Susana (Norma Mora) is doing a report on Doctor Karol's (Claudio Brook)
house of wax - when suddenly she disappears. Her sister Gloria (Roxana
Bellini) and brother-in-law get worried and turn to the police, and soon
enough, the cops are searching the wax museum ... at which point Dr Karol
turns to his friend Professor Galván (José Luis Jiménez) to call his
friend, the mysterious masked wrestler and crimefighter Santo (Santo) to
clear his name. Soon after Santo arrives on the scene, Professor Galván
disappears and so do Gloria and her husband ... because you see, even if
Dr Karol asked the professor to call in Santo, he's really the villain
himself who likes to kidnap people to disfigure them and turn them into
wax figures that only come to life at night via a special process - and
now he wants to try this special process on his most recent
abductees. Why does he do it? Because he was in a concentration
camp during World War II, and was horribly disfigured on his whole body,
and now he has found a new mission in life: to destroy beauty. Of
course, Santo figures everything out in the end - even if Doc Karol's
henchmen try to stop him every step along the way - and in the end has to
wrestle Karol and his monsters. He is almost defeated but wins the upper
hand, when the monsters turn against their maker, Doc Karol, and kill him,
and Santo buries the monsters under hot molten wax afterwards.
Of course this movie is silly, taking elements from Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933, Michael
Curtiz) and its maybe more famous remake House of Wax (1953, André De
Toth) but also from H.G.Wells' novel Island of Dr. Moreau, mixing
them with typical wrestling elements and nonsense plottwists - and the
outcome is nothing short of ridiculous ... but enjoyably so, a typical
piece of Mexican wrestling-horror-trash that might not make much sense,
that at times defies logic, that is full of laugh-inducing scenes, but
that for some reason or another is also wholly entertaining - at least for
those who don't take the film seriously. Recommended ... in a way at
least.
|