Stuff To Blow Your MindIn this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss René Cardona’s 1963 luchadora film “Doctor of Doom,” full of mad science and a sprinkling of lucha action. (orignally published 03/03/2023)
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb and Hey, this is going to be an episode that originally aired three three, twenty twenty three. It is Renee Cardona's nineteen sixty three Luchadora film Doctor of Doom. It's full of mad science and a sprinkling of Luca action in there as well. We hope you enjoy it.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob.
Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today we're going to be wrestling again. Because you may recall, if you've been listening to the show a while, there was a time long ago once in the world before that, I heard a voice whispering in the darkness, and I listen and it said to me, supernatural wrestling movies, and we of course that led to us covering Santo in the Treasure of Dracula, one of my favorite movies we've watched, pitting the ultimate good guy hero wrestler against the forces of Satan and the undead in the form of a actually, rather from what I call square, normal looking Dracula just kind of like Cape and you know the classic bell lego. See look right now it is time once again the voice has called out to us, and this time it said, not supernatural wrestling movies, but science fiction lucha libre.
That's right, we're dipping back into the wild world of Mexican lucha libre cinema. And yeah, this movie is a lot of fun. We're going to be talking about Doctor of Doom from nineteen sixty three. It's a different beast and that yeah, it leans more ridiculous sci fi as opposed to ridiculous supernatural elements. And also, while Santo in the Treasure of Dracula was a Lucidor picture starring El Santo himself, this is a Lucidora picture focusing instead mostly on female wrestlers.
Oh and what a treit it was to discover that there are science fiction lucha libre movies where the main luchadora is played by none other than Lorrain of Alaskaz, who you may remember from our episode on the movie Ship of Monsters, another one of my favorite films we've done on this show, Lorain of Alaskas in that played one of the two aliens sent to Earth to Find Earth's Greatest Hunks, and she was an absolute delight in that movie. I love her in this movie as well. She is our heroine, our butt kicking lucidora hero. So today's movie, the version of it I saw, was known with the English title Doctor of Doom. But I wanted to raise an issue right here at the beginning, because this movie is also known as Las Lucidoris contra el medico Asssino, meaning I guess the Lucidorus versus the killer doctor or versus the medical assassin. And there's a complication here with the fact that just before we started recording, I was looking around on the internet and I discovered that El Medico Assessino was also the name of an actual luchador. But I don't think he is in any way related to this movie, or if he is, I couldn't tell how he was related to the movie except in the overlapping idea of a killer doctor.
Yeah, because this film does not have outside of one dude who shows up, there's not a male wrestler. There's not a luchador proper in this film. So this guy, who I wasn't familiar with, is not part of the picture. So maybe it's just coincidence.
I do remember there's a good scene where a male wrestler just gets beat up by a room full of lady wrestlers. I love that.
Yeah. Oh, and there is a caveat there is a There is an actor in this film who was a wrestler. It may have been a wrestler at the time of the film. We'll get into that. But for the most part, none of the characters are male luchadors, and no male luchadors are showing up and saving the day. It's all up to the ladies. And of course other men will get into that in a second. But yeah, I wasn't familiar with this particular luchador, though there is. Interestingly enough, another guy I was familiar with. His name was doctor Cerebro, I think, and his Luca mask looked rather standard, except on the top it looked like there was an exposed brain, like he had had open cranium, you know, brain surgery.
So he's just like going into the ring with brain exposed.
Well, you know, it's that's frae. You're not supposed to believe that that's his actual brain up there, but that's the way his mask is decorated.
So a lot of what was fun to me about Santo and the Treasure of Dracula was that sort of like ludicrous collision of the different genres, the fact that you are pitting a in one sense, very mundane but exciting sport with a charismatic hero Lucha libre, you know, Mexican wrestling with these supernatural monster themes, and this movie has exactly the same appeal. It pits you know, mundane, earthly wrestlers against a science fiction murderer who wants to steal people's brains for his ungodly experiments.
Yes, I think the other interesting comparison to make is Santo and the Treasure of Dracula. Yes, you had absolute evil in Dracula, but then you have absolute goodness in the Ultimate Technico El Santo, who is so good and so capable, like it's never really in doubt who's going to come up on top. He's a superman, he's a living legend. And then as far as female characters go in that film, they're mostly just there to look beautiful and stand in the background. This picture is kind of it's interesting, you know, in the way that it sort of attempts to depict feminine strength because you know, on one hand, this is nineteen sixty three and it's an obvious genre picture, B movie. It's only going to do so much, and we end up with this weird mixture of female character traits both you know, very stereotypical, but then also you know, these are luchadoras. They're supposed to be strong, capable women.
Oh yeah, well, once again, I'd love Lorraine of Alaskas, and she's great as the heroin in this two thumbs up.
Yeah yeah. However, it's still again, it's nineteen sixty three, so things are only going to be so progressive because despite the fact that the various female characters in the film, including a female scientist, you know, get to show that they're capable, the luchadoras get to beat up a bunch of men and that's pretty great. But still we ultimately end up in the place plot wise where men have to save the women. And I would say that ultimately that's the weak link in the picture.
Hmmm, are you talking about what are you referring to there? Like the detective character.
The detective characters as show up, Yeah, yeah, so it ends up they end up having like more of a role in ultimately defeating the villains than I think we would want today as modern viewers, and I think maybe even in sixty three, Like it's a film about Luchadora's I want to see the luchador is doing more in the finale. But you know, that's that's my take on it.
Oh, I don't know. I mean, Lorreina and Golden Ruby opened quite a few cans in the film.
They do, Yeah, they do. They do not hold back on just beating the tar out of some Hinchman. Yeah, but I don't know. We'll see what We'll see where we get with this when we start talking about the plot, all right, elevator pitch, I don't know that we really need one at this point. But basically it's a brain transplant mad science picture, but with female wrestlers in it.
There's a wonderful scene in this film where a news report shares the information with the public that the police were able to deter from markings on the victim that their brain had been removed.
Yes, it's pretty clear that they're not removing the brains through the nose, you know, they're going right in the top. Yeah, doctor Cerebros style. So Yeah, I think the markings would be pretty obvious.
They don't show you the markings. What do those markings look like indicating the brain have been removed?
Yeah, I'm picturing open skull and an ice cream scoop, bloody ice cream scoop laying next to it, you know, all right, Well, when it comes to the trailer for this film, I wasn't able to find an obvious example of either the English or the Spanish language trailer, so instead we're going to feature just a clip here from the English dub of the picture. Joe, this is going to be the one failure after another monologue between the two mad scientists.
On failure after another box, the operation is tremendously difficult, doctor.
Isn't there any human being who can.
Stand the shock? Perhaps a stronger type of woman, an athlete, the one that can take more punishment than the average. If we could find a woman like that, doctor, she probably lived through the operation.
You know, they really give the murderous mad doctor a lot of pathos mm hmm.
Yes, yes, he is a very fun character. Though he has a secret identity. You don't know who he is. There's a lot of Scooby Doo action going on in this picture. So we're gonna treat that with kid gloves at least for a while. We're gonna try and retain the spoiler, keep it fresh for you.
Well, yeah, we'll warn you at the end before we do the reveal. Though it's not very hard to figure out.
You'll you'll see it coming miles away. You'll see it on the horizon with the so unrising behind it. It's but yeah, it's still fun when it gets there.
I totally agree. Yeah, it's not much of a mystery, but it's a great reveal anyway.
All right, Well, if you want to take a break here and go watch the film, it's pretty widely available. You can currently stream it on just to name some of the Amazon Prime fandor to the Flick's Fling. I don't know if some of those are real. Some of those I might be making up on the fly. You can also rent or buy it several places digitally as well. If you're looking for a DVD copy. I think something Weird put it out on disc a while back, alongside Wrestling Women Versus the Aztec Mummy. All right, let's get into the cast and the people involved in making this picture, starting at the Top with our director Renee Cardona, who lived nineteen oh five through nineteen eighty eight. Cardona was a director, actor, producer, writer, and editor, but best remembered as a director in the Golden age of Mexican cinema. He was born in Havana, Cuba. He began medical school, but had to flee the country from New York City. He was unable to continue his studies, but he got involved in filmmaking, which took him to Hollywood, and then he made the move to Mexico City. First as an actor, but then he went on to direct I think one hundred and forty six different pictures, or at least that's the credit number on IMDb. As an actor, he was in some really well received Mexican films, such as The Priest Secret from forty one and The Rocket Souls from forty three. As a director, however, he mostly made his splash directing I think seven different Santo movies, including Santo and the Treasure of Dracula from sixty nine, as well as such titles as She Wolves of the Ring and nineteen seventy two's Night of the Bloody Apes, which is sort of a nastier retread of this film, like basically he came back around and like, what if I made Doctor of Doom accept Sleazier for the nineteen seventies.
I recall looking at that one to see, oh, maybe this would be good for the show, but thinking it looked just gross.
Yeah. Yeah, Sometimes I'll forget and I'll go back and say, ah, Night of the Bloody Apes sounds good, and then I look at the details like no, no, no, not this one.
But he also made an absolutely unforgettable Christmas classic.
Oh yes, Santa Claus from nineteen fifty nine, in which Santa Claus and the devil battle for the soul of poor Lupita in Mexico City.
Can you imagine if they had gotten Santo and Lupita together in the same movie, like just the pure goodness would like it would like blind you.
Oh man, that would be good. Oh, speaking of Santa Claus, if memory serves the actor who played Santa Claus and that is also in Night of the Bloody Apes, I think he plays a doctor in that maybe the mad doctor in that picture.
Hmmm.
Well, as far as story and adaptation credit, this goes to Alfredo Salazar, who lived nineteen twenty two through two thousand and six. Brother of Mexican director Abel Salazar, Alfredo scripted a number of notable Mexican B pictures, including the Tech Mummy movies, multiple Santo movies, including Santo and The Treasure of Dracula. He also wrote The Batwoman from sixty eight nineteen sixty seven's The Panther Women as well, which is another well regarded luchadora film, But this one starred exotic dancer tongo Ela. I was interested in this one. This was a close pick for this week. I was looking for a good luchadora picture and that was the runner up.
