Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamb and Hey, this is going to be an episode
Speaker 1: that originally aired three three, twenty twenty three. It is
Speaker 1: Renee Cardona's nineteen sixty three Luchadora film Doctor of Doom.
Speaker 1: It's full of mad science and a sprinkling of Luca
Speaker 1: action in there as well. We hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob.
Speaker 3: Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today we're going
Speaker 3: to be wrestling again. Because you may recall, if you've
Speaker 3: been listening to the show a while, there was a
Speaker 3: time long ago once in the world before that, I
Speaker 3: heard a voice whispering in the darkness, and I listen
Speaker 3: and it said to me, supernatural wrestling movies, and we
Speaker 3: of course that led to us covering Santo in the
Speaker 3: Treasure of Dracula, one of my favorite movies we've watched,
Speaker 3: pitting the ultimate good guy hero wrestler against the forces
Speaker 3: of Satan and the undead in the form of a actually,
Speaker 3: rather from what I call square, normal looking Dracula just
Speaker 3: kind of like Cape and you know the classic bell lego.
Speaker 3: See look right now it is time once again the
Speaker 3: voice has called out to us, and this time it said,
Speaker 3: not supernatural wrestling movies, but science fiction lucha libre.
Speaker 1: That's right, we're dipping back into the wild world of
Speaker 1: Mexican lucha libre cinema. And yeah, this movie is a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. We're going to be talking about Doctor
Speaker 1: of Doom from nineteen sixty three. It's a different beast
Speaker 1: and that yeah, it leans more ridiculous sci fi as
Speaker 1: opposed to ridiculous supernatural elements. And also, while Santo in
Speaker 1: the Treasure of Dracula was a Lucidor picture starring El
Speaker 1: Santo himself, this is a Lucidora picture focusing instead mostly
Speaker 1: on female wrestlers.
Speaker 3: Oh and what a treit it was to discover that
Speaker 3: there are science fiction lucha libre movies where the main
Speaker 3: luchadora is played by none other than Lorrain of Alaskaz,
Speaker 3: who you may remember from our episode on the movie
Speaker 3: Ship of Monsters, another one of my favorite films we've
Speaker 3: done on this show, Lorain of Alaskas in that played
Speaker 3: one of the two aliens sent to Earth to Find
Speaker 3: Earth's Greatest Hunks, and she was an absolute delight in
Speaker 3: that movie. I love her in this movie as well.
Speaker 3: She is our heroine, our butt kicking lucidora hero. So
Speaker 3: today's movie, the version of it I saw, was known
Speaker 3: with the English title Doctor of Doom. But I wanted
Speaker 3: to raise an issue right here at the beginning, because
Speaker 3: this movie is also known as Las Lucidoris contra el
Speaker 3: medico Asssino, meaning I guess the Lucidorus versus the killer
Speaker 3: doctor or versus the medical assassin. And there's a complication
Speaker 3: here with the fact that just before we started recording,
Speaker 3: I was looking around on the internet and I discovered
Speaker 3: that El Medico Assessino was also the name of an
Speaker 3: actual luchador. But I don't think he is in any
Speaker 3: way related to this movie, or if he is, I
Speaker 3: couldn't tell how he was related to the movie except
Speaker 3: in the overlapping idea of a killer doctor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because this film does not have outside of one
Speaker 1: dude who shows up, there's not a male wrestler. There's
Speaker 1: not a luchador proper in this film. So this guy,
Speaker 1: who I wasn't familiar with, is not part of the picture.
Speaker 1: So maybe it's just coincidence.
Speaker 3: I do remember there's a good scene where a male
Speaker 3: wrestler just gets beat up by a room full of
Speaker 3: lady wrestlers. I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, and there is a caveat there is a
Speaker 1: There is an actor in this film who was a wrestler.
Speaker 1: It may have been a wrestler at the time of
Speaker 1: the film. We'll get into that. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: none of the characters are male luchadors, and no male
Speaker 1: luchadors are showing up and saving the day. It's all
Speaker 1: up to the ladies. And of course other men will
Speaker 1: get into that in a second. But yeah, I wasn't
Speaker 1: familiar with this particular luchador, though there is. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: another guy I was familiar with. His name was doctor Cerebro,
Speaker 1: I think, and his Luca mask looked rather standard, except
Speaker 1: on the top it looked like there was an exposed brain,
Speaker 1: like he had had open cranium, you know, brain surgery.
Speaker 3: So he's just like going into the ring with brain exposed.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's that's frae. You're not supposed to
Speaker 1: believe that that's his actual brain up there, but that's
Speaker 1: the way his mask is decorated.
Speaker 3: So a lot of what was fun to me about
Speaker 3: Santo and the Treasure of Dracula was that sort of
Speaker 3: like ludicrous collision of the different genres, the fact that
Speaker 3: you are pitting a in one sense, very mundane but
Speaker 3: exciting sport with a charismatic hero Lucha libre, you know,
Speaker 3: Mexican wrestling with these supernatural monster themes, and this movie
Speaker 3: has exactly the same appeal. It pits you know, mundane,
Speaker 3: earthly wrestlers against a science fiction murderer who wants to
Speaker 3: steal people's brains for his ungodly experiments.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think the other interesting comparison to make is
Speaker 1: Santo and the Treasure of Dracula. Yes, you had absolute
Speaker 1: evil in Dracula, but then you have absolute goodness in
Speaker 1: the Ultimate Technico El Santo, who is so good and
Speaker 1: so capable, like it's never really in doubt who's going
Speaker 1: to come up on top. He's a superman, he's a
Speaker 1: living legend. And then as far as female characters go
Speaker 1: in that film, they're mostly just there to look beautiful
Speaker 1: and stand in the background. This picture is kind of
Speaker 1: it's interesting, you know, in the way that it sort
Speaker 1: of attempts to depict feminine strength because you know, on
Speaker 1: one hand, this is nineteen sixty three and it's an
Speaker 1: obvious genre picture, B movie. It's only going to do
Speaker 1: so much, and we end up with this weird mixture
Speaker 1: of female character traits both you know, very stereotypical, but
Speaker 1: then also you know, these are luchadoras. They're supposed to
Speaker 1: be strong, capable women.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, once again, I'd love Lorraine of Alaskas,
Speaker 3: and she's great as the heroin in this two thumbs up.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. However, it's still again, it's nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: so things are only going to be so progressive because
Speaker 1: despite the fact that the various female characters in the film,
Speaker 1: including a female scientist, you know, get to show that
Speaker 1: they're capable, the luchadoras get to beat up a bunch
Speaker 1: of men and that's pretty great. But still we ultimately
Speaker 1: end up in the place plot wise where men have
Speaker 1: to save the women. And I would say that ultimately
Speaker 1: that's the weak link in the picture.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, are you talking about what are you referring to there?
Speaker 3: Like the detective character.
Speaker 1: The detective characters as show up, Yeah, yeah, so it
Speaker 1: ends up they end up having like more of a
Speaker 1: role in ultimately defeating the villains than I think we
Speaker 1: would want today as modern viewers, and I think maybe
Speaker 1: even in sixty three, Like it's a film about Luchadora's
Speaker 1: I want to see the luchador is doing more in
Speaker 1: the finale. But you know, that's that's my take on it.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know. I mean, Lorreina and Golden Ruby
Speaker 3: opened quite a few cans in the film.
Speaker 1: They do, Yeah, they do. They do not hold back
Speaker 1: on just beating the tar out of some Hinchman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. We'll see what We'll see where
Speaker 1: we get with this when we start talking about the plot,
Speaker 1: all right, elevator pitch, I don't know that we really
Speaker 1: need one at this point. But basically it's a brain
Speaker 1: transplant mad science picture, but with female wrestlers in it.
Speaker 3: There's a wonderful scene in this film where a news
Speaker 3: report shares the information with the public that the police
Speaker 3: were able to deter from markings on the victim that
Speaker 3: their brain had been removed.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's pretty clear that they're not removing the brains
Speaker 1: through the nose, you know, they're going right in the top. Yeah,
Speaker 1: doctor Cerebros style. So Yeah, I think the markings would
Speaker 1: be pretty obvious.
Speaker 3: They don't show you the markings. What do those markings
Speaker 3: look like indicating the brain have been removed?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm picturing open skull and an ice cream scoop,
Speaker 1: bloody ice cream scoop laying next to it, you know,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, when it comes to the trailer for
Speaker 1: this film, I wasn't able to find an obvious example
Speaker 1: of either the English or the Spanish language trailer, so
Speaker 1: instead we're going to feature just a clip here from
Speaker 1: the English dub of the picture. Joe, this is going
Speaker 1: to be the one failure after another monologue between the
Speaker 1: two mad scientists.
Speaker 4: On failure after another box, the operation is tremendously difficult, doctor.
Speaker 5: Isn't there any human being who can.
Speaker 4: Stand the shock? Perhaps a stronger type of woman, an athlete,
Speaker 4: the one that can take more punishment than the average.
Speaker 4: If we could find a woman like that, doctor, she
Speaker 4: probably lived through the operation.
Speaker 3: You know, they really give the murderous mad doctor a
Speaker 3: lot of pathos mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, he is a very fun character. Though he
Speaker 1: has a secret identity. You don't know who he is.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of Scooby Doo action going on in
Speaker 1: this picture. So we're gonna treat that with kid gloves
Speaker 1: at least for a while. We're gonna try and retain
Speaker 1: the spoiler, keep it fresh for you.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, we'll warn you at the end before we
Speaker 3: do the reveal. Though it's not very hard to figure out.
