Diana's (María Duval) 21st birthday is just around the corner - and
her father professor Orlof (Augusto Benedico) is worried, because he has
deciphered a prophecy in which the queen of the vampires Zorina (Lorena
Velazquez) will claim her on her birthday to make her her successor,
something she tried with Diana's ancestor 200 years ago but failed thanks
to a masked stranger ... Orlof of course calls the police, but there's
little they can do against a suspected vampire attack, so the professor
does the next best thing of course: call a professional masked
championship wrestler, Santo! Santo manages to prevent Diana from being
abducted at her birthday party, but now he has to feel the wrath of the
vampires, who try to kill him both inside and outside the ring, with
little success, though. After much to and fro, the vampires have managed
to kidnap Diana after all, since they easily outman Santo and the few
policemen who Orlof has gotten for his daughter's protection after all.
But by now, the professor has managed to totally decipher the prophecy,
which gives away the vampires hiding place. Santo rushes to the rescue ...
and walks into a death trap. But when the vampires are already about to
kill our masked hero, the sun comes up and erradicates them all, and those
who have managed to avoid the deadly rays are burned to a crisp by Santo
personally. Of course, this film isn't without its fails: There
are plotholes aplenty, most plottwists are either hilarious or stupid or
both, and ... why a masked wrestler to begin with? That all said, as a
prime example of early 1960's pulp cinema, this is also a pretty good
movie: It's full of genre clichées, some of the vampires' costumes are
hilariously camp, the story is enjoyably predictable, and the whole thing
is very well paced. So no, it's not a good movie by any measure (well,
it's a pretty good Santo movie at least), it's just loads of
fun!
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