Hmmm, well, maybe we'll have to check that out in the future as well. Now, when I'm thinking about the writing of wrestling films like this, obviously, one thing I love is the combination of the genres and the subject matters, you know, the science fiction horror or the supernatural horror with the wrestling. But the other thing is I'm wondering how you're going to find new ways every time to work in a wrestling match as the climax, because it's hard to make that fit. In this movie, they do it pretty well.
Yeah.
Yeah, it is an inter interesting check I was thinking about this a lot while watching it as well, like, Okay, they had the mandate, it's got to be probably, I'm assuming they were probably like it's got to be a luchador film. People want to see lucadoras. The Luchador films are very successful, so just do that. And they're like, okay, well, well, all right, we gotta somehow work it in. Okay, what's what's our villain gonna be? Yeah? How do you weave it together? And you'll end up with a situation where of course, your mad brain transplant doctor needs strong women, so he's going to target or attempt to target luchadoras.
Right, So in this film they managed to do it by having like, oh, she think our heroin thinks she's just going into a regular wrestling match against a human wrestler, but in fact this is a superpowered brain transplanted monster of science. But like, how do they usually I mean, every time is it just like the hero or heroin gets tricked into a wrestling match with somebody they think is a human but turns out to be a monster or something.
Well with I think in a lot of the Santo pictures it also comes down to characters realizing, hey, we've got some sort of problem, We've got a threat. We need to call El Santo. Santo because he's like a superhero, he's larger than life. He's solving crimes and defeating evil in this picture, though, Gloria Venus, who will talk about in just a minute, like she's just a working luchadora. That's true. Yeah, they just get sucked into this whole situation. They don't call her, she's not a crime fighter. So in a way, this film is a lot more believable. It's a lot of realistic that.
Yeah, I guess that's the difference. Now, I can't recall actually did the climax of Treasure Santo and the Treasure of Dracula even involve a match in the ring. Maybe it didn't. Maybe it was just a bunch of wrestling and fighting in like actual locations relevant to the plot.
Yeah, there are other Santo pictures where that is the factor. Like there's like the evil Rudo is actually a werewolf, But I don't think that happened at all in Treasure of Fracula.
Okay, so maybe it's a well I don't know. I wonder if it's a thing over time, they are more comfortable just having the climax be some kind of conflict outside the ring. But maybe in earlier pictures they're they're they're like, Okay, we got to bring it back to the ring somehow for the big showdown.
Yeah. Yeah, and perhaps as they go, yeah, they have to keep thinking of ways to spice it up. What can we do differently. We can't just have the same format, even though these are you know, the expectations are there for the audience.
I'm sure this has been commented on a million times, but I can't help but notice it. It seems to me like the the Great Uh sort of fantastical, over the top dramas. The fictionalized stories in these Mexican wrestling films from the middle of the century must have contributed to the elaborate fictional storylines that come to fill in between the matches in like American professional wrestling circuits. Does that make sense, Yeah?
Maybe so. Yeah. It's interesting though, because I don't think you see much of that in Lucha Libre. But then again, you end up having this thing where, you know, American wrestling ends up influencing Lucha Libre and so forth, So there's a lot of exchange going there between these different styles.
You know, a lot more than me. I guess I had assumed. Maybe maybe I was wrong that the like all the elaborate fictional backstories and the soap opera aspect of it is is a more recent thing in American professional wrestling that like, if you go back to the mid century, they didn't have as much of the like supposed backstage drama and the kind of super the meta stories, right.
I believe that is the case. That's my understanding. Yeah, that you go back far enough and a lot of these pro wrestling products are based are going to be very similar. They're all originally based on kind of a US euro model where it's more about the action in the ring and if there may be some you know, backstage stuff, radio stuff, et cetera, but it's not as much of a focus as it is today in American wrestling.
Another question you might not know the answer, I don't know, but does like does modern American pro wrestling it all rope in any of these like supernatural or science fiction themes. Is there like a wrestler in the WWE today that wants to remove people's brains?
Yeah?
I think there is one guy. There's always there's always room for a supernatural gimmick in wrestling, especially American wrestling, and sometimes in Japanese. It just it kind of varies, but definitely in American wrestling you'll always have at least one, maybe two guys that are doing some sort of supernatural gimmick, and you know it. It's one of those things that some people love, some people hate. I guess it's it's great for great for the kids, of nothing else. I don't know. I enjoyed. I think there should always be some sort of a undead zombie man in wrestling.
Of course, always gotta have a vampire, gotta have a brain thief. Yeah, oh hey, But I want to say one thing about the particular version of this movie that I watched that I really enjoyed was the English dub of it. So I haven't I couldn't speak to the Spanish audio version, but the English dub on this movie was great, fun and highly amusing.
Oh yeah, I really enjoyed the dub. Unlike Treasure of Draculade with Treasure of Dracula, I also enjoyed the dub, but that was, as you might recall, a modern dub that attempted to and I think mostly succeeded in capturing the feel of a nineteen sixties dub.
Yes, but you could tell it was modern from what I could tell it. The one I was watching, I think was vintage.
Yeah, this is vintage. This is because this film was distributed in the US by Kay Gordon Murray lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen seventy nine, American producer best known for dubbing and releasing foreign films for the US market, including such films as The Robot Versus The az Tech Mommy from fifty seven Santa Claus. We just talked about, oh, in the Brainiac from sixty two, which is a really fun Mexican vampire movie in which the vampire is very monstrous.
Has a long tongue. Am I right about that?
Yeah? Yeah, all right, Well let's get into the cast here. We've mentioned her several times already, but yeah, Gloria Venus, played by the beautiful and talented Lorena of Alaska, is born nineteen thirty seven and as of this recording still around. I don't think she's been active in the last few years, but she had a very long career. I think she was still showing up occasionally in films or TV shows.
I love Loraina of Alaskas in this movie, and I loved her in the other when we watched Ship of Monsters. In both cases, it's a very interesting kind of performance in that she is not chewing the scenery, like she's not doing an over the top, you know, high energy acting performance. She's she's very reserved, you might say, in the character kind of like economical with her movements and her expressions, but to a very pleasing effect, Like she just kind of wears this expression of ironic, almost inappropriate amusement almost all the time, and it plays so well in these scenes.
Yeah, And it's not like she's cracking up or or what corpsing as the as the modern term for it. It's not like that, but it's just she strikes this nice balance of amusement.
But I think a big difference here is that while while she's great in this movie, Lorraine of Alaskaz was not a wrestler first, and you don't I don't think see her do much, if any, actual wrestling in this movie. She is frequently replaced by an obvious stunt double.
Yeah.
I mean they might have taught her a few things, just for some of these scenes where she's applying a submission hold and you see her face rather clearly, But yeah, she was. I think she was a model turned actor and plays a wrestler here. Very different from these scenarios where someone like Al Santo or Blue Demon are luchador's first and they become a big enough name that they transition into acting as well.
And I guess you could argue, of course that you know, being a luchador is already that gives you kind of a leg up into the acting world because it is both an athletic art and a performance art at the same time. It's like having to be an athlete and an actor rolled into one.
Yeah, though with some key differences, and you know, I imagine it's not a seamless transition, but great for the stunt scenes. Like I will say that that the wrestling that we see in Santo and the Treasure of Dracula is far superior to what we see in this picture. And part of that, I think has to do with the fact that you it's centered around a non wrestler an actor playing the key role.
Agree, So it's like there's less I don't know. I guess technical flare, but I nonetheless greatly enjoyed the beat them up scenes.
Oh yeah, yeah, certainly. So. Yeah. She was a model, but she was also step daughter of actor Victor of Velasquez and a former beauty pageant competitor, I believe for Miss Mexico. She was in two different Santo movies from nineteen sixty two, Santo Versus the Zombies and Santo Versus The Vampire Woman or Women. I can't remember which one it is, but at any rate, she is a vampire woman in that she plays Zorina, Queen of the Vampires.
Oh, I gotta see that one.
She was also in another Santo movie as well, nineteen sixty five's The Diabolical Acts. So this is her first portrayal of Gloria Venus, and she went on to play that character again in nineteen sixty four's Wrestling Women Versus the Aztec Mummy, and she played Loretta Venus in nineteen sixty five's She Wolves of the Ring, also from Cardona. I haven't seen that one, so I don't know if it's just basically the same character, or if the name gets changed by accident, or if it's supposed to be her sister. I'm not sure.
Takes place a generation in the future and she plays her own daughter.
Yeah, I'm not sure what the angle is there, but at any rate, she's a delight. She was a huge star in Mexican cinema and also had a presence on Mexican soap operas and was active up until I believe about twenty twenty. All Right, just because it's a sixties film centering around female characters doesn't mean you get away without having some sort of a hunky man hero in the picture, and that's what we have in this character. Armando played by Armando Silvestri.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet your jawline.
Yes, he was born in nineteen twenty six and I think it's still still around. He was apparently a bullfighter turned actor. He was active from nineteen forty seven through twenty seventeen as an actor. Apparently he left bullfighting for acting after being badly gored. Oh wow, I have to say had quite an acting career, played a lot of honky leading men in Mexican cinema, but also played various parts in American westerns. So his credits include numerous Cardona pictures including Knight of the Bloody Apes and The Wrestling Women Versus the Aztec Mummy. But he also pops up in nineteen seventies, Two Meals for Sister Sarah, nineteen sixty eights, The Scalp Hunters, and in some other pictures as well, so multiple loos of films in there. Though.
To be clear, now we get another major character to mention, which is that our heroin in this film does not fight alone. She ends up developing a great friendship with another luchadora and it becomes kind of a buddy picture in a way. And that is with the luchadora Golden Ruby. Is that ruby spelled with a Y or ruby spelled with an I?