Speaker 1: You'll you'll see it coming miles away. You'll see it
Speaker 1: on the horizon with the so unrising behind it. It's
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's still fun when it gets there.
Speaker 3: I totally agree. Yeah, it's not much of a mystery,
Speaker 3: but it's a great reveal anyway.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, if you want to take a break
Speaker 1: here and go watch the film, it's pretty widely available.
Speaker 1: You can currently stream it on just to name some
Speaker 1: of the Amazon Prime fandor to the Flick's Fling. I
Speaker 1: don't know if some of those are real. Some of
Speaker 1: those I might be making up on the fly. You
Speaker 1: can also rent or buy it several places digitally as well.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for a DVD copy. I think something
Speaker 1: Weird put it out on disc a while back, alongside
Speaker 1: Wrestling Women Versus the Aztec Mummy. All right, let's get
Speaker 1: into the cast and the people involved in making this picture,
Speaker 1: starting at the Top with our director Renee Cardona, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen oh five through nineteen eighty eight. Cardona was
Speaker 1: a director, actor, producer, writer, and editor, but best remembered
Speaker 1: as a director in the Golden age of Mexican cinema.
Speaker 1: He was born in Havana, Cuba. He began medical school,
Speaker 1: but had to flee the country from New York City.
Speaker 1: He was unable to continue his studies, but he got
Speaker 1: involved in filmmaking, which took him to Hollywood, and then
Speaker 1: he made the move to Mexico City. First as an actor,
Speaker 1: but then he went on to direct I think one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty six different pictures, or at least that's
Speaker 1: the credit number on IMDb. As an actor, he was
Speaker 1: in some really well received Mexican films, such as The
Speaker 1: Priest Secret from forty one and The Rocket Souls from
Speaker 1: forty three. As a director, however, he mostly made his
Speaker 1: splash directing I think seven different Santo movies, including Santo
Speaker 1: and the Treasure of Dracula from sixty nine, as well
Speaker 1: as such titles as She Wolves of the Ring and
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two's Night of the Bloody Apes, which is
Speaker 1: sort of a nastier retread of this film, like basically
Speaker 1: he came back around and like, what if I made
Speaker 1: Doctor of Doom accept Sleazier for the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: I recall looking at that one to see, oh, maybe
Speaker 3: this would be good for the show, but thinking it
Speaker 3: looked just gross.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Sometimes I'll forget and I'll go back and say, ah,
Speaker 1: Night of the Bloody Apes sounds good, and then I
Speaker 1: look at the details like no, no, no, not this one.
Speaker 3: But he also made an absolutely unforgettable Christmas classic.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, Santa Claus from nineteen fifty nine, in which
Speaker 1: Santa Claus and the devil battle for the soul of
Speaker 1: poor Lupita in Mexico City.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine if they had gotten Santo and Lupita
Speaker 3: together in the same movie, like just the pure goodness
Speaker 3: would like it would like blind you.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that would be good. Oh, speaking of Santa Claus,
Speaker 1: if memory serves the actor who played Santa Claus and
Speaker 1: that is also in Night of the Bloody Apes, I
Speaker 1: think he plays a doctor in that maybe the mad
Speaker 1: doctor in that picture.
Speaker 5: Hmmm.
Speaker 1: Well, as far as story and adaptation credit, this goes
Speaker 1: to Alfredo Salazar, who lived nineteen twenty two through two
Speaker 1: thousand and six. Brother of Mexican director Abel Salazar, Alfredo
Speaker 1: scripted a number of notable Mexican B pictures, including the
Speaker 1: Tech Mummy movies, multiple Santo movies, including Santo and The
Speaker 1: Treasure of Dracula. He also wrote The Batwoman from sixty
Speaker 1: eight nineteen sixty seven's The Panther Women as well, which
Speaker 1: is another well regarded luchadora film, But this one starred
Speaker 1: exotic dancer tongo Ela. I was interested in this one.
Speaker 1: This was a close pick for this week. I was
Speaker 1: looking for a good luchadora picture and that was the
Speaker 1: runner up.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, well, maybe we'll have to check that out in
Speaker 3: the future as well. Now, when I'm thinking about the
Speaker 3: writing of wrestling films like this, obviously, one thing I
Speaker 3: love is the combination of the genres and the subject matters,
Speaker 3: you know, the science fiction horror or the supernatural horror
Speaker 3: with the wrestling. But the other thing is I'm wondering
Speaker 3: how you're going to find new ways every time to
Speaker 3: work in a wrestling match as the climax, because it's
Speaker 3: hard to make that fit. In this movie, they do
Speaker 3: it pretty well.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is an inter interesting check I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this a lot while watching it as well, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: they had the mandate, it's got to be probably, I'm
Speaker 1: assuming they were probably like it's got to be a
Speaker 1: luchador film. People want to see lucadoras. The Luchador films
Speaker 1: are very successful, so just do that. And they're like, okay, well, well,
Speaker 1: all right, we gotta somehow work it in. Okay, what's
Speaker 1: what's our villain gonna be? Yeah? How do you weave
Speaker 1: it together? And you'll end up with a situation where
Speaker 1: of course, your mad brain transplant doctor needs strong women,
Speaker 1: so he's going to target or attempt to target luchadoras.
Speaker 3: Right, So in this film they managed to do it
Speaker 3: by having like, oh, she think our heroin thinks she's
Speaker 3: just going into a regular wrestling match against a human wrestler,
Speaker 3: but in fact this is a superpowered brain transplanted monster
Speaker 3: of science. But like, how do they usually I mean,
Speaker 3: every time is it just like the hero or heroin
Speaker 3: gets tricked into a wrestling match with somebody they think
Speaker 3: is a human but turns out to be a monster
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 1: Well with I think in a lot of the Santo
Speaker 1: pictures it also comes down to characters realizing, hey, we've
Speaker 1: got some sort of problem, We've got a threat. We
Speaker 1: need to call El Santo. Santo because he's like a superhero,
Speaker 1: he's larger than life. He's solving crimes and defeating evil
Speaker 1: in this picture, though, Gloria Venus, who will talk about
Speaker 1: in just a minute, like she's just a working luchadora.
Speaker 1: That's true. Yeah, they just get sucked into this whole situation.
Speaker 1: They don't call her, she's not a crime fighter. So
Speaker 1: in a way, this film is a lot more believable.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of realistic that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess that's the difference. Now, I can't recall
Speaker 3: actually did the climax of Treasure Santo and the Treasure
Speaker 3: of Dracula even involve a match in the ring. Maybe
Speaker 3: it didn't. Maybe it was just a bunch of wrestling
Speaker 3: and fighting in like actual locations relevant to the plot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are other Santo pictures where that is the factor.
Speaker 1: Like there's like the evil Rudo is actually a werewolf,
Speaker 1: But I don't think that happened at all in Treasure
Speaker 1: of Fracula.
Speaker 3: Okay, so maybe it's a well I don't know. I
Speaker 3: wonder if it's a thing over time, they are more
Speaker 3: comfortable just having the climax be some kind of conflict
Speaker 3: outside the ring. But maybe in earlier pictures they're they're
Speaker 3: they're like, Okay, we got to bring it back to
Speaker 3: the ring somehow for the big showdown.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and perhaps as they go, yeah, they have
Speaker 1: to keep thinking of ways to spice it up. What
Speaker 1: can we do differently. We can't just have the same format,
Speaker 1: even though these are you know, the expectations are there
Speaker 1: for the audience.
Speaker 3: I'm sure this has been commented on a million times,
Speaker 3: but I can't help but notice it. It seems to
Speaker 3: me like the the Great Uh sort of fantastical, over
Speaker 3: the top dramas. The fictionalized stories in these Mexican wrestling
Speaker 3: films from the middle of the century must have contributed
Speaker 3: to the elaborate fictional storylines that come to fill in
Speaker 3: between the matches in like American professional wrestling circuits. Does
Speaker 3: that make sense, Yeah?
Speaker 1: Maybe so. Yeah. It's interesting though, because I don't think
Speaker 1: you see much of that in Lucha Libre. But then again,
Speaker 1: you end up having this thing where, you know, American
Speaker 1: wrestling ends up influencing Lucha Libre and so forth, So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of exchange going there between these different styles.
Speaker 3: You know, a lot more than me. I guess I
Speaker 3: had assumed. Maybe maybe I was wrong that the like
Speaker 3: all the elaborate fictional backstories and the soap opera aspect
Speaker 3: of it is is a more recent thing in American
Speaker 3: professional wrestling that like, if you go back to the
Speaker 3: mid century, they didn't have as much of the like
Speaker 3: supposed backstage drama and the kind of super the meta stories, right.
Speaker 1: I believe that is the case. That's my understanding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that you go back far enough and a lot of
Speaker 1: these pro wrestling products are based are going to be
Speaker 1: very similar. They're all originally based on kind of a
Speaker 1: US euro model where it's more about the action in
Speaker 1: the ring and if there may be some you know,
Speaker 1: backstage stuff, radio stuff, et cetera, but it's not as
Speaker 1: much of a focus as it is today in American wrestling.
