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Profanadores de Tumbas
The Grave Robbers
Traficantes de Muerte / Santo contra los Profanadores de Tumbas
Mexico 1965
produced by Luis Enrique Vergara for Filmica Vergara, Cinecomisiones
directed by José Díaz Morales
starring Santo, Gina Romand, Mario Orea, Jorge Peral, Jesús Camacho, Jessica Munguia, Fernando Osés, Bigotón Castro, Lobo Negro (= Guillermo Hernández), Estela Peral, Jorge Fegán, Martha Lasso Rentería, Fernando Saucedo, Nathanael León (as Frankestein), Julio Ahuet, Leonor Gómez, Juan Garza, Quasimodo
written by Luis Enrique Vergara, music by Jorge Pérez
El Santo
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Mad scientist Doctor Toicher (Mario Orea) leads a gang of graverobbers,
as he needs recently deceased bodies to create life to ultimately ... rule
the world of course. Thing is, his experiments fail, one after the other,
and thus he decides for his creation of life to succeed he needs the heart
of a superman - like world championship wrestler Santo. And when he spots
Santo's best friends, soccer player Carlos (Jorge Peral) and his fiancée,
singer and dancer Marta (Gina Romand), he decides he needs their perfect
bodies for his experiments as well. Santo though is already on the trail
of the graverobbers and thus Dr Toicher, but that doesn't deter Toicher
for going after Santo and friends still, often relying a bit too heavily
on the (usually ultimately under-effective) gadgets designed by his
hunchback (Jesús Camacho), like a lamp emmitting a psychedelic gas, a wig
and a violin string, both equipped with the power to strangle on their
own, a canvas that bleeds on its own and the like. Sine all these gadgets
came from the same source, this only helps Santo though ... but in the
end, he and Carlos and Marta are all captured by Toicher. But as all good
villains, Toicher refuses to just kill the good guy as would be
reasonable, but torture him for a bit first ... but what do you know,
Santo gets free, lays havoc to Toicher's lab, and ultimately Toicher,
after killing his trusted hunchback, dies in one of his own contraptions. Profanadores
de Tumbas is in fact a very silly film: The plot doesn't make all that
much sense, and is presented in a way too straight forward way, with no
real highlights - and that said, the icing of the cake are really the
hunchback's grotesque and ineffective killing machines, which make little
sense storywise, but are nothing short of laugh-inducing, even if they
could have been represented much better and given more room to. But
actually, much of the film is reserved for Santo battling with villains in
hand-on-hand combat, which becomes boring a bit too soon. Still, while
certainly not one of the better Santo films, the wacky moments at least
give the film some weird extra quality.
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