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Santo en el Misterio de la Perla Negra
Santo in Mystery of the Black Pearl
Misión secreta en el Caribe
Spain / Mexico / Columbia 1974
produced by Juan José Ortega for Producciones Juan N. Ortega
directed by Fernando Orozco
starring Santo, María Eugenia San Martín, Mara Cruz, Guillermo Gálvez, Frank Braña, Antonio Pica, Juan Garza, Fernando Osés, Carlos Suárez, Orlando Vélez
written by Fernando Orozco, music by G.C. Carreón
El Santo
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Santo is informed about a plot to smuggle a set of stolen diamonds -
attached to the outer hull of a cruise ship - to Panama where they're
exchanged for pearls. But the baddies behind the operation listen in on
the briefing and from now on make every attempt to keep Santo from getting
onto the cruiser - without success. Likewise on the cruise ship many
attempts are made to kill Santo, to no avail. When he leaves the ship in
Panama, Santo runs into a trap and he's ultimately tied to a post beneath
the pier where he's to be drowned once the tide comes in - but an unknown
man saves him the last minute. Santo shows up at exactly the restaurant
baddie Andres (Antonio Pica) and his entourage dine, giving them quite a
fright, and gets a message via throwing knife to meet one Wu-Li (María
Eugenia San Martín), who turns out to be one of Andres' girls who has
decided to switch sides, and who has actually seen to it that he got saved
from drowning. Wu-Li gives Santo the basics of Andres' plot, and Santo is
soon on the trail of Andes' partner, shady pearl dealer Davila (Guillermo
Gálvez), who likes to work his native pearl divers half to death, and who
shoots dead those who don't comply - and thus is almost lynched by the
locals. He makes a hasty escape, with Santo in hot pursuit, and pretty
much leads Santo to Andres - but there's nothing to actually pin on
Andres, so he, his girlfriend (Mara Cruz) and Wu-Li make it onwards on the
cruise ship with the case of diamonds still attached to the outer hull.
Santo travels per airplane to arrive ahead of them and has them searched
at the airport but to no avail. When Andres and girlfriend go diving for
the diamonds, they're followed by Santo and Wu-Li, but once Andres has
retrieved the diamonds from the ship's hull, his girlfriend harpoons him
while Wu-Li abandons Santo swimming in the middle of the Ocean, as the two
women have long conspired to keep Andres' diamonds for themselves to have
a life in luxury. But of course, justice is served to them in the end ... A
little info up front as there's some confusion about the release date of
this movie: While the IMDb lists it as 1976, more credible sources suggest
1974 while rumour persists it was released in Spain in 1971 as Misión
Secreta en el Caribe. Whatever the case, it's rather likely that the
film was shot even earlier than that, since it sharing much cast and crew
with 1969's Santo Frente a la Muerte suggests the two films were
shot back-to-back, something that's only reconfirmed by the fact that some
footage of Santo en el Misterio de la Perla Negra also shows up in
the non-Santo movie Campeones del Ring from 1972. Be
that as it may, Santo en el Misterio de la Perla Negra is actually
not one of the better Santo movies, the film's very straight-forward plot
lacks proper structure, which results in quite some plotholes and leaps of
reason. Plus, it's a film that's really rather sloppily made: Not only
does it seem to use a Santo-double in an ill-fitting mask in a handful of
scenes, something that's painfully obvious even to the untrained eye, it's
also a bit of a hodgepodge of a film, inserting footage from Sam Fuller's
1969 movie Shark! for its opening scenes, a car chase that doesn't
have anything to do with the movie's plot, later a women's wrestling bout
is shown that remains completely inconsequential, as well as scenes from
an old-fashioned musical revue, rather obviously stock footage dating from
much earlier than the rest of the film. This of course is objectively not
good filmmaking - but is also kind of endearing in its brashness, so
certainly adds to the film's weird charm. But still, as far as Santo
movies go, this isn't a very good one, just a somewhat likeable oddity.
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