Speaker 3: Another question you might not know the answer, I don't know,
Speaker 3: but does like does modern American pro wrestling it all
Speaker 3: rope in any of these like supernatural or science fiction themes.
Speaker 3: Is there like a wrestler in the WWE today that
Speaker 3: wants to remove people's brains?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think there is one guy. There's always there's always
Speaker 1: room for a supernatural gimmick in wrestling, especially American wrestling,
Speaker 1: and sometimes in Japanese. It just it kind of varies,
Speaker 1: but definitely in American wrestling you'll always have at least one,
Speaker 1: maybe two guys that are doing some sort of supernatural gimmick,
Speaker 1: and you know it. It's one of those things that
Speaker 1: some people love, some people hate. I guess it's it's
Speaker 1: great for great for the kids, of nothing else. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I enjoyed. I think there should always be
Speaker 1: some sort of a undead zombie man in wrestling.
Speaker 3: Of course, always gotta have a vampire, gotta have a
Speaker 3: brain thief. Yeah, oh hey, But I want to say
Speaker 3: one thing about the particular version of this movie that
Speaker 3: I watched that I really enjoyed was the English dub
Speaker 3: of it. So I haven't I couldn't speak to the
Speaker 3: Spanish audio version, but the English dub on this movie
Speaker 3: was great, fun and highly amusing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I really enjoyed the dub. Unlike Treasure of
Speaker 1: Draculade with Treasure of Dracula, I also enjoyed the dub,
Speaker 1: but that was, as you might recall, a modern dub
Speaker 1: that attempted to and I think mostly succeeded in capturing
Speaker 1: the feel of a nineteen sixties dub.
Speaker 3: Yes, but you could tell it was modern from what
Speaker 3: I could tell it. The one I was watching, I
Speaker 3: think was vintage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is vintage. This is because this film was
Speaker 1: distributed in the US by Kay Gordon Murray lived nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty two through nineteen seventy nine, American producer best known
Speaker 1: for dubbing and releasing foreign films for the US market,
Speaker 1: including such films as The Robot Versus The az Tech
Speaker 1: Mommy from fifty seven Santa Claus. We just talked about, oh,
Speaker 1: in the Brainiac from sixty two, which is a really
Speaker 1: fun Mexican vampire movie in which the vampire is very monstrous.
Speaker 3: Has a long tongue. Am I right about that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, all right, Well let's get into the cast here.
Speaker 1: We've mentioned her several times already, but yeah, Gloria Venus,
Speaker 1: played by the beautiful and talented Lorena of Alaska, is
Speaker 1: born nineteen thirty seven and as of this recording still around.
Speaker 1: I don't think she's been active in the last few years,
Speaker 1: but she had a very long career. I think she
Speaker 1: was still showing up occasionally in films or TV shows.
Speaker 3: I love Loraina of Alaskas in this movie, and I
Speaker 3: loved her in the other when we watched Ship of Monsters.
Speaker 3: In both cases, it's a very interesting kind of performance
Speaker 3: in that she is not chewing the scenery, like she's
Speaker 3: not doing an over the top, you know, high energy
Speaker 3: acting performance. She's she's very reserved, you might say, in
Speaker 3: the character kind of like economical with her movements and
Speaker 3: her expressions, but to a very pleasing effect, Like she
Speaker 3: just kind of wears this expression of ironic, almost inappropriate
Speaker 3: amusement almost all the time, and it plays so well
Speaker 3: in these scenes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's not like she's cracking up or or
Speaker 1: what corpsing as the as the modern term for it.
Speaker 1: It's not like that, but it's just she strikes this
Speaker 1: nice balance of amusement.
Speaker 3: But I think a big difference here is that while
Speaker 3: while she's great in this movie, Lorraine of Alaskaz was
Speaker 3: not a wrestler first, and you don't I don't think
Speaker 3: see her do much, if any, actual wrestling in this movie.
Speaker 3: She is frequently replaced by an obvious stunt double.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean they might have taught her a few things,
Speaker 1: just for some of these scenes where she's applying a
Speaker 1: submission hold and you see her face rather clearly, But yeah,
Speaker 1: she was. I think she was a model turned actor
Speaker 1: and plays a wrestler here. Very different from these scenarios
Speaker 1: where someone like Al Santo or Blue Demon are luchador's
Speaker 1: first and they become a big enough name that they
Speaker 1: transition into acting as well.
Speaker 3: And I guess you could argue, of course that you know,
Speaker 3: being a luchador is already that gives you kind of
Speaker 3: a leg up into the acting world because it is
Speaker 3: both an athletic art and a performance art at the
Speaker 3: same time. It's like having to be an athlete and
Speaker 3: an actor rolled into one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, though with some key differences, and you know, I imagine
Speaker 1: it's not a seamless transition, but great for the stunt scenes.
Speaker 1: Like I will say that that the wrestling that we
Speaker 1: see in Santo and the Treasure of Dracula is far
Speaker 1: superior to what we see in this picture. And part
Speaker 1: of that, I think has to do with the fact
Speaker 1: that you it's centered around a non wrestler an actor
Speaker 1: playing the key role.
Speaker 3: Agree, So it's like there's less I don't know. I
Speaker 3: guess technical flare, but I nonetheless greatly enjoyed the beat
Speaker 3: them up scenes.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, certainly. So. Yeah. She was a model,
Speaker 1: but she was also step daughter of actor Victor of
Speaker 1: Velasquez and a former beauty pageant competitor, I believe for
Speaker 1: Miss Mexico. She was in two different Santo movies from
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, Santo Versus the Zombies and Santo Versus
Speaker 1: The Vampire Woman or Women. I can't remember which one
Speaker 1: it is, but at any rate, she is a vampire woman
Speaker 1: in that she plays Zorina, Queen of the Vampires.
Speaker 3: Oh, I gotta see that one.
Speaker 1: She was also in another Santo movie as well, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five's The Diabolical Acts. So this is her first
Speaker 1: portrayal of Gloria Venus, and she went on to play
Speaker 1: that character again in nineteen sixty four's Wrestling Women Versus
Speaker 1: the Aztec Mummy, and she played Loretta Venus in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five's She Wolves of the Ring, also from Cardona.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that one, so I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's just basically the same character, or if the name
Speaker 1: gets changed by accident, or if it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: her sister. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Takes place a generation in the future and she plays
Speaker 3: her own daughter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure what the angle is there, but
Speaker 1: at any rate, she's a delight. She was a huge
Speaker 1: star in Mexican cinema and also had a presence on
Speaker 1: Mexican soap operas and was active up until I believe
Speaker 1: about twenty twenty. All Right, just because it's a sixties
Speaker 1: film centering around female characters doesn't mean you get away
Speaker 1: without having some sort of a hunky man hero in
Speaker 1: the picture, and that's what we have in this character.
Speaker 1: Armando played by Armando Silvestri.
Speaker 3: Ladies and gentlemen, meet your jawline.
Speaker 1: Yes, he was born in nineteen twenty six and I
Speaker 1: think it's still still around. He was apparently a bullfighter
Speaker 1: turned actor. He was active from nineteen forty seven through
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen as an actor. Apparently he left bullfighting for
Speaker 1: acting after being badly gored. Oh wow, I have to
Speaker 1: say had quite an acting career, played a lot of
Speaker 1: honky leading men in Mexican cinema, but also played various
Speaker 1: parts in American westerns. So his credits include numerous Cardona
Speaker 1: pictures including Knight of the Bloody Apes and The Wrestling
Speaker 1: Women Versus the Aztec Mummy. But he also pops up
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventies, Two Meals for Sister Sarah, nineteen sixty eights,
Speaker 1: The Scalp Hunters, and in some other pictures as well,
Speaker 1: so multiple loos of films in there. Though.
Speaker 3: To be clear, now we get another major character to mention,
Speaker 3: which is that our heroin in this film does not
Speaker 3: fight alone. She ends up developing a great friendship with
Speaker 3: another luchadora and it becomes kind of a buddy picture
Speaker 3: in a way. And that is with the luchadora Golden Ruby.
Speaker 3: Is that ruby spelled with a Y or ruby spelled
Speaker 3: with an I?
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't member, but Golden Ruby is played by
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Campbell for nineteen forty two American actor who's with
Speaker 1: a number of films. I think a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of her filmography is Mexican cinema, so she was
Speaker 1: in all of the luchadora movies that we've mentioned so
Speaker 1: far in this episode, as well as Las Lobo still Ring,
Speaker 1: and she pops up in at least one US Western
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six is the professionals.
Speaker 3: She and Lorena make a great team. There are multiple scenes.
Speaker 3: There's like one scene where they're I think they're temporarily
Speaker 3: roommates for some reason, and they're both just like sleeping
Speaker 3: in these twin beds and what looks like an apartment
Speaker 3: and they're like, hey, wait, somebody's about to break in
Speaker 3: and try to steal our brains. So they like pretend
Speaker 3: to be asleep, and then when the guys sneak in
Speaker 3: the window, they just pop up and whip their butts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're not even I don't think they're even
Speaker 1: doing They might have thrown some arm drags or something,
Speaker 1: but for the most part they're just like pummeling these
Speaker 1: eyes in the face with their fists. Yeah, okay. Now,
Speaker 1: another major actor in this picture is Roberto Canado who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen eighteen through nineteen ninety eight. He plays the professor.