Oh, I don't member, but Golden Ruby is played by Elizabeth Campbell for nineteen forty two American actor who's with a number of films. I think a lot of a lot of her filmography is Mexican cinema, so she was in all of the luchadora movies that we've mentioned so far in this episode, as well as Las Lobo still Ring, and she pops up in at least one US Western nineteen sixty six is the professionals.
She and Lorena make a great team. There are multiple scenes. There's like one scene where they're I think they're temporarily roommates for some reason, and they're both just like sleeping in these twin beds and what looks like an apartment and they're like, hey, wait, somebody's about to break in and try to steal our brains. So they like pretend to be asleep, and then when the guys sneak in the window, they just pop up and whip their butts.
Yeah, and they're not even I don't think they're even doing They might have thrown some arm drags or something, but for the most part they're just like pummeling these eyes in the face with their fists. Yeah, okay. Now, another major actor in this picture is Roberto Canado who lived nineteen eighteen through nineteen ninety eight. He plays the professor.
I loved this guy's performance as well as and also whoever did the English dub for him, Big thumbs up on.
Both agreed this is a very fun dubbing.
Oh yeah, so he quite often it gets extremely close to the James Mason voice.
He comes in and says it's terrible. How they've been stealing everyone's brains.
Isn't it. Oh yeah, yeah, this character is a lot of fun. He's invited to attend the Luca and he's like, oh no, I absolutely deployed. It's so violent. I can't stand it. I don't have the constitution for it.
He walks backstage after watching a Gloria Venus match. He's like, there to see her, and he comes into her locker room or whatever. She's like, oh, did you like my match, Professor.
He's like, oh, it's terrible. I can still stand. Violence. Just disgusts me. I don't to vomit right now.
Oh yeah, it's yeah. It's a really fun performance from a very talented Mexican performer. Again from the golden age of Mexican cinema. He acted in over three hundred films, which included a lot of B films but also some serious dramas. On the B cinema end of things. He pops up in several Santo pictures. He's in sixty eight's The Batman, He's in the nineteen sixty five werewolf film Le Lobo, and well.
Wait a minute, was the sixty eight one The Batman or The Batwoman?
I'm sorry, it's the Batwoman, I said to Batman, but this is the Batwoman. There's another Cardona picture. Yeah, he's in this werewolf picture. He also pops up in some later day horror films, such as the nineteen eighty six slasher movie Bestia Nocturna and the nineteen eighty nine Mexican slasher film Grave Robbers, the latter of which is is available to stream on various side side. I was tempted to check it out, but I didn't get a chance. But as a serious actor and dramas, he appeared in I think at least two very critically well received pictures, including Publrina from nineteen forty nine and Crime and Punishment from nineteen fifty one, an adaptation of Crime and Punishment.
Great job, Roberto, Yeah, I love him in this. I want to see his other movies.
Yeah, we'll talk more about his performance as we get into the picture. But hey, you've also got to have some comic relief. You got to get a comedian in there. You might remember in Santo in the Treasure of Dracula, we had a very funny Mexican comedian, and we have another Mexican comedian in.
This film in Santo and the Treasure of Dracula. Was it Perry Co the annoying sidekick.
Yes, the cowardly sidekick. It was a lot of fun in this We have the character listed in the credits as Cama, but I think he actually he gets a different name in the dub.
Right, I'm not in the English dub. I could be wrong about this, but I think maybe they called him Tommy. Okay, but he's the main detective sidekick, Armando's buddy.
Yeah, a short little fella played by Chuccho Selinas, who died in two thousand and one. I'm not sure birth date is public record, but yeah. He seems to have been mainly a comic actor, providing similar comic relief in such pictures as The Wrestling Women Versus the Aztec Mummy and some other lucha pictures. He was also in some just outright comedies, such as Mexico two thousand from nineteen eighty three. I believe we talked about that one in Ship of Monsters because it's the same director.
Oh Rgalio Gonzalez.
Yeah.
Well, in this movie, a lot of his comedy scenes I think are coming from an apparent mismatch where he's He and Ruby Golden Ruby seem to be falling in love with each other, which is funny because he's very short and she's very tall.
And that's all. That's all there is. Yeah, it's a pretty one note joke, one note romance. But they keep touching base on it.
Oh it's sweet though.
It is sweet. Yes, we also did we mention that we have an ape man in this picture?
Oh yeah, there's a there's a so we not only brain transplants. This movie has Island of Doctor Moreau in it, you know, the mad The mad doctor is like, why didn't I make a half man half gorilla? Wouldn't that be good? Yes, it would be good. Let's do that.
Yeah. Now the poster makes it looks like it is a gorilla or a gorilla suit. It is not. It is more of a gorilla like you said at Doctor Island of Doctor Moreau sort of thing.
Well, that's how it's described with the it's just a it's just a guy. And they glued some extra extra hair on him, and some gave him some like a prosthetic nose, I guess.
Yeah, yeah, limited prosthetics were applied to him. Yeah, but the fella that these prosthetics are applied to and then they glute some hair on. It is a pretty interesting character. This is Geraldo's who lived nineteen thirty five through twenty eleven. So this is just one of your cloud You find this any cinematic culture. You have a great brute man character. Actor here plays a lot of heavies, plays a lot of monsters, does a lot of work in genre pictures, but also ends up having some background work in a lot of bigger pictures as well.
Now I might guess was this guy himself originally a wrestler.
He was. He was originally a luchador wrestling as Gerardo l. Romano. I'm not sure how long he was actually active, but it does seem from what I was reading about him on like Luchiwiki and some other sites, it sounds like he transitioned full time into acting after a while. This was apparently his first picture. However, he followed it up with several Santo Aztec Mummy and Blue Demon pictures, and he sort of reprised this same role in nineteen sixty nine's Night of the Bloody Aes. He is the eight Monster in that, but he also pops up as a bandit in Alejandro Jo Droowski's legendary nineteen seventy psychedelic western al Topo. Oh yeah. He also plays a bandit in nineteen seventy three's The Mansion of Madness, which is a surreal inmates take over the asylum picture starring the legendary Claudio Brook. Claudio Brook for any of them out there not as familiar with Mexican cinema. He pops up in Giermel de Toro's Kronos. He plays the evil old Man who wants it to get a hold of the Kronos device.
Evil old man and the main villain I'm remembering in that is is Oh what's his name that we know so well?
Oh yeah, another great brute man actor, Ron Perlman.
Ron Perlman, I remember Ron Pearlman worked for him in this movie.
Yeah yeah, His boss is Claudio Brook. Okay, so that's a picture. There's some elements to it that kind of disqualify it from weird house cinema, but it's a great Claudia Brook performance anyway, as far as as a peda goes here. His other credits include roles in nineteen eighty three's Beyond the Limit, starring Michael Caine, Richard Gear and Bob Hoskins Oliver Stone's nineteen eighty six films Salvador in the He's also in the I did not know this existed, but there's a nineteen eighty one Ringo star Caveman movie titled Caveman.
But that's great.
That Yeah, it has the look of quality to it.
Wait a minute, now, I may have seen that there were a lot of Caveman movies, but I may have seen part of this one because I remember seeing a movie on TV when I was younger where a Tyrannosaurus rex is hit in the groin with a club and its eyes go cross eyed.
Well, it sounds like nineteen eighty one's Caveman might be the sort of picture where that happens. Dennis Quaid is also in it. Oh wow, yeah, we may we may have to come back in in this one in greater detail. This is always one of the fun things about diving into pictures like this, as you discover things you had had no idea that it existed and or that had any right to exist. Caveman from nineteen eighty one takes place in the year one zillion BC. By the way, that's that's part of this.
Could have done just a little bit of research to get that a little more calibrated. Oh wait, I just looked it up. Caveman had Barbara Bach in it.
Oh wow, great cast, great cast of nothing else of just a couple of more. Zepeda also shows up in Tony Scott's nineteen ninety Kevin Costner film Revenge, and he's also in John Frankenheimer's The Burning Season from nineteen ninety four, which starred Rol Julia So not bad, All told okay. And finally, as far as the music goes, Atonio Diez Conde did the music. He died in nineteen seventy six. He was just He was a prolific Mexican composer who worked on a ton of B pictures during this time period. I get the impression he has just churning it out. It's pretty standard stuff here. It's good. You know, it delivers the musical vibes you expect from a Loocha picture from this era.
I recall the music often really turns on a dime. There's like a sudden cut and it goes from you know, just the like plowing ominous orchestral music to straighten too, going oh doop de dooo, you know, like whimsical fun stuff.
But you know he's keeping up with the picture.
Really, So we take a break and then come back to talk about the plot.
Let's do it.
Hey, So I guess it's time to talk about the plot. And if we sound different at all right now, it's because we had to split this recording up into two different sessions. So now we are returning from the from the interlude to talk about the plot of Doctor of Doom. And I think one thing I will say kicking off this movie is that it should it probably assumes now my number one position for movies that just get on with it. This movie makes haste. So at the very beginning, no studio logo, no credits. The first thirteen seconds of this film depict what appears to be a murder. I think later it is just a gorilla man kidnapping that will turn into a murder. But it like it happens so fast, so like orchestral, you know, ominous orchestral music is just grinding. From frame one, we see this grimy looking back loot. It looks I guess like a film studio lot. But then there's a woman in a fur coat walking around with a handbag. She's walking briskly as though afraid. And then there are two menacing goons in suits and ties following her. Here we're about eight seconds in. She looks over her shoulder, she's afraid. The music swells. There is a different dude, not one of the two suits, but a shirtless guy with harry arms. He reaches out from behind a brick wall strangles her from behind. Then we're at like thirteen or fourteen seconds in, and then we cut to a ladies wrestling match and then the credits roll. Remember that thing about the head explosion scene and scanners, how they like put it was originally going to be the opening scene, but then they put it later because they didn't want people coming in late to the movie to the theaters to miss it. Renee Cardona was obviously not consumed with similar worries about this Gomar attack scene.
