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Film / Santo y Blue Demon contra Drácula y el Hombre Lobo

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Exactly What It Says on the Tin. El Santo and his Masked Luchador pal Blue Demon do, indeed, fight against Dracula, a werewolf named Rufus Rex, and their legions of vampire and werewolf followers in this 1972 Mexican film.

El Santo gets drawn into the action by his girlfriend Lina Cristaldi. The Cristaldis (Lina, the Professor, his daughter Laura, and her young daughter, Rosita) turn out to be the last descendants of a wizard who killed Dracula and the Wolf Man 400 years ago. Revived in modern Mexico (by a hunchback, no less!), the two monsters plot their revenge, planning to kill, seduce, and/or convert the last Cristaldis.

Fortunately, the undead prove, as usual, to be vulnerable to wrestling moves.


This film provides examples of:

  • Achilles' Heel: The Dagger of Boidros is a slightly odd example. It was used to destroy Dracula and the Wolf Man 400 years ago. In the film, it mostly is used the way a crucifix or garlic is used in other vampire stories - as a ward. It does not actually play a role in the monsters' destruction.
  • Classical Movie Vampire: This Dracula is very much in the Lugosi/Lee vein.
  • Failed a Spot Check: Santo and Blue Demon are supposedly on guard in the Cristaldi mansion, but are too busy with their chess game to notice most of the occupants leaving under monstrous influence.
  • Forklift Fu: Lina rescues the luchadores by toppling a wall of boxes on a group of mobsters.
  • Fur Against Fang: Defied. The vampire and werewolf disagree a few times but never come to blows and are instead partners in crime.
  • Glamorous Single Mother: Laura Cristaldi. * Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The monsters maintain a pit with wooden stakes at the bottom, apparently for the sole purpose of entertaining themselves by making captives try to cross it on a narrow plank, as werewolves shake it back and forth. They force a captive Blue Demon to do this. Ultimately, this proves to be an extremely poor interior design decision.
  • Knockout Gas: Even the great Santo is vulnerable to a hunchback with a knockout gas grenade!
  • Masked Luchador: The eponymous heroes, of course.
  • Monster Mash: Dracula and the Wolf Man get along quite well. While Dracula ultimately calls the shots, he treats Rufus Rex, the Wolf Man, as a near-equal, and the two work well together.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: A lot of important stuff occurs off screen:
    • A great deal of fuss is made over the Wolf Man's need to seduce Laura Cristaldi in order to conduct an unholy ritual with her... which we never see, though we do see its result.
    • Another scene is described in which Santo is ambushed by three werewolves, but kills two with the Dagger of Boidros (one escaping to tell the tale). Sounds like it would have been a pretty exciting fight, but we see none of it! This was possibly left off screen to avoid a Fight Scene Failureinvoked. Lucha films tended to use luchadors as stunt actors, not trained movie stuntmen, so there may not have been anyone around who knew how to stage a convincing knife fight.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: As is typical of Mexican films of the era, not all that different. This Dracula hews pretty close to the best-known mid-20th century cinematic portrayals, save for the importance of the Dagger of Boidros.
  • Plucky Girl: Lina, who constantly ignores Santo's warnings to stay out of danger, and rescues him twice (once while driving a forklift!)
  • Protective Charm: The Dagger of Boidros is used as this, more than as an actual weapon.
  • Sycophantic Servant: Eric the hunchback is the Renfield to Dracula in this movie. Though he plays the usual role of a loyal servant who can move around and do things that a vampire can't, there's an interesting twist to this: It turns out that, even though Eric is mortal, he has become so evil that he is not immune to the Dagger of Boidros: it can destroy him as well.
  • Versus Title
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: A particularly bad example. At the end of the film, the luchador heroes and Santo's girlfriend Lina discuss what to tell Rosita about her horrifying ordeal when she wakes up in the morning. They decide to tell her it was just a bad dream. Which, yeah, that'll work... at least until she wonders where her mother is, and they have to tell her that she had been transformed into one of the living dead, and (the film implies but does not directly state) sent to her eternal rest after the destruction of the two eponymous monsters.

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