Speaker 3: I loved this guy's performance as well as and also
Speaker 3: whoever did the English dub for him, Big thumbs up on.
Speaker 1: Both agreed this is a very fun dubbing.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so he quite often it gets extremely close
Speaker 3: to the James Mason voice.
Speaker 6: He comes in and says it's terrible. How they've been
Speaker 6: stealing everyone's brains.
Speaker 1: Isn't it. Oh yeah, yeah, this character is a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. He's invited to attend the Luca and he's like,
Speaker 1: oh no, I absolutely deployed. It's so violent. I can't
Speaker 1: stand it. I don't have the constitution for it.
Speaker 3: He walks backstage after watching a Gloria Venus match. He's like,
Speaker 3: there to see her, and he comes into her locker
Speaker 3: room or whatever. She's like, oh, did you like my match, Professor.
Speaker 5: He's like, oh, it's terrible. I can still stand. Violence.
Speaker 5: Just disgusts me. I don't to vomit right now.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's yeah. It's a really fun performance from
Speaker 1: a very talented Mexican performer. Again from the golden age
Speaker 1: of Mexican cinema. He acted in over three hundred films,
Speaker 1: which included a lot of B films but also some
Speaker 1: serious dramas. On the B cinema end of things. He
Speaker 1: pops up in several Santo pictures. He's in sixty eight's
Speaker 1: The Batman, He's in the nineteen sixty five werewolf film
Speaker 1: Le Lobo, and well.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, was the sixty eight one The Batman
Speaker 3: or The Batwoman?
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's the Batwoman, I said to Batman, but
Speaker 1: this is the Batwoman. There's another Cardona picture. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: in this werewolf picture. He also pops up in some
Speaker 1: later day horror films, such as the nineteen eighty six
Speaker 1: slasher movie Bestia Nocturna and the nineteen eighty nine Mexican
Speaker 1: slasher film Grave Robbers, the latter of which is is
Speaker 1: available to stream on various side side. I was tempted
Speaker 1: to check it out, but I didn't get a chance.
Speaker 1: But as a serious actor and dramas, he appeared in
Speaker 1: I think at least two very critically well received pictures,
Speaker 1: including Publrina from nineteen forty nine and Crime and Punishment
Speaker 1: from nineteen fifty one, an adaptation of Crime and Punishment.
Speaker 3: Great job, Roberto, Yeah, I love him in this. I
Speaker 3: want to see his other movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll talk more about his performance as we get
Speaker 1: into the picture. But hey, you've also got to have
Speaker 1: some comic relief. You got to get a comedian in there.
Speaker 1: You might remember in Santo in the Treasure of Dracula,
Speaker 1: we had a very funny Mexican comedian, and we have
Speaker 1: another Mexican comedian in.
Speaker 3: This film in Santo and the Treasure of Dracula. Was
Speaker 3: it Perry Co the annoying sidekick.
Speaker 1: Yes, the cowardly sidekick. It was a lot of fun
Speaker 1: in this We have the character listed in the credits
Speaker 1: as Cama, but I think he actually he gets a
Speaker 1: different name in the dub.
Speaker 3: Right, I'm not in the English dub. I could be
Speaker 3: wrong about this, but I think maybe they called him Tommy. Okay,
Speaker 3: but he's the main detective sidekick, Armando's buddy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a short little fella played by Chuccho Selinas, who
Speaker 1: died in two thousand and one. I'm not sure birth
Speaker 1: date is public record, but yeah. He seems to have
Speaker 1: been mainly a comic actor, providing similar comic relief in
Speaker 1: such pictures as The Wrestling Women Versus the Aztec Mummy
Speaker 1: and some other lucha pictures. He was also in some
Speaker 1: just outright comedies, such as Mexico two thousand from nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three. I believe we talked about that one in
Speaker 1: Ship of Monsters because it's the same director.
Speaker 3: Oh Rgalio Gonzalez.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, in this movie, a lot of his comedy scenes
Speaker 3: I think are coming from an apparent mismatch where he's
Speaker 3: He and Ruby Golden Ruby seem to be falling in
Speaker 3: love with each other, which is funny because he's very
Speaker 3: short and she's very tall.
Speaker 1: And that's all. That's all there is. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty one note joke, one note romance. But they keep
Speaker 1: touching base on it.
Speaker 3: Oh it's sweet though.
Speaker 1: It is sweet. Yes, we also did we mention that
Speaker 1: we have an ape man in this picture?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's a there's a so we not only
Speaker 3: brain transplants. This movie has Island of Doctor Moreau in it,
Speaker 3: you know, the mad The mad doctor is like, why
Speaker 3: didn't I make a half man half gorilla? Wouldn't that
Speaker 3: be good? Yes, it would be good. Let's do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now the poster makes it looks like it is
Speaker 1: a gorilla or a gorilla suit. It is not. It
Speaker 1: is more of a gorilla like you said at Doctor
Speaker 1: Island of Doctor Moreau sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Well, that's how it's described with the it's just a
Speaker 3: it's just a guy. And they glued some extra extra
Speaker 3: hair on him, and some gave him some like a
Speaker 3: prosthetic nose, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, limited prosthetics were applied to him. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: the fella that these prosthetics are applied to and then
Speaker 1: they glute some hair on. It is a pretty interesting character.
Speaker 1: This is Geraldo's who lived nineteen thirty five through twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: So this is just one of your cloud You find
Speaker 1: this any cinematic culture. You have a great brute man character.
Speaker 1: Actor here plays a lot of heavies, plays a lot
Speaker 1: of monsters, does a lot of work in genre pictures,
Speaker 1: but also ends up having some background work in a
Speaker 1: lot of bigger pictures as well.
Speaker 3: Now I might guess was this guy himself originally a wrestler.
Speaker 1: He was. He was originally a luchador wrestling as Gerardo l. Romano.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how long he was actually active, but
Speaker 1: it does seem from what I was reading about him
Speaker 1: on like Luchiwiki and some other sites, it sounds like
Speaker 1: he transitioned full time into acting after a while. This
Speaker 1: was apparently his first picture. However, he followed it up
Speaker 1: with several Santo Aztec Mummy and Blue Demon pictures, and
Speaker 1: he sort of reprised this same role in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine's Night of the Bloody Aes. He is the eight
Speaker 1: Monster in that, but he also pops up as a
Speaker 1: bandit in Alejandro Jo Droowski's legendary nineteen seventy psychedelic western
Speaker 1: al Topo. Oh yeah. He also plays a bandit in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three's The Mansion of Madness, which is a
Speaker 1: surreal inmates take over the asylum picture starring the legendary
Speaker 1: Claudio Brook. Claudio Brook for any of them out there
Speaker 1: not as familiar with Mexican cinema. He pops up in
Speaker 1: Giermel de Toro's Kronos. He plays the evil old Man
Speaker 1: who wants it to get a hold of the Kronos device.
Speaker 3: Evil old man and the main villain I'm remembering in
Speaker 3: that is is Oh what's his name that we know
Speaker 3: so well?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, another great brute man actor, Ron Perlman.
Speaker 3: Ron Perlman, I remember Ron Pearlman worked for him in
Speaker 3: this movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, His boss is Claudio Brook. Okay, so that's
Speaker 1: a picture. There's some elements to it that kind of
Speaker 1: disqualify it from weird house cinema, but it's a great
Speaker 1: Claudia Brook performance anyway, as far as as a peda
Speaker 1: goes here. His other credits include roles in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: three's Beyond the Limit, starring Michael Caine, Richard Gear and
Speaker 1: Bob Hoskins Oliver Stone's nineteen eighty six films Salvador in
Speaker 1: the He's also in the I did not know this existed,
Speaker 1: but there's a nineteen eighty one Ringo star Caveman movie
Speaker 1: titled Caveman.
Speaker 3: But that's great.
Speaker 1: That Yeah, it has the look of quality to it.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, now, I may have seen that there
Speaker 3: were a lot of Caveman movies, but I may have
Speaker 3: seen part of this one because I remember seeing a
Speaker 3: movie on TV when I was younger where a Tyrannosaurus
Speaker 3: rex is hit in the groin with a club and
Speaker 3: its eyes go cross eyed.
Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like nineteen eighty one's Caveman might be
Speaker 1: the sort of picture where that happens. Dennis Quaid is
Speaker 1: also in it. Oh wow, yeah, we may we may
Speaker 1: have to come back in in this one in greater detail.
Speaker 1: This is always one of the fun things about diving
Speaker 1: into pictures like this, as you discover things you had
Speaker 1: had no idea that it existed and or that had
Speaker 1: any right to exist. Caveman from nineteen eighty one takes
Speaker 1: place in the year one zillion BC. By the way,
Speaker 1: that's that's part of this.
Speaker 3: Could have done just a little bit of research to
Speaker 3: get that a little more calibrated. Oh wait, I just
Speaker 3: looked it up. Caveman had Barbara Bach in it.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, great cast, great cast of nothing else of
Speaker 1: just a couple of more. Zepeda also shows up in
Speaker 1: Tony Scott's nineteen ninety Kevin Costner film Revenge, and he's
Speaker 1: also in John Frankenheimer's The Burning Season from nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: which starred Rol Julia So not bad, All told okay.
