Certainly when it comes to really bad cinema, my hat goes off to the Mexican Wrestling/Horror genre. How could they not be super-cooly bad? I mean first off, they were made low budget in Mexico and were basically rip-offs of the Hollywood monster movies. Then they toss in Wrestling, because Mexicans love wrestling heros; who by the way are not always the best thespians in the world and wear a lot of masks. And finally, by the time they make it to us English-speaking audiences, the are dubbed (usually pretty awfully too), and if you get them from RHINO HOME VIDEO, they have some campy Rock 'n' Roll tunes tossed in.
The delema here, and the reason why I have not reviewed any Wrestling/Horror flicks here yet is because it's been so hard to pick one from the many there are to review. I mean Santo is certainly the coolest Mexican Wrestler, and he has fought everything from Zombies, Dracula, the infamous Aztec Mummy to Evil Brains and the King of Crime. In fact, he has so many movies, how could I pick just one.
So, for this review, I've decided to go with Wrestling Women, because as cool as Santo is, women wrestlers are more appealing than a big guy in a mask. And besides, there are fewer Wrestling Women movies to choose from. But which one of them to choose?
I decided to go with:
WRESTLING WOMEN VS THE AZTEC MUMMY
Why you might ask?
'Cause I love that crazy Aztec Mummy. It is a creature unique to the Mexican Horror Genre. Sure you've seen mummies, but the Aztec Mummy is big like Frankenstein, looks like a Zombie and can change into a bat like Dracula.
Also, the Aztec Mummy is not the really big baddie in this flick; in fact he doesn't show up until the last half hour or so. The real evil arch villian is The Black Dragon, an evil Fu Mancho-like basterd who is knocking off archelogists to get parts of a codex to get some treasure or something or other...but who cares about plot? When you have a evil oriental super villian, you know it's gonna get messy.
This Black Dragon has two judo wrestling daughters who take on our heros, Lorena and The Golden Rubi, in a grudge match.
The sad thing though, is that in Mexico, in the early '60s when this was made, apparently women still wrestled fully dressed in leotards...oh well.
Still this flick has all the bad dubbing and acting and camp you come to expect from Mexican Horror, and a wholly convoluted contrived plot. And as a bonus, if you have the RHINO release, you get a catchy Rock and Roll soundtrack that you will be humming along with for days...of course, the original version is likely to be a little more serious in it's presentation but is harder than hell to find except in it's original Spanish.