Yeah yeah. Cronenberg was more like, Oh, we want to make sure they have time to get in and have a seat, get their popcorn so they can see that our signature was special effect. Cardona is more like, we don't want them to leave. We need to They've just set down make sure that they're getting all the action possible. They need to know that this film is just going to be NonStop.
Beast man murder within thirteen seconds, yes, but then okay, so we cut to a wrestling match, and that's what we're gonna be watching, or at least what we're gonna try to watch, because it has credits playing over it. I was immediately complaining about this because we can't see the wrestling. The screen is just full of credits in the you know, the dripping blood font and they're covering up the action. But upon watching this scene a second time, I realize there may be a reason that they are not letting us get a good look at anything, that they're putting the credits over the wrestling, and it's because I think this scene is a footage double dip. This is the wrestling match we see later in the movie between between Gloria Venus and Golden Ruby and La Gasela the Gazelle and I can't remember the other wrestler's name, but it's the tag team match. And it's clear that it's a double dip because this scene contains characters who won't be introduced until later in the film.
Ah good aye, good eye. I didn't catch this myself when I first started watching the picture.
Yeah, I didn't either. So we see Golden Ruby in it, she'll arrive later in the movie. We see the detectives in it, kind of like hooting at the action. And I think it's funny because didn't we just talk about movies that do this, that show you later scenes from the movie, specifically action scenes during the opening credits like Thrilling Bloody Sword and all Monsters.
Attack, Yep, yep, we have. This does pop up from time to time, and in cases like that, they'll often show off signature special effects from later on in the picture. In the opening scene. It's like if you were watching Scanners and the opening credits to Scanners showed our hero's head exploding at the end of Scanners, you know, like it's sometimes that bad. The Thrilling Bloody Sword. Yeah, it gives away some of the coolest stuff, I guess, just saying hey, stick around because you're going to get to see this without words in front of it later on. And then of course there are some really there are some other ridiculous examples of it. It's like one of the releases of pod People which we also talked about on the show, features a footage from an entirely different film, Galaxy Invader.
That's right, one of those Don Dollar movies, the Marilyn Special.
Yeah, so all told, I would say this is maybe weirdly effective since the footage they're using feel it kind of has a generic vibe to it. Anyway, you don't know who these characters are yet, so for the most part, they're just random wrestlers are random dudes in suits, and it doesn't reveal a monster, a major special effect, or a major plot point.
That's right. So I didn't catch it until I was looking closely the second time. But there is one character who stands out in the footage you see behind the credits, and I think this is intentional because she is our heroin for the film. One of the wrestlers in this match is the brave, beautiful, bone crushingly mighty Gloria Venus, played by Lorraino of Alaskaz. And I like how even in the opening credits, while she's so this is a tag te match, we see her first where she's like at the ropes, she's watching the match in front of her. She's not even fighting yet. She's about to come in and open a can here, but she's still got that signature facial expression of the kind of slightly inappropriate aloof amusement.
Yeah, and she's not touching the tag rope. But then again, I'm now that I say that, I'm not sure Lucha Libre has or had a tag rope.
So what is a tag rope?
They're like these little I didn't know they existed for the longest, But if you watch the tag matches, especially like American tag matches, there are these like little ropes on top of the turn buckle that the the wrestler who's not tagged in the other member of the tag team has to be touching so that they can't just run around on the ring apron and sometimes the raffle, you know, get onto him and tell them to touch the tag ropes. But I don't know, that might not be a thing in legit.
But they violate this all the time, right, don't They just kind of like run in when they're not supposed to.
I mean, that's why I have rules, so they could they broke good by the bad guys.
Okay, but of course Gloria. Gloria wins this match and as with most of the fight scenes in this movie, there are shots where Loraine vel Esquez is replaced by an incredibly obvious double doesn't look anything like her.
Yeah. Yeah, they have some some real grapplers on hand to do these stunts.
Yeah, I think they try to accomplish it, especially by giving her really big hair, which Gloria Venus has.
Yeah, and we should also describe Gloria Venus's wrestling attire because you might if you've not seen this film or seeing stills from it, you might imagine, you know, this this beautiful, stunning Mexican actress in some sort of like colorful I don't know. Maybe it's maybe it's flower theme, maybe it's space theme. No, it's like a gray, full body jumpsive that you're wearing, I mean, not particularly exciting.
It's in black and white, so I don't know what color it would have been, but it does appear to be one single solid color.
Yeah, maybe it's so like in real life it would be a real floral color. I guess that would fit. But yeah, there's no designs on it or anything. It's just a full body suit. And maybe that makes the I mean, everybody's costume is like that, like this in these sequences, very drab outfits going on here. I don't see any sequence or sparkles.
Oh, but I wanted to point out there is one shot of her that's definitely lorraina of Alaska's. It's not the stunt double, and it's one where she's doing some kind of strange submission hold where she like stretches her opponent's arms out in opposite directions. And I was trying to think, what is this? Is this a real move? What is this move called?
I couldn't find exactly what this is, but Lucha Libre especially has a ton of crazy submission holds. They always have all sorts of things, like some things that are rooted more or less in actual grappling and actual wrestling, but then it goes crazy from there. There's all sorts of stuff where like people are, you know, being suspended upside down or they're made into a human pendulum or something. So this one's not even that wacky, but it and it has similar vibes with the number of other sort of twisty like step over fold the legs sort of holds. I found one looking around on Lucha wiki that looked similar called luck constida, but it's not a one hundred percent match like it has a little bit more step over. So maybe they had something picked out something and they kind of adapted it so that Gloria here, again played by a non wrestler, could stand in and do it. Also, it's worth noting that this is a submission hold where you can see both both individuals faces. Both wrestlers faces are present, which heightens the drama, which is not always a concern in lucha, but is often a concern in wrestling in general. And for a film, obviously you want you want those facial expressions, especially the facial expression of your your hero here.
That's a good point. I'm glad we have your your wrestling expertise to consult when doing like this.
I'm no expert.
Well not might your relative expertise compared to me, I wouldn't have even thought about the faces. That totally makes sense. But anyway, after the match, Gloria Gloria Venus wins and she returns to her locker room accompanied by her sister Alice, and Gloria and Alice both have such big hair. Alice's hair here is like a gorgeous, glossy motorcycle helmet.
It really is. Yeah, this is I get. This was the style of the day, right. I mean you look at like college yearbooks and high school yearbooks in this era, and this is the hairstyle for women.
I don't know what you call this hairstyle. So it's like straight hair, but it's like gigantic, it's like helmet sized. It's a great look. The sixties were amazing. So we learn from their conversation that Gloria venus. She says, I would hate to be thought of as a braggart, but no woman has ever pinned me, isues, so she is the undisputed champ. And we learn that Alice is not a fighter like Gloria. She says if she were in Gloria's line of work, she would be afraid of getting her arm broken. But they have a good relationship. It looks like they're going to head out to dinner together after the match, so they're close. Then let's cut straight from that to some sci fi horror. We go to a different scene. Here there is a person lying on an operating table strapped with a ventilator mask and all these black hoses running to it while two creepy doctors in surgical masks lean over the patient with a nervous eagerness. And so these two guys. One is an imposing, taller boss doctor with a piercing glare and a sonorous voice, and then there is a cringing, shorter hinch doctor to assist him and to sort of flatter his ego.
Yeah, it's clear the taller doctor is the titular doctor of doom. I didn't know you could get a doctorate in doom, but he did.
He specialized in doom studies at Moreau University. So they say, you know, they're ready for the surgery now, So they paint a circle on the person's shaved scalp, and then they bring in a second person. So they're like lining up these two bodies on operating tables next to each other. Here we get a lot of close ups on rubber gloves and electrodes and stuff like that to let us know that mad science is taking place. But whatever it is they're trying to do here doesn't work out. We get sad orchestral music and the lead doctor says another failure. He's clearly dejected. And here we get some exposition what's going on here? Is your standard brain transplant. I think they were trying to take out a random woman's brain and then transplant it into a man's body. But that doesn't make sense based on some other things they say later. So they talk about like putting it in his body, but then they're also saying that this operation will only work with women's brains. I guess because women's brains are better suit for it for some reason.
Well, it's because females are strong as hell. They they basically say this later on. It's like the female brain is just more resilient, it's tougher.
Yeah, okay, so there's only women's brains will work. But they also I'm not clear why are they doing this. Did the man that they're trying to transplant into not have a brain of his own? Why did he need a new brain? H They explain that it is the fourth time they have attempted this type of procedure and it has failed every time.
Yeah, I don't get the impression they're trying to help anyone. They're just they just got to be first. They're trying to break new ground and become underground surgical legends. I guess.
But what's going to happen to the to the patient number one's brain. If he gets a new brain transplanted into his head, where does his Is it a brain swapp Does his brain go to her head?
Maybe one brain's just going in the trash? I don't know.
Okay, but the Hinch doctor here has an amazing theory for why the operation has not been a success. He starts hypothesized, saying that the women's brains they've been trying to transplant have not been smart enough to survive the operation, and they need to stop kidnapping women with dumb brains and instead try to kidnap smart women to get their smart brains. All right, all right, very interesting, and the boss doctor seems convinced they should try it, but their conversation is interrupted by kind of besteal growls what's this? And the boss doctor says, Gomar is acting up again? Gomar? What's Gomar? Well, here we introduced the second sci fi theme adjacent to the first. So this is a wrestling movie. It has brain transplants, but as we've alluded to, it is also a Doctor Moreau style beast man movie. So the monster we saw attack the lady in the opening thirteen seconds is Gomar. From what I gather, he is a gorilla human hybrid created by the boss doctor here by transplanting a gorilla's brain into a man's body.
Yep, that seems to be the case. So this was like patient A in this effort. This was the first success, and they keep him around because he's useful.