Speaker 1: And finally, as far as the music goes, Atonio Diez
Speaker 1: Conde did the music. He died in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: He was just He was a prolific Mexican composer who
Speaker 1: worked on a ton of B pictures during this time period.
Speaker 1: I get the impression he has just churning it out.
Speaker 1: It's pretty standard stuff here. It's good. You know, it
Speaker 1: delivers the musical vibes you expect from a Loocha picture
Speaker 1: from this era.
Speaker 3: I recall the music often really turns on a dime.
Speaker 3: There's like a sudden cut and it goes from you know,
Speaker 3: just the like plowing ominous orchestral music to straighten too,
Speaker 3: going oh doop de dooo, you know, like whimsical fun stuff.
Speaker 1: But you know he's keeping up with the picture.
Speaker 3: Really, So we take a break and then come back
Speaker 3: to talk about the plot.
Speaker 1: Let's do it.
Speaker 3: Hey, So I guess it's time to talk about the plot.
Speaker 3: And if we sound different at all right now, it's
Speaker 3: because we had to split this recording up into two
Speaker 3: different sessions. So now we are returning from the from
Speaker 3: the interlude to talk about the plot of Doctor of Doom.
Speaker 3: And I think one thing I will say kicking off
Speaker 3: this movie is that it should it probably assumes now
Speaker 3: my number one position for movies that just get on
Speaker 3: with it. This movie makes haste. So at the very beginning,
Speaker 3: no studio logo, no credits. The first thirteen seconds of
Speaker 3: this film depict what appears to be a murder. I
Speaker 3: think later it is just a gorilla man kidnapping that
Speaker 3: will turn into a murder. But it like it happens
Speaker 3: so fast, so like orchestral, you know, ominous orchestral music
Speaker 3: is just grinding. From frame one, we see this grimy
Speaker 3: looking back loot. It looks I guess like a film
Speaker 3: studio lot. But then there's a woman in a fur
Speaker 3: coat walking around with a handbag. She's walking briskly as
Speaker 3: though afraid. And then there are two menacing goons in
Speaker 3: suits and ties following her. Here we're about eight seconds in.
Speaker 3: She looks over her shoulder, she's afraid. The music swells.
Speaker 3: There is a different dude, not one of the two suits,
Speaker 3: but a shirtless guy with harry arms. He reaches out
Speaker 3: from behind a brick wall strangles her from behind. Then
Speaker 3: we're at like thirteen or fourteen seconds in, and then
Speaker 3: we cut to a ladies wrestling match and then the
Speaker 3: credits roll. Remember that thing about the head explosion scene
Speaker 3: and scanners, how they like put it was originally going
Speaker 3: to be the opening scene, but then they put it
Speaker 3: later because they didn't want people coming in late to
Speaker 3: the movie to the theaters to miss it. Renee Cardona
Speaker 3: was obviously not consumed with similar worries about this Gomar
Speaker 3: attack scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Cronenberg was more like, Oh, we want to
Speaker 1: make sure they have time to get in and have
Speaker 1: a seat, get their popcorn so they can see that
Speaker 1: our signature was special effect. Cardona is more like, we
Speaker 1: don't want them to leave. We need to They've just
Speaker 1: set down make sure that they're getting all the action possible.
Speaker 1: They need to know that this film is just going
Speaker 1: to be NonStop.
Speaker 3: Beast man murder within thirteen seconds, yes, but then okay,
Speaker 3: so we cut to a wrestling match, and that's what
Speaker 3: we're gonna be watching, or at least what we're gonna
Speaker 3: try to watch, because it has credits playing over it.
Speaker 3: I was immediately complaining about this because we can't see
Speaker 3: the wrestling. The screen is just full of credits in
Speaker 3: the you know, the dripping blood font and they're covering
Speaker 3: up the action. But upon watching this scene a second time,
Speaker 3: I realize there may be a reason that they are
Speaker 3: not letting us get a good look at anything, that
Speaker 3: they're putting the credits over the wrestling, and it's because
Speaker 3: I think this scene is a footage double dip. This
Speaker 3: is the wrestling match we see later in the movie
Speaker 3: between between Gloria Venus and Golden Ruby and La Gasela
Speaker 3: the Gazelle and I can't remember the other wrestler's name,
Speaker 3: but it's the tag team match. And it's clear that
Speaker 3: it's a double dip because this scene contains characters who
Speaker 3: won't be introduced until later in the film.
Speaker 1: Ah good aye, good eye. I didn't catch this myself
Speaker 1: when I first started watching the picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't either. So we see Golden Ruby in it,
Speaker 3: she'll arrive later in the movie. We see the detectives
Speaker 3: in it, kind of like hooting at the action. And
Speaker 3: I think it's funny because didn't we just talk about
Speaker 3: movies that do this, that show you later scenes from
Speaker 3: the movie, specifically action scenes during the opening credits like
Speaker 3: Thrilling Bloody Sword and all Monsters.
Speaker 1: Attack, Yep, yep, we have. This does pop up from
Speaker 1: time to time, and in cases like that, they'll often
Speaker 1: show off signature special effects from later on in the picture.
Speaker 1: In the opening scene. It's like if you were watching
Speaker 1: Scanners and the opening credits to Scanners showed our hero's
Speaker 1: head exploding at the end of Scanners, you know, like
Speaker 1: it's sometimes that bad. The Thrilling Bloody Sword. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: gives away some of the coolest stuff, I guess, just
Speaker 1: saying hey, stick around because you're going to get to
Speaker 1: see this without words in front of it later on.
Speaker 1: And then of course there are some really there are
Speaker 1: some other ridiculous examples of it. It's like one of
Speaker 1: the releases of pod People which we also talked about
Speaker 1: on the show, features a footage from an entirely different film,
Speaker 1: Galaxy Invader.
Speaker 3: That's right, one of those Don Dollar movies, the Marilyn Special.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so all told, I would say this is maybe
Speaker 1: weirdly effective since the footage they're using feel it kind
Speaker 1: of has a generic vibe to it. Anyway, you don't
Speaker 1: know who these characters are yet, so for the most part,
Speaker 1: they're just random wrestlers are random dudes in suits, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't reveal a monster, a major special effect, or
Speaker 1: a major plot point.
Speaker 3: That's right. So I didn't catch it until I was
Speaker 3: looking closely the second time. But there is one character
Speaker 3: who stands out in the footage you see behind the credits,
Speaker 3: and I think this is intentional because she is our
Speaker 3: heroin for the film. One of the wrestlers in this
Speaker 3: match is the brave, beautiful, bone crushingly mighty Gloria Venus,
Speaker 3: played by Lorraino of Alaskaz. And I like how even
Speaker 3: in the opening credits, while she's so this is a
Speaker 3: tag te match, we see her first where she's like
Speaker 3: at the ropes, she's watching the match in front of her.
Speaker 3: She's not even fighting yet. She's about to come in
Speaker 3: and open a can here, but she's still got that
Speaker 3: signature facial expression of the kind of slightly inappropriate aloof amusement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she's not touching the tag rope. But then again,
Speaker 1: I'm now that I say that, I'm not sure Lucha
Speaker 1: Libre has or had a tag rope.
Speaker 3: So what is a tag rope?
Speaker 1: They're like these little I didn't know they existed for
Speaker 1: the longest, But if you watch the tag matches, especially
Speaker 1: like American tag matches, there are these like little ropes
Speaker 1: on top of the turn buckle that the the wrestler
Speaker 1: who's not tagged in the other member of the tag
Speaker 1: team has to be touching so that they can't just
Speaker 1: run around on the ring apron and sometimes the raffle,
Speaker 1: you know, get onto him and tell them to touch
Speaker 1: the tag ropes. But I don't know, that might not
Speaker 1: be a thing in legit.
Speaker 3: But they violate this all the time, right, don't They
Speaker 3: just kind of like run in when they're not supposed to.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why I have rules, so they could
Speaker 1: they broke good by the bad guys.
Speaker 3: Okay, but of course Gloria. Gloria wins this match and
Speaker 3: as with most of the fight scenes in this movie,
Speaker 3: there are shots where Loraine vel Esquez is replaced by
Speaker 3: an incredibly obvious double doesn't look anything like her.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they have some some real grapplers on hand
Speaker 1: to do these stunts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think they try to accomplish it, especially by
Speaker 3: giving her really big hair, which Gloria Venus has.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we should also describe Gloria Venus's wrestling attire
Speaker 1: because you might if you've not seen this film or
Speaker 1: seeing stills from it, you might imagine, you know, this
Speaker 1: this beautiful, stunning Mexican actress in some sort of like
Speaker 1: colorful I don't know. Maybe it's maybe it's flower theme,
Speaker 1: maybe it's space theme. No, it's like a gray, full
Speaker 1: body jumpsive that you're wearing, I mean, not particularly exciting.
Speaker 3: It's in black and white, so I don't know what
Speaker 3: color it would have been, but it does appear to
Speaker 3: be one single solid color.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe it's so like in real life it would
Speaker 1: be a real floral color. I guess that would fit.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's no designs on it or anything. It's
Speaker 1: just a full body suit. And maybe that makes the
Speaker 1: I mean, everybody's costume is like that, like this in
Speaker 1: these sequences, very drab outfits going on here. I don't
Speaker 1: see any sequence or sparkles.
