Having turned down the opportunity to appear in 1952’s El Enmascarado De Plata El Santo made his screen debut with supporting roles in 2 crime capers shot in Cuba in 1958: Santo Contra El Cerebro Del Mal(aka Santo Vs The Evil Brain) & Santo Contra Hombres Infernales (aka Santo Vs The Infernal Men).
#Santo contra el cerebro del mal series#
It was the success of his own comic book series and early film appearances, wherein he fought for truth, justice and the Mexican way, that El Santo deserted the dark side and became the wholesome hero we know and love today. In 1942 he adopted the now familiar silver mask of El Santo however despite his new ‘saintly’ moniker Huerta continued to essay the role of ‘rudo’ in the ring. Between 1935 & 1942 he adopted a number of ‘rudo’ guises including Hombre Rojo (Red Man) and Demonio Negro (Black Demon). Rodolfo Guzman Huerta was born in 1917 and began his wrestling career aged 16.
As threatening as these noticeably foreign intruders may have appeared none were able to defy the headlocks and body-slams of Mexico’s tight-wearing national heroes. Soon Dracula, the Wolfman, Frankenstein, Zombies and even a few Martians were all invading the wrestling ring. The emergence of an indigenous horror genre in Mexico in the late 1950’s, starting with films such as ‘The Vampire’ (1957) & ‘The Man & The Monster’ (1958), had a strong influence on the Mexican wrestling movie. The early Lucha Libre films usually pit their masked heroes against gangsters, crooks or kidnappers but slowly science-fiction and fantasy elements crept in to the stories giving the protagonists more other-worldly opponents to grapple with. Although El Santo himself would soon embark on a 4 decade spanning film career on this occasion another wrestler played the eponymous role. The Lucha Libre film genre effectively commenced in 1952 with the release of El Enmascarado De Plata (The Man In The Silver Mask), the lead character based on a popular masked wrestler named El Santo (The Saint).
On a purely functional level by keeping their faces covered performers could be defeated in one incarnation only to return to the ring as a new character the next week without too much fuss. The colourful masks provided larger than life identities for the heroes (yay!) and villains (boo!) and a particularly terrible defeat would climax with the loser unmasked and humiliated. Masked combatants were divided into 2 camps: ‘tecnicos’ (the good guys) & ‘rudos’ (the bad guys) and their dramatic conflicts owed as much to pantomime theatricality as they did to athletic prowess and sportsmanship (although I wouldn’t say that to their faces). Wrestling had been a popular spectator sport in Mexico since the early 1930s before appearing on cinema screens in the ‘50s.
#Santo contra el cerebro del mal serial#
With their combination of masked super-heroes & secret agents, monsters & mad scientists, bouts of frantic man-on-man grappling & Saturday morning serial style criminal capering they have no immediate cousins anywhere else in the world. Mexican wrestling, or Lucha Libre movies form a peculiar and unique cinematic genre.
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