But by the way, there's just a set note here. To get to Gomar's cage, they have to go down in a basement full of cardboard boxes and upside down chairs, wild upside down chairs.
I got a.
Picture for you to look at here. There's like at least ten upside down chairs. What's going on?
I mean at times I thought, well, maybe Gomar has been down there throwing chairs around, but he's not actually in this room, right, This is just like a store room.
Yeah, it's like the room that gives access to his cage.
It kept making me think about the Gilda Radner skit from It came from Hollywood, in which there's a radio program talking about an escape gorilla and she starts frantically piling everything in her living room up against the windows and doors. But that doesn't actually prevent an explanation for what we see here.
No, So I just don't understand it. Maybe that's just how they store their extra chairs at the Mad Science Lab.
Yeah, or even maybe it's just a case where like set decoration, like we're so used to seeing the wall of cardboard boxes in films, like that's a that's a standard you need to create a storeroom environment. Just pack, get some empty boxes, pile them up, start filming. And so they're doing a little bit of this, but then they're getting there a little chewos here. They're like, let's get some other shapes in there. One thing that I like about the Mad Science Chamber is that they do a pretty good job of like, you know, you have a lot of stuff going on, but also the shadows of the stuff in the background, and in black and white, it tends to play really well.
I agree. Yes, this movie actually does a lot of scenes with good shadows. So anyway, they go down to meet with Gomar, they give him some row on meat. They say he's uh I think. They explain he's slowly transforming from half man, half gorilla into full gorilla and the only reason the doctor retains control over him for the moment is because he has Gomar in a hypnotic state, and he fears that he will soon lose all control over Gomar.
Yeah, this is all tremendous because on one hand, first of all, you have this movie is telling us that if you transplant a gorilla's brain into a human body, not only is this a success, but it will gradually transform the body into the body of a gorilla. Yes, and then on top of that, they're just feeding this gorilla just big bloody chunks of meat and bone. Gorillas don't eat big chunks of meat, so they should be throwing in a whole bunch of like vegetables and stuff.
Yeah, give that gorilla some fruits and stuff.
Yeah, I guess it just wouldn't be as scary if Gomar is sitting there chewing on a big head of cabbage.
But so in this scene we get the doctor muttering. He says, I must trendsplant a human brain into another human being. That's the goal I've set for myself. You know, he's self directed in his ambitions. He picks a project and sticks with it.
That's one of my favorite lines for in the film. That's the goal I've set for myself.
Oh, there's a lot of good lines like that we will get to many more. But here's the part where they explained that the experiments have to be done on women because women's brains react better than men's brains to brain transplantation. But then I wonder, well, wait a minute, how would he know that because all of his patients have died during the procedure.
Well, I guess maybe they're dying slower when they were working with men. I'm not sure.
Okay, So here they agree on the theory of the Hinch doctor that they need to find a smart brain to use in the next experiment. So we get a scene transition, you know, newspaper seller saying extra extra, another woman murdered by the mad doctor. So this is the big headline in town. Then we cut inside a building that is it looks I mean, it looks just kind of like a house. It's like a living room that has been converted into a laboratory with a bunch of microscopes and chemistry re equipment and people in lab coats and oh, what do you know? One of the people here in lab coats is Alice, the sister of Gloria Venus. Uh but uh, oh wait a second, are you already putting two and two together. She's a scientist, and I think the filmmakers may be suggesting that she has a smart brain.
I believe so. Also, I want to note that this living room like a laboratory set. This is your saying science lab as opposed to the mad science lab we saw earlier. So I think they put a lot of thought into this. It's like, we've got to transition to another science lab, but it needs to We need a different layout. It needs to be brighter, it needs to be a little more inviting, multiple people. Nobody's being victimized, that's right.
Yeah, this one's more cozy than the other one. But even in the science lab, it seems that the latest murder by the mad doctor has everyone kind of in a buzz, and Alice wants to know more about it. She sends out one of her colleagues to buy her a newspaper so she can learn more, and then into the scene comes the Professor, one of my favorite characters. This is the guy who runs this nonspecific laboratory. He is a timid, soft spoken bookish man in a vest and tie with thick eyeglasses, and I loved this character, especially in the English dub because, as I mentioned earlier, they give him something pretty close to James Mason voice, and his scenes for this reason are almost uniformly hilarious.
Yeah, and it's a great, great look too, like he's always looking down, rarely making eye contact with the people he's talking to, very meek, and when he does look up, especially if he happens to glance in the direction of the camera, he's got really thick glasses, so you get like that distortion of the eyes. It's great. Like he's not portrayed as a straight up comic character, but I guess there's sort of you know, he's a little bit bumbling and likable and just overly sensitive and concerned.
He's got a little touch of who's that guy in trailer park bowl is with the thick glass what's the.
Name is it? Bubbles? Yeah right, okay, yeah, yeah, definitely a similar visual effect going on.
But he walks up to Alice and he's like, ooh, it's terrible out of stealing everyone's brains out there, and yeah, did you go out last night?
Alice?
And she says she went out to watch her sister's wrestling match, and then she goes, have you ever been to a wrestling match, professor, And.
Oh no, simply couldn't bear it. I poor violence, It disgusts me.
And she tries to real young yaker here.
Yeah, she tries to defend wrestling. She's like, it's a fantastic sports, sir, I think you'd enjoy it once you saw it. And well, he's not interested in wrestling, but what he is way too interested in is Alice's personal life. He starts in on like how could.
You how could you be walking out alone together without an escort?
And he starts, you know, telling her she shouldn't have stayed out late last night, not without a man to help her get home safely.
You know all this, and have you not read about the man doctor? It's really reckless.
And uh, and she she just jokes about it. She's like, well I wear my little rabbit's foot, you know. And he just won't shut up. He's like, he starts explaining how it makes him so angry to hear a girl joke about a matter as dreadful as this and not take safety seriously. Uh, and then he gets distracted by another lab tech who's like, you know, a professor the you know, the blood you ordered last week has arrived and so he's going to go take care of that. But then he he has on a side to say like, wow.
I say more to you about this later.
No, yeah, real, real Michael Scott levels of wandering around the office here, not really doing anything but but just pestering the employees.
But Alice doesn't seem all that annoyed. She just ignores him completely. And then we get another scene with a news report to trans transition between things, and this is a scene where the English dub once again was great. The newscaster says, reports showed that these nocturnal acts are continuing and police are still accusing that criminal who's caused so much public discussion due to his actions. He's been named the mad Doctor. Oh but then this is the part where I think we mentioned this earlier. So he says, the woman he killed last night is in the morgue. She was found early this morning, and as always happened, police found Marx showing that the brain had been removed from the unfortunate girl's body.
Well, I mean, I guess we saw the mark being made on one of the bodies and the surgical proceedings earlier. So the little painting rush. Yeah, yeah, so I guess we know what it would look like.
That's how they knew the brain had been removed.
Okay, yeah.
Anyway, the mad doctor's identity remains a mystery. The case is still unsolved. But here we meet a couple more main characters, the police detectives, and so this is Armando Armando. Wait is the actor or the character or Armando Silvestri.
I think, oh goodness, Silvestria is the actor?
Okay, correctly, Well so I think in the Spanish version he's called Armando Campos, but in the English dub he's called Mike and his associate is named Tommy, so it's Mike and Tommy. In the English dub. Tommy says, you know, they're really looking into it. He says, they investigated all the doctors in the medical profession and that got nowhere. Yeah, that is air.
I love that because it's like, presumably we're in Mexico City and they have spoken to all the doctors in Mexico City. That's amazing.
We interrogated all the doctors. And then there's a there's a comic bit where they're like, okay, well we still haven't caught him. And then Tommy is like, oh, I've got to go. I've got to go call my grandma, make sure she doesn't go out tonight. But then he gets on the phone, he's like, she's she's quite deaf, and he's like, Grandma, stay inside tonight.
I can't help but feel this with somebody's stand up debt right here, maybe maybe Tommy's stand up debt in real life, kind of a new heart vibe to it.
Then from here, whoa, we get to a scene with the bad guys, sort of a convention of all the bad guys, the mad doctor and his assistant. They appear in masked costumes. Now, remember when we saw them before, they were in surgical garbs, so they had caps and surgical masks on. And now they are wearing masks almost like inquisitors or like lucha masks, I guess, but much creepier, kind of like ghost versions. They look hideously unsettling.
Yeah, and in this we're getting a better look at the full operation. Here we've got hooded doctors with secret identities. We've got Gomar, the mutant ape man. And then we have like a whole table or like a whole barrage of heavies here, presumably like criminal underworld characters that are working for the doctor. So this operation seems well funded because these guys are not doing this for free. I guess the Mad Doctor's paying them. I can't imagine what else is in it for them.
Oh yeah, I'm sure he's paying them. In fact, he says later, he's like, you know, I reward my employees, well, the ones who are loyal to me. After he's complaining that he had to execute a traitor who was going to reveal his identity.
Yeah, or maybe this is like an underground pharmaceutical company and the other chair people on the board.
So anyway, the Mad Doctor says his experiments cannot be delayed. They must bring him another woman with a brain immediately, and the Hinchman complained, they're like, Boss, the police are watching all the highways and searching all cars. We can't get you a person with a brain. And he just says, silence, You're going to do exactly as I order you. And he says they don't have to worry about the police because Gomar is going to go with them, And the Mad Doctor has upgraded Gomar with special equipment so that even bullets will be unable to stop him.
Oh, and I got excited when I heard this because I had no idea where this was going. How are they gonna upgrade Gomar?
Oh they got a Gomar's upgrade is fantastic.
Mm hmm.
Okay, we'll get to that in the second. But who are they supposed to kidnap? The hand off a picture to the hnchman and oh no, it's a picture of Alice. My heart sank upon seeing this. But then there was something of some very funny timing with a music sting here, because you might expect a sting immediately upon revelation of the photo, but instead they like, show the photo and then there's a two to three second delay and then the dun, dun dun. So I wonder if they were thinking maybe we might need a minute to recognize who was in the picture.