Speaker 3: Oh, but I wanted to point out there is one
Speaker 3: shot of her that's definitely lorraina of Alaska's. It's not
Speaker 3: the stunt double, and it's one where she's doing some
Speaker 3: kind of strange submission hold where she like stretches her
Speaker 3: opponent's arms out in opposite directions. And I was trying
Speaker 3: to think, what is this? Is this a real move?
Speaker 3: What is this move called?
Speaker 1: I couldn't find exactly what this is, but Lucha Libre
Speaker 1: especially has a ton of crazy submission holds. They always
Speaker 1: have all sorts of things, like some things that are
Speaker 1: rooted more or less in actual grappling and actual wrestling,
Speaker 1: but then it goes crazy from there. There's all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff where like people are, you know, being suspended
Speaker 1: upside down or they're made into a human pendulum or something.
Speaker 1: So this one's not even that wacky, but it and
Speaker 1: it has similar vibes with the number of other sort
Speaker 1: of twisty like step over fold the legs sort of holds.
Speaker 1: I found one looking around on Lucha wiki that looked
Speaker 1: similar called luck constida, but it's not a one hundred
Speaker 1: percent match like it has a little bit more step over.
Speaker 1: So maybe they had something picked out something and they
Speaker 1: kind of adapted it so that Gloria here, again played
Speaker 1: by a non wrestler, could stand in and do it. Also,
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that this is a submission hold where
Speaker 1: you can see both both individuals faces. Both wrestlers faces
Speaker 1: are present, which heightens the drama, which is not always
Speaker 1: a concern in lucha, but is often a concern in
Speaker 1: wrestling in general. And for a film, obviously you want
Speaker 1: you want those facial expressions, especially the facial expression of
Speaker 1: your your hero here.
Speaker 3: That's a good point. I'm glad we have your your
Speaker 3: wrestling expertise to consult when doing like this.
Speaker 1: I'm no expert.
Speaker 3: Well not might your relative expertise compared to me, I
Speaker 3: wouldn't have even thought about the faces. That totally makes sense.
Speaker 3: But anyway, after the match, Gloria Gloria Venus wins and
Speaker 3: she returns to her locker room accompanied by her sister Alice,
Speaker 3: and Gloria and Alice both have such big hair. Alice's
Speaker 3: hair here is like a gorgeous, glossy motorcycle helmet.
Speaker 1: It really is. Yeah, this is I get. This was
Speaker 1: the style of the day, right. I mean you look
Speaker 1: at like college yearbooks and high school yearbooks in this era,
Speaker 1: and this is the hairstyle for women.
Speaker 3: I don't know what you call this hairstyle. So it's
Speaker 3: like straight hair, but it's like gigantic, it's like helmet sized.
Speaker 3: It's a great look. The sixties were amazing. So we
Speaker 3: learn from their conversation that Gloria venus. She says, I
Speaker 3: would hate to be thought of as a braggart, but
Speaker 3: no woman has ever pinned me, isues, so she is
Speaker 3: the undisputed champ. And we learn that Alice is not
Speaker 3: a fighter like Gloria. She says if she were in
Speaker 3: Gloria's line of work, she would be afraid of getting
Speaker 3: her arm broken. But they have a good relationship. It
Speaker 3: looks like they're going to head out to dinner together
Speaker 3: after the match, so they're close. Then let's cut straight
Speaker 3: from that to some sci fi horror. We go to
Speaker 3: a different scene. Here there is a person lying on
Speaker 3: an operating table strapped with a ventilator mask and all
Speaker 3: these black hoses running to it while two creepy doctors
Speaker 3: in surgical masks lean over the patient with a nervous eagerness.
Speaker 3: And so these two guys. One is an imposing, taller
Speaker 3: boss doctor with a piercing glare and a sonorous voice,
Speaker 3: and then there is a cringing, shorter hinch doctor to
Speaker 3: assist him and to sort of flatter his ego.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's clear the taller doctor is the titular doctor
Speaker 1: of doom. I didn't know you could get a doctorate
Speaker 1: in doom, but he did.
Speaker 3: He specialized in doom studies at Moreau University. So they say,
Speaker 3: you know, they're ready for the surgery now, So they
Speaker 3: paint a circle on the person's shaved scalp, and then
Speaker 3: they bring in a second person. So they're like lining
Speaker 3: up these two bodies on operating tables next to each other.
Speaker 3: Here we get a lot of close ups on rubber
Speaker 3: gloves and electrodes and stuff like that to let us
Speaker 3: know that mad science is taking place. But whatever it
Speaker 3: is they're trying to do here doesn't work out. We
Speaker 3: get sad orchestral music and the lead doctor says another failure.
Speaker 3: He's clearly dejected. And here we get some exposition what's
Speaker 3: going on here? Is your standard brain transplant. I think
Speaker 3: they were trying to take out a random woman's brain
Speaker 3: and then transplant it into a man's body. But that
Speaker 3: doesn't make sense based on some other things they say later.
Speaker 3: So they talk about like putting it in his body,
Speaker 3: but then they're also saying that this operation will only
Speaker 3: work with women's brains. I guess because women's brains are
Speaker 3: better suit for it for some reason.
Speaker 1: Well, it's because females are strong as hell. They they
Speaker 1: basically say this later on. It's like the female brain
Speaker 1: is just more resilient, it's tougher.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so there's only women's brains will work. But
Speaker 3: they also I'm not clear why are they doing this.
Speaker 3: Did the man that they're trying to transplant into not
Speaker 3: have a brain of his own? Why did he need
Speaker 3: a new brain? H They explain that it is the
Speaker 3: fourth time they have attempted this type of procedure and
Speaker 3: it has failed every time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't get the impression they're trying to help anyone.
Speaker 1: They're just they just got to be first. They're trying
Speaker 1: to break new ground and become underground surgical legends. I guess.
Speaker 3: But what's going to happen to the to the patient
Speaker 3: number one's brain. If he gets a new brain transplanted
Speaker 3: into his head, where does his Is it a brain
Speaker 3: swapp Does his brain go to her head?
Speaker 1: Maybe one brain's just going in the trash? I don't know.
Speaker 3: Okay, but the Hinch doctor here has an amazing theory
Speaker 3: for why the operation has not been a success. He
Speaker 3: starts hypothesized, saying that the women's brains they've been trying
Speaker 3: to transplant have not been smart enough to survive the operation,
Speaker 3: and they need to stop kidnapping women with dumb brains
Speaker 3: and instead try to kidnap smart women to get their
Speaker 3: smart brains. All right, all right, very interesting, and the
Speaker 3: boss doctor seems convinced they should try it, but their
Speaker 3: conversation is interrupted by kind of besteal growls what's this?
Speaker 3: And the boss doctor says, Gomar is acting up again? Gomar?
Speaker 3: What's Gomar? Well, here we introduced the second sci fi
Speaker 3: theme adjacent to the first. So this is a wrestling movie.
Speaker 3: It has brain transplants, but as we've alluded to, it
Speaker 3: is also a Doctor Moreau style beast man movie. So
Speaker 3: the monster we saw attack the lady in the opening
Speaker 3: thirteen seconds is Gomar. From what I gather, he is
Speaker 3: a gorilla human hybrid created by the boss doctor here
Speaker 3: by transplanting a gorilla's brain into a man's body.
Speaker 1: Yep, that seems to be the case. So this was
Speaker 1: like patient A in this effort. This was the first success,
Speaker 1: and they keep him around because he's useful.
Speaker 3: But by the way, there's just a set note here.
Speaker 3: To get to Gomar's cage, they have to go down
Speaker 3: in a basement full of cardboard boxes and upside down chairs,
Speaker 3: wild upside down chairs.
Speaker 1: I got a.
Speaker 3: Picture for you to look at here. There's like at
Speaker 3: least ten upside down chairs. What's going on?
Speaker 1: I mean at times I thought, well, maybe Gomar has
Speaker 1: been down there throwing chairs around, but he's not actually
Speaker 1: in this room, right, This is just like a store room.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like the room that gives access to his cage.
Speaker 1: It kept making me think about the Gilda Radner skit
Speaker 1: from It came from Hollywood, in which there's a radio
Speaker 1: program talking about an escape gorilla and she starts frantically
Speaker 1: piling everything in her living room up against the windows
Speaker 1: and doors. But that doesn't actually prevent an explanation for
Speaker 1: what we see here.
Speaker 3: No, So I just don't understand it. Maybe that's just
Speaker 3: how they store their extra chairs at the Mad Science Lab.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or even maybe it's just a case where like
Speaker 1: set decoration, like we're so used to seeing the wall
Speaker 1: of cardboard boxes in films, like that's a that's a
Speaker 1: standard you need to create a storeroom environment. Just pack,
Speaker 1: get some empty boxes, pile them up, start filming. And
Speaker 1: so they're doing a little bit of this, but then
Speaker 1: they're getting there a little chewos here. They're like, let's
Speaker 1: get some other shapes in there. One thing that I
Speaker 1: like about the Mad Science Chamber is that they do
Speaker 1: a pretty good job of like, you know, you have
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff going on, but also the shadows
Speaker 1: of the stuff in the background, and in black and white,
Speaker 1: it tends to play really well.
Speaker 3: I agree. Yes, this movie actually does a lot of
Speaker 3: scenes with good shadows. So anyway, they go down to
Speaker 3: meet with Gomar, they give him some row on meat.
