to first win Lady Isabela's affections, and
when tht doesn't work, he chains her up to torture her. Our good
aristocrat then tries to free her, but Black Mask is now much more
powerful than before and our hero only just manages to escape with his
life. He then turns to the white magician Abraca (Mario Sevilla again) to
give him extra powers too ... and wouldn't you know it, suddenly he turns
into Santo. As Santo he fights and defeats Black Mask, but by now Isabela
is already dead. Santo vows to fight for good from now on and becomes a
monk.
Back in the now: Black Mask tries to kill Santo (the current Santo, his
mask is handed down from father to son since the 16-hundreds) again, but
when that doesn't work, he kills his girlfriend (Betty González) instead.
Now Santo knows it's time for the final showdown, and he fights Black Mask
and defeats him by removing his mask, which immediately makes the villain
turn to dust. Dona Isabela appears again to thank Santo for freeing her
soul.
Of course, the plot of El Hacha Diabólica is a load of baloney,
and it's made rather on the cheap, but that doesn't necessarily make the
movie a bad film: It is fittingly moody and creepy in atmosphere, the
period sequences are on a small scale but look convincing enough (apart
from Santo's wrestling outfit), and the Black Mask's exectuioner-style
outfit may be cheap but it's suitably chilling. Of course, if you don't
like Mexican masked wrestler (or lucha libre) movies as such, you will
hate this one, but if you can accept a bit of silliness into your life,
you'll probably be entertained.
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