I'm not sure, all right, So things are not looking good for Alice at this point. We know where this is headed, right.
So Alice gets kidnapped. We see her working late at the last doing chemistry. The professor shows up to pester her some more about how she shouldn't go home alone, and she ignores him and leaves, but uh oh, what's this? We see that she forgot her lucky Rabbit's foot.
It's like the.
Professor examines it. It's hanging there on a coat hook. And then some creeps in suits run up behind Alice on the sidewalk. They grab her, they throw her into a taxi. The I guess the taxis at this place in time. I'll have this pattern of triangles on them, which head on kind of looks like the car has teeth. I like that.
Yeah, yeah, Like maybe this might be an accident of black and light here, like maybe it's red and white. I think that would probably make more sense. But maybe it's black and white in real life. I don't know.
But then we come upon an action scene which is excellent. So what's going on with Gomar? What's the Gomar upgrade? Do you want to describe it?
Rob Oh? Sure, Gomar has been updated with body armor. And when I say body armor, I don't mean like some sort of like military modern tech. I'm talking like he has like play like it's kind of like scale mail on his body, and then this big creepy metal mask over his head. The main thing that I instantly compared it to is the robot in the Phantom Creep starring Bella Lagosi that has a tremendous robot costume that doesn't quite look like a robot. It looks like it's hideous and demonic, and this has similar vibes like the robot from Phantom Creeps and Armored Gomar could be a tag team.
So the police tried to stop the Henchman from kidnapping Alice. They stop the car, but Gomar gets out in his suit of armor and his mask which is so his like golden mask, super creepy looking. He gets out, he fights all the police. He beats him up. I think he kills several of them. He body slams them and so forth, and then gets back in the taxi and they head off to the Mad Doctor's lab, as happens multiple times in the movie. When they get back, Gomar is just standing there in his armor, and the Mad Doctor says, you did a good job. Gomar.
Yes. Say what you will about the Mad Doctor here and the way he conducts his business, but he has a lot of positive reinforcement here for Gomar. He's constantly reminding him you are doing a good job, and I appreciate it. I just want you to know, Gomar. Sometimes I don't take enough time to tell you this, but I appreciate what you're doing and I love you. It's true.
Onto the procedure, they're going to try to do another brain transplant. Unfortunately, despite her very smart brain, Alice does not survive the brain transplant surgery. So they try again. They fail and Alice dies in the process tragically. And then the sidekick doctor comes up with a new idea. He says, actually, maybe what we needed was not a smart brain, but a brain with some kind of toughness, athleticism, endurance, a brain from the kind of woman who could both dole out in withstand the most punishing of suplexes and pile drivers. But where could we expect to find a brain of this kind?
We know where this is going as well.
Yeah, that's all right. So the mad doctor hears this, he gets a look of sadistic inspiration. He clearly has an idea for how to proceed now here we uh, there's there's further investigation. We go back to the cops. They you know, they're following up on the death of Alice, and the police figure out that she has a sister. Everything's coming together here. So the two detectives, Mike and Tommy, they go to inform Glory Venus at the wrestling gym, and this will introduce the wrestling gym as a setting where many other scenes occur. There's always like a lot of activity going on in the gym.
Yeah, there's a lot of independent workouts going on. Some some women are doing like setup, some are doing other types of like calisthenics, and then there's always at least a couple of women that are doing some some grapple sessions as well, some takedowns and some lock ups.
So, of course Gloria Venus is horrified to find out that her sister has killed. She has to go in to identify the body and they the police, are trying to find out anything they can. They end up interrogating the professor from the chemistry lab about what happened, and he oh god, there was a line that made me laugh. So he goes up to Gloria Venus and.
The professor is like, I can't tell you how sorry I feel Gloria about how is his death?
I mean, like maybe she thought he'd been talking about, you know, how far away she had to park from the building or something.
Yeah, but he's yeah, he's like he's really taking this hard. The professors really shook up, but.
For this, so he tries to be helpful. He's like, please, do not hesitate to call upon me if you need anything at all, Gloria, do not call the professor just I don't think she's gonna Yeah, but she, Gloria Venus once again kind of ignores him, and she vows to find the killer and get revenge. So here we i'd say our Act one is complete. This is our set up up.
Yeah, yeah, we know what everyone wants here. Mad Doctor wants wants a brain and it's probably gonna be vitness. It's going to be Gloria Venus's brain that he goes after, and Gloria Venus wants vengeance.
Right, So the mad Doctor sets his henchmen about to find women with incredible physical strength and stamina.
Uh.
And here we cut back to the Lucidora Gym where all the grapples are going on, and we let's see several things happen. We in act too, we meet a new character. They introduce a character named Golden Ruby. She is I think she's coming from the States maybe, but she's like entering the circuit for some reason.
Yeah, you know, I guess it's kind of like a territory sort of thing. So she's come down here to, you know, away from the American wrestling territories to work in Mexico for a little bit. And the whole vibe that we've seen thus far of the luchadora the scene here in this film is that it's just everyone's really pleasant. They're very support of each other, They're protective of each other. There's not really a technico rudo baby faced heel scenario going on here. Everybody's on the same team and they just want to get in there and compete. It has a real sports feel. I guess I agree like that. Yeah, the vibe between all of the luchadoras is wonderful. They're all kind of supportive of each other and they work together. There's one scene where this horrible like male wrestler comes into their gym and he's like, give me those weights and like punches one of them. I guess, yeah, he's like, I want that equipment and then just attacks them and then they all gang up and they just.
Beat him down. It is a righteous rudo beat down, and I love it.
Yeah, it's a great scene because our two main luchadora characters are standing in the background and we see all the actual luchadoras that are in the film. They're the ones that jump in and start grabbing and flipping this guy. I think somebody puts him in a full nelson and somebody drop kicks in, and then there's just a huge pile up on him, like one does a jumping pin and then everyone else piles on top of that. And Gloria Venus and in Ruby they just have a nice laugh at this.
But then they also get to bond, like they become fast friends. Because there's a scene right after this. Ruby clearly admires Gloria Vinas. She's like, you know, you're the greatest. You're just I wish I could be a wrestler like you, and Gloria Venus is like, oh no, you're great too, and then Golden Ruby asks her, what why do you have such a sad look in your eye despite being you know, despite being a wrestling machine. And then Gloria Venus says, it's just something I can't forget. My sister, she was murdered three nights ago. It's like would you expect her to forget.
It by now?
But anyway, they decide to be friends, and they decide Golden Ruby is going to move into Gloria's apartment.
Makes sense. Makes sense.
Now after this we get to watch a full on Luchadora match, and if this is the tag team match that played under the open credits, now we get to finally look at it. So it's Gloria Venus and Golden Ruby as a team versus the Gazelle and Bertha Galindo.
Yeah, and this was this was interesting to watch. Now for my taste, I would say that the actual lucha wrestling we see in Santo and the Treasure of Dracula is better and more entertaining. This wrestling, I don't know, It's hard for me to make out exactly how to feel about. I think like, on one hand, what they show us here again has no rudo technico distinction. There's no good guys or bad guys. So it has a you know, very has that real sports feel to it that certainly fits the vibe of the film, because again, this is not a film about superhero luchadors or Luchadora's saving the day. This is about like normal people, like they're just professionals working in a a in a real world scenario, and they just happen to fall into this this sci fi speculative plot line. And in terms of like trying to compare the wrestling that we're seeing here to existing footage, that's where you really run into some problems. And I hadn't really looked into this all that much before. But and I could be very wrong in this, because again I'm not an expert. But when I go looking around for non movie Lucha footage from before, say, the nineteen eighties, or even any indications that some of the biggest annual Luca shows of the year, like going back to like sixty two and I'm back in the fifties as well, any indication that those were recorded, I don't get anything. And then I looked a little deeper and I found there's an individual that on social media Luca blog, and Luca blog is also the blog it's a great English language Luca source. This individual points out that while there was Luca on TV in the nineteen fifties, it doesn't seem like that footage has ever turned up, so I don't know if it's lost, if it needs to be restored or what. I know that with some of those older TV stations, like tapes were reused and stuff was just destroyed and without any really forethought in terms of you know, setting aside for the future. And I don't know, maybe some of these big shows weren't even recorded. Maybe they're just you know, big gate live events. So what I'm trying to get to is like it's hard to compare this to what actual pure Lujah Libre was like and this time period, because I don't think that we have much footage outside of Luca films of male or female performers. And yeah, so some of the earliest Luca footage we have maybe from these films from going back into the nineteen fifties. I think the oldest Luca film in existence was the nineteen fifty two's Hurricane Ramirez. That's the name of the wrestler that is the star of it. So this was pre Santo, but I think Santo Pictures picked up not long after this, so I don't know. I find that kind of interesting to think of, like these are films about Lujah do and luchadors going up against monsters and scientists and and also like you know, criminal masterbinds and that sort of thing very much in the in the vein of the old serial adventures. But it also seems like that this that these films are also some of the only examples we have of what of what Lucia Libra looked like at the time. Yeah, but at any rate, we see some grapples, there's some takedowns, there's you know, it's some fun action going on in the ring, and it gets it across for the audience what's going on here.
And we get to see characters in the audience in the scene. So both the police detectives Mike and Tommy, and the professor come to watch, even though despite what the professor said, he's there at the match, and on the close ups of the professor he looks hilarious.
Yeah. Yeah, these are definitely some of those scenes where you get that the effect of the big thick glasses making his eyes look enormous.
And he does he does look kind of queasy observing the brutal violence.
Yeah, everyone around him is yelling and whot and and getting into it, and he is not so much. He's just quietly observing it, and you know, maybe it's making him feel bad.
Here's another thing that you might understand. I didn't. Why are the detectives When they show up. Tommy encourages Mike to start booing, and they just boo as if that's like understood as something you're just supposed to do during the match, But like, why are they booing and who are they booing at? Were you just supposed to boo in these matches?