Speaker 3: They say he's uh I think. They explain he's slowly
Speaker 3: transforming from half man, half gorilla into full gorilla and
Speaker 3: the only reason the doctor retains control over him for
Speaker 3: the moment is because he has Gomar in a hypnotic state,
Speaker 3: and he fears that he will soon lose all control
Speaker 3: over Gomar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is all tremendous because on one hand, first
Speaker 1: of all, you have this movie is telling us that
Speaker 1: if you transplant a gorilla's brain into a human body,
Speaker 1: not only is this a success, but it will gradually
Speaker 1: transform the body into the body of a gorilla. Yes,
Speaker 1: and then on top of that, they're just feeding this
Speaker 1: gorilla just big bloody chunks of meat and bone. Gorillas
Speaker 1: don't eat big chunks of meat, so they should be
Speaker 1: throwing in a whole bunch of like vegetables and stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, give that gorilla some fruits and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess it just wouldn't be as scary if
Speaker 1: Gomar is sitting there chewing on a big head of cabbage.
Speaker 3: But so in this scene we get the doctor muttering.
Speaker 3: He says, I must trendsplant a human brain into another
Speaker 3: human being. That's the goal I've set for myself. You know,
Speaker 3: he's self directed in his ambitions. He picks a project
Speaker 3: and sticks with it.
Speaker 1: That's one of my favorite lines for in the film.
Speaker 1: That's the goal I've set for myself.
Speaker 3: Oh, there's a lot of good lines like that we
Speaker 3: will get to many more. But here's the part where
Speaker 3: they explained that the experiments have to be done on
Speaker 3: women because women's brains react better than men's brains to
Speaker 3: brain transplantation. But then I wonder, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: how would he know that because all of his patients
Speaker 3: have died during the procedure.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess maybe they're dying slower when they were
Speaker 1: working with men. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Okay, So here they agree on the theory of the
Speaker 3: Hinch doctor that they need to find a smart brain
Speaker 3: to use in the next experiment. So we get a
Speaker 3: scene transition, you know, newspaper seller saying extra extra, another
Speaker 3: woman murdered by the mad doctor. So this is the
Speaker 3: big headline in town. Then we cut inside a building
Speaker 3: that is it looks I mean, it looks just kind
Speaker 3: of like a house. It's like a living room that
Speaker 3: has been converted into a laboratory with a bunch of
Speaker 3: microscopes and chemistry re equipment and people in lab coats
Speaker 3: and oh, what do you know? One of the people
Speaker 3: here in lab coats is Alice, the sister of Gloria Venus.
Speaker 3: Uh but uh, oh wait a second, are you already
Speaker 3: putting two and two together. She's a scientist, and I
Speaker 3: think the filmmakers may be suggesting that she has a
Speaker 3: smart brain.
Speaker 1: I believe so. Also, I want to note that this
Speaker 1: living room like a laboratory set. This is your saying
Speaker 1: science lab as opposed to the mad science lab we
Speaker 1: saw earlier. So I think they put a lot of
Speaker 1: thought into this. It's like, we've got to transition to
Speaker 1: another science lab, but it needs to We need a
Speaker 1: different layout. It needs to be brighter, it needs to
Speaker 1: be a little more inviting, multiple people. Nobody's being victimized,
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this one's more cozy than the other one. But
Speaker 3: even in the science lab, it seems that the latest
Speaker 3: murder by the mad doctor has everyone kind of in
Speaker 3: a buzz, and Alice wants to know more about it.
Speaker 3: She sends out one of her colleagues to buy her
Speaker 3: a newspaper so she can learn more, and then into
Speaker 3: the scene comes the Professor, one of my favorite characters.
Speaker 3: This is the guy who runs this nonspecific laboratory. He
Speaker 3: is a timid, soft spoken bookish man in a vest
Speaker 3: and tie with thick eyeglasses, and I loved this character,
Speaker 3: especially in the English dub because, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: they give him something pretty close to James Mason voice,
Speaker 3: and his scenes for this reason are almost uniformly hilarious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's a great, great look too, like he's
Speaker 1: always looking down, rarely making eye contact with the people
Speaker 1: he's talking to, very meek, and when he does look up,
Speaker 1: especially if he happens to glance in the direction of
Speaker 1: the camera, he's got really thick glasses, so you get
Speaker 1: like that distortion of the eyes. It's great. Like he's
Speaker 1: not portrayed as a straight up comic character, but I
Speaker 1: guess there's sort of you know, he's a little bit
Speaker 1: bumbling and likable and just overly sensitive and concerned.
Speaker 3: He's got a little touch of who's that guy in
Speaker 3: trailer park bowl is with the thick glass what's the.
Speaker 1: Name is it? Bubbles? Yeah right, okay, yeah, yeah, definitely
Speaker 1: a similar visual effect going on.
Speaker 3: But he walks up to Alice and he's like, ooh,
Speaker 3: it's terrible out of stealing everyone's brains out there, and yeah,
Speaker 3: did you go out last night?
Speaker 5: Alice?
Speaker 3: And she says she went out to watch her sister's
Speaker 3: wrestling match, and then she goes, have you ever been
Speaker 3: to a wrestling match, professor, And.
Speaker 6: Oh no, simply couldn't bear it. I poor violence, It
Speaker 6: disgusts me.
Speaker 1: And she tries to real young yaker here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she tries to defend wrestling. She's like, it's a
Speaker 3: fantastic sports, sir, I think you'd enjoy it once you
Speaker 3: saw it. And well, he's not interested in wrestling, but
Speaker 3: what he is way too interested in is Alice's personal life.
Speaker 3: He starts in on like how could.
Speaker 5: You how could you be walking out alone together without
Speaker 5: an escort?
Speaker 3: And he starts, you know, telling her she shouldn't have
Speaker 3: stayed out late last night, not without a man to
Speaker 3: help her get home safely.
Speaker 5: You know all this, and have you not read about
Speaker 5: the man doctor? It's really reckless.
Speaker 3: And uh, and she she just jokes about it. She's like,
Speaker 3: well I wear my little rabbit's foot, you know. And
Speaker 3: he just won't shut up. He's like, he starts explaining
Speaker 3: how it makes him so angry to hear a girl
Speaker 3: joke about a matter as dreadful as this and not
Speaker 3: take safety seriously. Uh, and then he gets distracted by
Speaker 3: another lab tech who's like, you know, a professor the
Speaker 3: you know, the blood you ordered last week has arrived
Speaker 3: and so he's going to go take care of that.
Speaker 3: But then he he has on a side to say like, wow.
Speaker 5: I say more to you about this later.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, real, real Michael Scott levels of wandering around
Speaker 1: the office here, not really doing anything but but just
Speaker 1: pestering the employees.
Speaker 3: But Alice doesn't seem all that annoyed. She just ignores
Speaker 3: him completely. And then we get another scene with a
Speaker 3: news report to trans transition between things, and this is
Speaker 3: a scene where the English dub once again was great.
Speaker 3: The newscaster says, reports showed that these nocturnal acts are
Speaker 3: continuing and police are still accusing that criminal who's caused
Speaker 3: so much public discussion due to his actions. He's been
Speaker 3: named the mad Doctor. Oh but then this is the
Speaker 3: part where I think we mentioned this earlier. So he says,
Speaker 3: the woman he killed last night is in the morgue.
Speaker 3: She was found early this morning, and as always happened,
Speaker 3: police found Marx showing that the brain had been removed
Speaker 3: from the unfortunate girl's body.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I guess we saw the mark being
Speaker 1: made on one of the bodies and the surgical proceedings earlier.
Speaker 1: So the little painting rush. Yeah, yeah, so I guess
Speaker 1: we know what it would look like.
Speaker 3: That's how they knew the brain had been removed.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, the mad doctor's identity remains a mystery. The case
Speaker 3: is still unsolved. But here we meet a couple more
Speaker 3: main characters, the police detectives, and so this is Armando Armando.
Speaker 3: Wait is the actor or the character or Armando Silvestri.
Speaker 1: I think, oh goodness, Silvestria is the actor?
Speaker 3: Okay, correctly, Well so I think in the Spanish version
Speaker 3: he's called Armando Campos, but in the English dub he's
Speaker 3: called Mike and his associate is named Tommy, so it's
Speaker 3: Mike and Tommy. In the English dub. Tommy says, you know,
Speaker 3: they're really looking into it. He says, they investigated all
Speaker 3: the doctors in the medical profession and that got nowhere. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that is air.
Speaker 1: I love that because it's like, presumably we're in Mexico
Speaker 1: City and they have spoken to all the doctors in
Speaker 1: Mexico City. That's amazing.
Speaker 3: We interrogated all the doctors. And then there's a there's
Speaker 3: a comic bit where they're like, okay, well we still
Speaker 3: haven't caught him. And then Tommy is like, oh, I've
Speaker 3: got to go. I've got to go call my grandma,
Speaker 3: make sure she doesn't go out tonight. But then he
Speaker 3: gets on the phone, he's like, she's she's quite deaf,
Speaker 3: and he's like, Grandma, stay inside tonight.
Speaker 1: I can't help but feel this with somebody's stand up
Speaker 1: debt right here, maybe maybe Tommy's stand up debt in
Speaker 1: real life, kind of a new heart vibe to it.