I mean, I'm guessing that you the booing would be for the bad guys, for the rudos, and you're cheering for the technicos. I mean that's the clear division, the moral division that would take place, and the passion play that you're observing in the ring. But again, we don't really have anything to indicate that either team is good or bad. They're just all working ladies doing their jobs up there.
Well, the professor visits the locker room after so Gloria and Ruby I think they win. They make a great tag team. And then the professor comes to visit them in the locker room. I guess them something I don't remember what. The first thing they're like, oh, hey, did you like the fight? Professor?
He's like, nah, I detest such spectacles, absolutely horrible.
And then the detectives come in, and there's a funny moment when Ruby Golden Ruby shakes hands with Tommy, the short detective. She like crushes his hand and he buckles at the knees and he is immediately in love.
Yeah.
Yeah, And then we see the two wrestlers and the two detectives. They go out for supper and dancing after this. So love is in the air.
And you really do think you're going to go and see this date like it sounds like it could be fun. We've learned more about these characters. We'll get more of this Tommy and Ruby romance that is budding.
No, we don't see that at all'll be cut straight to Gloria and Ruby asleep in bed, So I guess just skip over that. The Mad Doctor's goons show up. This is the I think we mentioned the scene earlier. They show up to like creep in through the window and kidnap them, I think, But they hear them coming and then they pretend to be asleep but then jump out and issue a brutal walloping on the bad guys.
Oh yeah, they just beat the tar out of them. They just like take them down. It's like two hands that punch in at a time right in the face. They just drive them out. They're out the windows.
They're like kicking them in the butt as they're going out the windows.
So it's very satisfying.
But then we see the henchmen go back to the mad Doctor and they're like, wellhy didn't you tell us those two girls were wrestlers. But after this, the police come up with the plan. The detectives are like, I know those men are going to come and try to kidnap you again because they want your brains obviously, So let's use the U two luchadoras as bait to draw out the mad doctor, you know. So we'll let you get kidnapped and then we'll follow close behind you and that way we'll catch him.
All right, pretty standard, but seems all right. I mean, this is the first point in the picture there where I was like, really, our luchadors are gonna be bait, like they're the tough ones. But all right, we'll go with it.
Well, I don't know it makes sense because they're the tough ones. I thought that was the whole one.
That's true. Yeah, well that's true as well. I guess the thing is like This is the sort of scheme that would be employed in various other sort of serial action pictures of the day, you can imagine. So it feels like they're reusing a formula here. But yeah, like you say, it makes sense, and they're tough. They can stand up for themselves when things inevitably go wrong.
Right, So they go out walking after midnight and then there comes here comes Gomar in his armor and he like grabs them. They get in the car just you know, the kneeja brains ladies. So they speed away to the Mad Doctor's secret hideout, pursued by the detectives once again. When everybody's gathered here in the Mad Doctor's lab, the Mad Doctor in his super creepy inquisitorhood, he's like, you did an excellent job, Gomar, excellent work. And Mike and Tommy track them down. They show up, They follow the car and they show up. They fight the Mad Doctor's henchman, but they are out numbered. Mike and Tommy not doing so hot. I mean, they put up a fight, but there's too many henchmen. Things look bad until Gloria and Ruby wake up. They were like laying on these operating tables and then they come to, they run in, beat up the henchmen and rescue the detectives.
Yeah, so you end up taking back some of what I said here because they do whit more butt here and we get a nice Scooby Doo moment here.
That's right. So they catch not the mad Doctor, but the Hinch Doctor, the second doctor, and they unmask him to reveal Wait a minute, we know this man. It's Boris, one of the guys who worked at the chemistry lab with Alice.
Hmmm, all right, so now we're beginning to see how things come together here. Yeah.
So then there is a police interrogation scene. I don't think this is how they do interrogations in real life, but like every character in the movie is in this room. They're all in the same room. All of the captured Mad Doctor henchmen are in the room, both detectives, the detective's boss, the professor, Gloria, and Ruby. Everybody's here.
Well, they just didn't have one way glass technology yet, I guess.
Yeah. So they initially think that this guy is the mad Doctor, but the professor suggests otherwise. They say, you know what, the professor.
Is like, he's not the real mad Doctor.
He must be covering up for him who's the real mad Doctor.
I don't know why he suspects this, but the cops just kind of go with it, and they interrogate him on that, and Boris is about to reveal the real Mad Doctor's identity when he suddenly is like oh, and he gasps and collapses. So we get some autopsy results, and we learned that Boris was killed by some kind of tiny weapon, almost like a James Bond movie kind of weapon, a cylinder that fires a poison needle into the heart when someone bites down on it. So the true Mad Doctor, we find out, was in the room with them and had a cylinder in his mouth and must have bit down on the cylinder to shoot the poison needle into Boris's heart and then spit the cylinder out somewhere.
All right, I like it. It's complicated, but but yeah, we have some spy gadgetry going on here.
And we also learned that the real Mad Doctor escaped through a secret passageway with Gomar when the when the police came in, Yeah, footage not found, right, So they say, oh, we come back. We see the mad Doctor in his disguise and he's talking to his main hinchman, I guess, the one that the police didn't catch, and he says, you know, Boris tried to turn me in, but he paid dearly for his treachery. Once again, I have made the police look like fools.
Rob.
I just know they're standing really close in the scene. Why, I don't know. They're in a big room and they're standing almost like right at each other.
Well, yeah, and it's a wide shot too. I guess it's the thing because you get used to seeing people having conversations way too close to each other in films, but oftentimes it's sort of that tighter shot here. You know, we could have had folks stand a little further back from each other here and it would have been fine.
Yeah, there's so much negative space, I wonder. Oh but anyway, He's like, okay, so I punish people who betray me, and the Hinchman's like, I'm no stool pigeon chief, I'm loyal. So what's next for the mad Doctor, Well, reorganize the gang. And then he thinks I'm gonna eliminate those pesky detectives. Mike and his stupid sidekick will die. And then these were some good things from the English stub. He says, I'm going to make a good trap, and then he says, I'm sure his death is not going to be pretty. But the way he says good trap makes me think, wait, did he make a trap before? That was like not a good trap?
You know, he's maybe he's just kind of building himself up. I'm going to make a good trap. I can do it. This is the goal I set for myself.
So after this, Mike and Tommy visit the Luchadora Gym and they give special watches to Gloria and Ruby, which are we find out are transponder watches so that they can always be found. And we learned that Mike and Tommy are wearing them too, so you can activate them and they'll produce like a homing signal.
So everybody's kind of engaged to each other now via side technology.
Yeah, when they give them out, Gloria is like, hey, these are cute. There's more a tall short romance humor with Ruby and Tommy. She's like, Oh, I couldn't stand to be lost from you, my five foot lightning bolt. But what is the Mad Doctor's trapp going to be? Well, the Professor calls the police. He calls up Mike and says he's got to arrange a meeting with the detectives. But then the camera pulls back to reveal that he's calling at gunpoint. There are some bad guys pointing guns at him, and it turns out the Mad Doctor's goons are using this as a setup to catch Mike and Tommy. So the Mad Doctor catches them. He's like, you have interfered with my work. Take them to the death chamber. So what's the death chamber? Well, first they have to walk through the basement that's got all the upside down chairs in it. But then they throw them in a chamber, which Rob how would you describe this contraption? I loved it all right.
So basically, we have the walls closing in here. This is one of the this is something we've seen in so many films, right, this is the trash compactor scene from Star Wars, you know, in Star Wars, and of course George Lucas was drawing on older cinematic traditions here, and we have two walls moving into to squash squash our heroes between them. Sometimes you get spikes thrown into the mix as well. And on the spike front, we do have a great example of that from Krawl. It was maybe not just two walls, but there was some spike action going on in that movie as well.
Yes, yes, the bandits who end up allying with Oh, Crolls, not the hero, Crolls, the bad guy whatever his name is, the hero.
No, crolls the planet.
Crols the planet. That's right, Yeah, No, the bandits who Alan Armstrong's buddies. Wait, it is Alan Armstrong, isn't it.
I remember, Yeah, Yeah, he's in there. He's inky.
Yeah, those guys. They end up in a spike room that's got spikes coming out of the walls.
Now. I had to look into this a little bit because I'm like, I wonder how far back this goes, And I'm not entirely sure. What's the first film to have walls moving in on our heroes? But it does show up in nineteen thirty five's The Raven. These are just blank walls that are going to squish our hero and the damsel in distress. But you also have red hot walls closing in. In Edgar Allan Poe's story The Pit in the Pendulum from eighteen forty two, So at the very least, I think we can safely say this is an idea that predates cinema. This film has its own unique take on it because we have a wall with spikes on one side and that's moving. On the other side, we have a stationary cage wall. But on the other side of that cage wall is Gomar, and Gomar is all riled up. He's reaching through the cage with his monster arms, trying to grab our hero. So you know, what are they gonna do. Are they gonna they're going to give in to Gomar and let him, you know, tear them to pieces, or are they gonna let the spikes skewer them? And if they don't make up their mind, they're going to get the worst of both worlds.
Right, So they are trapped between a spike wall and a Gomar place.
Yeah, just like the saying goes.
But then we remember that while the detectives originally presented these watches to Gloria and Ruby as like something that could save them, tables are turned because they need help. So the detectives radio Gloria and Ruby with their watches. They activate a sound beacon so that the luchadoras can track them down, and track them down they do. When the Luchadoras arrive at the lab, the lab is covered in cobwebs. Like, wait a minute, they were just they were just there. It seems like a day before and it didn't have any cobwebs.
Yeah. Yeah, these are some fast acting spiders, I guess. Yeah.
But Gloria and Ruby to the rescue. They beat up the Mad Doctor's thugs and they free the helpless cop boyfriends and they get into a big fight there. They're they're they're sort of fighting their way out of the hideout, and in the end, Gloria Venus throws acid into the Mad Doctor's face. He's still masked, but he gets the acid on him, and the Mad Doctor screams, and then there's like a there's suddenly a raging fire and they say, oh no, the Mad Doctor. He's done for. He's trapped in the spurning building. We have to escape. No time to find out the Mad Doctor's real identity before we leave.
But this is a big moment for Gloria. This is their first opportunity to actually physically strike out against the man who murdered her sister.
Right she's she's got her revenge, or so she thinks, and here you're sport. Spoiler warning, The Mad Doctor's identity reveal is coming in just a moment, so if you don't want to know it, you can you can pause here. But so we have Gomar comes to the rescue. Surprisingly, he shows up. He drags the mad Doctor out of the building, so the Mad Doctor is not killed in the fire, and then we we cut to another scene where the professor and the professor he's doing a phone call. He calls in to check on Gloria. He's like, hey, how are you feeling, and then he says strangely, he.
Says, well, I call it because I'd like to watch you wrestle again.
And she offers to send him tickets. He doesn't need tickets. He I don't know why he called. Then he's just like, I just want to see you wrestle. So he we learn he's going to do that, and then suddenly there's a reveal. He turns his head and one half of the Professor's face is scarred like two face in Batman, and he says, I want vengeance.
Yeah. Whole scene here is inside profile until he turns and takes his glasses off, and we see that that that he has in fact scarred by the acid, that the Professor all along has been the mad doctor. And like we said earlier on, you can kind of see this twist coming miles away.
There's no other character it really could have been that I can think.
Yeah, yeah, there wasn't a really they they did. They did some interesting things to try and throw you off the scent, but they never really developed or portrayed a proper additional suspect, Like who were we supposed to think it was Tommy? Now?
I mean the only other character I think you could have because you see him with a mask on. The only character who like fits the physical profile might have been Armando. Maybe you know Maya, but I don't know.
That it makes sense. There's no real evidence for that, you know, to be the case. So but still like seeing it coming not and knowing how it's going to roll out, it's still pretty great because Canado is terrific. He's been terrific the whole film as the Professor, but now he gets to go into just pure maniacal mode. Unmasked, half scarred, He's just a full blown super villain at this point and he's delightful.
Yeah, I love it. And now he's only using his non James Mason voice, he's only using the mad doctor voice, the deep sonorous version. So he announces his plan. He's going to take Gomar's physical strength. He's going to transplant it into the body of a luchadora so he can create a murderous, superhuman luchadora to destroy Gloria Venus.
So we're putting the medical goals on the back burner for the time being, and we're switching to vengeance mode here.
Yeah, and he's like doing monologues into the camera. He says, she'll blow her body to pieces, Yes, a little killing in the ring for all the audience to see. And then he did, you know, cackling laughter. But it makes me think he's still maybe like he might have been kind of sincere about his hatred of wrestling from that line, like maybe he's part of his goal is to get revenge on Gloria Venus, but the other part is to make the audience feel bad for watching wrestling.
Did you get out? Kind of because to carry out this plan of vengeance, and again, it's kind of an unwarranted vengeance because like, are you really allowed to have vengeance against the person who scarred you while you were trying to take their brain? I don't know. But at any rate, he's going to have to become a wrestling manager, a lucha libre manager, and wear a lucha libre mask in order to carry this out.
I don't know.
I think vengeance often works that way. I mean, okay, so Captain Ahab wants vengeance against Moby Dick, but he was trying to kill Moby Dick. He was the aggressor. He was, he was the initial attacker. I think that's just often how it is.
People.
It was your fault the whole time, but still you came out badly and now you want revenge.
There's a good point. It's a good point. And like we they have this is the mad quest for revenge. Now it's all encompassing. You know, Gloria Venus wanted vengeance, she swore vengeance, but she's still was keeping up her day j yeah, in her social life.
But so they do the procedure and they create the super luchadora named Vendetta, and so he tests her out. He says, like, destroy that table there, and she flips over the table and she's she's wearing Oh, this is now a masked luchadora. I don't think any of the luchadoras we've met so far have been masked.
No, they hadn't, and it's it's a pretty It's also the first costume we see that has any pizazz to it, because then the mask has like a lightning bolt on it. Lower face is revealed in the mask, and then we get kind of a sparkly looking cake, which is very jaunty, even if the basic jumpsuit underneath is the same gray jumpsuit that everyone else has.
All Right, so Vendetta is now on the scene, and we learned there's like a TV announcer saying, okay, she's called Vendetta. She's from Paris. Was there a big wrestling scene in Paris? Maybe there was.
I think there was wrestling. There was wrestling in France at some point. I'm not sure what was going on there in sixty two, but huh, okayber Andre the Giant came from France. That's true.
Yeah, I've just never heard of French wrestling before, but I guess it must have been a thing. But we learned that she challenges Gloria Venus for the championship, and there's gonna be The numbers here are fuzzy. They say first that they're fighting for a purse of two thousand, four hundred currency unspecified. They just say the number, and then later they say that the fight is for twenty five thousand dollars. Do you understand what's going on there?
I'm not sure. I mean, you know, I probably shouldn't pick this apart too much because also, like this is the main event. Vendetta is complete unknown, They're just gonna reveal her and now she has a main event slot over everybody else. She instantly gets a challenge for the championship. I guess I assume does.
The originally work like that, like you're not a rookie and you get to go fight stone cold or whatever?
Well, I mean, I guess it does kind of work like that sometimes, But even for the like the real sports feel we're going for here, there has to be some sort of build up, right, some sort of a win lost record established, but now we're going straight for it.
So there's a funny scene where they like sign the contract and oh, the Mad Doctor is there also wearing a Lucha mask for the contract signing scene, and he looks creepy in his his mask is teeth.
Yeah yeah, has kind of a skull vibe going on.
But we go to the match and when Vendetta enters the ring, she's just like kicking spectators in the face.
Yeah. So finally in this match we get that that proper rudo technico vibe going on. One wrestler is clearly the villain and the other is clearly the hero. One is honorable and the other one is just all fighting and nastiness. Wants you know, not only wants to hurt her opponent, but will hurt anyone else that gets in her way.
That's right, because we see Vendetta like suplexing the referee, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, just I think throws the referee.
Yeah, she eventually throws the referee out of the ring, and so oh he's Gloria done for. Well, ultimately, it's a movie where where Friendship comes to the rescue because Golden Ruby comes in to help her. She I don't know if she used the tag rope correctly, but Golden Ruby comes into the ring and together they beat up Vendetta.
Oh you know where this is completely no rules at this point. This is a straight up run. I mean that basically any order in the match has fallen apart. I mean, and that was that was the Professor's plan all along. Right, It's like he doesn't want her beat in the ring. He wants her killed in the ring.
Right, But ultimately this is not the final showdown. I kind of wish they had somehow found a way to do the final like ultimate showdown in the ring. Instead, the action moves elsewhere because the Mad Doctor has to run away, I think, because the police arrives. So he's like, oh no, and he runs away, and then he summons Vendetta to help him, and they both end up climbing a water tower and the police put like, you know, high beams on them. They put like lights up on them, and Mike climbs up the water tower to I guess, tell them to come down or something. But they start attacking Mike and they're like stomping on his fingers as he's hanging on for dear life. So what do they have to do. Well, they've got to they've got to shoot them. So Tommy shoots the Mad Doctor and Vendetta with a rifle and that's the end. I feel like that's kind of an unsatisfying ending to this. I wish they'd had a different kind of final confrontation.
Yeah, I absolutely agree. I feel like the ending here is the ultimate Week Week link because it ends up taking place outside the Ring after we've built up to that in ring encounter, and.
Then doesn't involve the main characters.
Yeah, it doesn't involve our lutadoras at all. It's just as police shooting the villains off a water tower. Yeah, so like our villains end up looking a bit dumber for having gone up there, and then it's just kind of they're just kind of dispatched with ease, and then it's the end of the picture. So I wish they had done something something a little different here at the end.
I agree. I think this movie overall is deserving of a much better ending confrontation. I feel like they could have found a way to make it all happen in the Ring, but I don't know.
Yeah, or if they had to go to one last location, I don't know, maybe a secondary layer, Maybe it's a they try to there's a getaway car, a submarine, I don't know. There's so many places you could go why the water tower.
Yeah, you're totally right, And then it wraps up so quick. After that, the mad doctor like falls to his death off the water tower, and I think the detective comes in and he says to Gloria Venus, it's all over. Now your sister has been avenged, the end, and that's it.
I do like that about a lot of these old pictures. When it's time to close up to the shop, they just turn the sign around and near out the door.
Well, I'm gonna say I really had a great time with this movie. Doctor Doomed tremendously fun.
Yeah, yeah, ending aside is a lot of fun, fun performers, well shot. Like we've been saying, you know, nice, nice, attractive black and white, because a lot of the film is about like creeping around in alleys and creeping all around in mad science layers. So the black and white fits it really well and they do a good job with it.
I think we have gone on really long about this one.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we may have to cut some of my diatribes there about Lucia Libra history there, but at any rate, it was fun to return to the world of lucha in this picture. So if you enjoyed this one and you didn't listen to our episode about Santo and the Treasure of Dracula, go back and listen to that one, because you'll probably enjoy it as well. Just a reminder that we're primarily a science podcast here. It's saying science for the most part, not mad science. And with it we have our core episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind publishing and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film. If you want to see a complete list of all the movies we've discussed on Weird House Cinema, well, you can go to a couple of places. I blog about these films at s Immuta music dot com. But also if you use letterbox, that's L E T E R B O x D dot com. We have a profile there. The profile is weird House. You can look us up. We have a list there and you can see all the all the movies we've covered, the poster arts cascading across the screen, and you can sort through them. You can look at them by by decade, by genre, that sort of thing. It's pretty fun to toy around with.
Huge thanks to our audio producer Jjposway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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