Speaker 3: Then from here, whoa, we get to a scene with
Speaker 3: the bad guys, sort of a convention of all the
Speaker 3: bad guys, the mad doctor and his assistant. They appear
Speaker 3: in masked costumes. Now, remember when we saw them before,
Speaker 3: they were in surgical garbs, so they had caps and
Speaker 3: surgical masks on. And now they are wearing masks almost
Speaker 3: like inquisitors or like lucha masks, I guess, but much creepier,
Speaker 3: kind of like ghost versions. They look hideously unsettling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in this we're getting a better look at
Speaker 1: the full operation. Here we've got hooded doctors with secret identities.
Speaker 1: We've got Gomar, the mutant ape man. And then we
Speaker 1: have like a whole table or like a whole barrage
Speaker 1: of heavies here, presumably like criminal underworld characters that are
Speaker 1: working for the doctor. So this operation seems well funded
Speaker 1: because these guys are not doing this for free. I
Speaker 1: guess the Mad Doctor's paying them. I can't imagine what
Speaker 1: else is in it for them.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I'm sure he's paying them. In fact, he
Speaker 3: says later, he's like, you know, I reward my employees, well,
Speaker 3: the ones who are loyal to me. After he's complaining
Speaker 3: that he had to execute a traitor who was going
Speaker 3: to reveal his identity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or maybe this is like an underground pharmaceutical company
Speaker 1: and the other chair people on the board.
Speaker 3: So anyway, the Mad Doctor says his experiments cannot be delayed.
Speaker 3: They must bring him another woman with a brain immediately,
Speaker 3: and the Hinchman complained, they're like, Boss, the police are
Speaker 3: watching all the highways and searching all cars. We can't
Speaker 3: get you a person with a brain. And he just says, silence,
Speaker 3: You're going to do exactly as I order you. And
Speaker 3: he says they don't have to worry about the police
Speaker 3: because Gomar is going to go with them, And the
Speaker 3: Mad Doctor has upgraded Gomar with special equipment so that
Speaker 3: even bullets will be unable to stop him.
Speaker 1: Oh, and I got excited when I heard this because
Speaker 1: I had no idea where this was going. How are
Speaker 1: they gonna upgrade Gomar?
Speaker 3: Oh they got a Gomar's upgrade is fantastic.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Okay, we'll get to that in the second. But who
Speaker 3: are they supposed to kidnap? The hand off a picture
Speaker 3: to the hnchman and oh no, it's a picture of Alice.
Speaker 3: My heart sank upon seeing this. But then there was
Speaker 3: something of some very funny timing with a music sting here,
Speaker 3: because you might expect a sting immediately upon revelation of
Speaker 3: the photo, but instead they like, show the photo and
Speaker 3: then there's a two to three second delay and then
Speaker 3: the dun, dun dun. So I wonder if they were
Speaker 3: thinking maybe we might need a minute to recognize who
Speaker 3: was in the picture.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, all right, So things are not looking
Speaker 1: good for Alice at this point. We know where this
Speaker 1: is headed, right.
Speaker 3: So Alice gets kidnapped. We see her working late at
Speaker 3: the last doing chemistry. The professor shows up to pester
Speaker 3: her some more about how she shouldn't go home alone,
Speaker 3: and she ignores him and leaves, but uh oh, what's this?
Speaker 3: We see that she forgot her lucky Rabbit's foot.
Speaker 1: It's like the.
Speaker 3: Professor examines it. It's hanging there on a coat hook.
Speaker 3: And then some creeps in suits run up behind Alice
Speaker 3: on the sidewalk. They grab her, they throw her into
Speaker 3: a taxi. The I guess the taxis at this place
Speaker 3: in time. I'll have this pattern of triangles on them,
Speaker 3: which head on kind of looks like the car has teeth.
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Like maybe this might be an accident of
Speaker 1: black and light here, like maybe it's red and white.
Speaker 1: I think that would probably make more sense. But maybe
Speaker 1: it's black and white in real life. I don't know.
Speaker 3: But then we come upon an action scene which is excellent.
Speaker 3: So what's going on with Gomar? What's the Gomar upgrade?
Speaker 3: Do you want to describe it?
Speaker 1: Rob Oh? Sure, Gomar has been updated with body armor.
Speaker 1: And when I say body armor, I don't mean like
Speaker 1: some sort of like military modern tech. I'm talking like
Speaker 1: he has like play like it's kind of like scale
Speaker 1: mail on his body, and then this big creepy metal
Speaker 1: mask over his head. The main thing that I instantly
Speaker 1: compared it to is the robot in the Phantom Creep
Speaker 1: starring Bella Lagosi that has a tremendous robot costume that
Speaker 1: doesn't quite look like a robot. It looks like it's
Speaker 1: hideous and demonic, and this has similar vibes like the
Speaker 1: robot from Phantom Creeps and Armored Gomar could be a
Speaker 1: tag team.
Speaker 3: So the police tried to stop the Henchman from kidnapping Alice.
Speaker 3: They stop the car, but Gomar gets out in his
Speaker 3: suit of armor and his mask which is so his
Speaker 3: like golden mask, super creepy looking. He gets out, he
Speaker 3: fights all the police. He beats him up. I think
Speaker 3: he kills several of them. He body slams them and
Speaker 3: so forth, and then gets back in the taxi and
Speaker 3: they head off to the Mad Doctor's lab, as happens
Speaker 3: multiple times in the movie. When they get back, Gomar
Speaker 3: is just standing there in his armor, and the Mad
Speaker 3: Doctor says, you did a good job. Gomar.
Speaker 1: Yes. Say what you will about the Mad Doctor here
Speaker 1: and the way he conducts his business, but he has
Speaker 1: a lot of positive reinforcement here for Gomar. He's constantly
Speaker 1: reminding him you are doing a good job, and I
Speaker 1: appreciate it. I just want you to know, Gomar. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I don't take enough time to tell you this, but
Speaker 1: I appreciate what you're doing and I love you. It's true.
Speaker 3: Onto the procedure, they're going to try to do another
Speaker 3: brain transplant. Unfortunately, despite her very smart brain, Alice does
Speaker 3: not survive the brain transplant surgery. So they try again.
Speaker 3: They fail and Alice dies in the process tragically. And
Speaker 3: then the sidekick doctor comes up with a new idea.
Speaker 3: He says, actually, maybe what we needed was not a
Speaker 3: smart brain, but a brain with some kind of toughness, athleticism, endurance,
Speaker 3: a brain from the kind of woman who could both
Speaker 3: dole out in withstand the most punishing of suplexes and
Speaker 3: pile drivers. But where could we expect to find a
Speaker 3: brain of this kind?
Speaker 1: We know where this is going as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's all right. So the mad doctor hears this,
Speaker 3: he gets a look of sadistic inspiration. He clearly has
Speaker 3: an idea for how to proceed now here we uh,
Speaker 3: there's there's further investigation. We go back to the cops.
Speaker 3: They you know, they're following up on the death of Alice,
Speaker 3: and the police figure out that she has a sister.
Speaker 3: Everything's coming together here. So the two detectives, Mike and Tommy,
Speaker 3: they go to inform Glory Venus at the wrestling gym,
Speaker 3: and this will introduce the wrestling gym as a setting
Speaker 3: where many other scenes occur. There's always like a lot
Speaker 3: of activity going on in the gym.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of independent workouts going on. Some
Speaker 1: some women are doing like setup, some are doing other
Speaker 1: types of like calisthenics, and then there's always at least
Speaker 1: a couple of women that are doing some some grapple
Speaker 1: sessions as well, some takedowns and some lock ups.
Speaker 3: So, of course Gloria Venus is horrified to find out
Speaker 3: that her sister has killed. She has to go in
Speaker 3: to identify the body and they the police, are trying
Speaker 3: to find out anything they can. They end up interrogating
Speaker 3: the professor from the chemistry lab about what happened, and
Speaker 3: he oh god, there was a line that made me laugh.
Speaker 3: So he goes up to Gloria Venus and.
Speaker 6: The professor is like, I can't tell you how sorry
Speaker 6: I feel Gloria about how is his death?
Speaker 3: I mean, like maybe she thought he'd been talking about,
Speaker 3: you know, how far away she had to park from
Speaker 3: the building or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he's yeah, he's like he's really taking this hard.
Speaker 1: The professors really shook up, but.
Speaker 3: For this, so he tries to be helpful. He's like, please,
Speaker 3: do not hesitate to call upon me if you need
Speaker 3: anything at all, Gloria, do not call the professor just
Speaker 3: I don't think she's gonna Yeah, but she, Gloria Venus
Speaker 3: once again kind of ignores him, and she vows to
Speaker 3: find the killer and get revenge. So here we i'd
Speaker 3: say our Act one is complete. This is our set
Speaker 3: up up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we know what everyone wants here. Mad Doctor
Speaker 1: wants wants a brain and it's probably gonna be vitness.
Speaker 1: It's going to be Gloria Venus's brain that he goes after,
Speaker 1: and Gloria Venus wants vengeance.
Speaker 3: Right, So the mad Doctor sets his henchmen about to
Speaker 3: find women with incredible physical strength and stamina.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And here we cut back to the Lucidora Gym where
Speaker 3: all the grapples are going on, and we let's see
Speaker 3: several things happen. We in act too, we meet a
Speaker 3: new character. They introduce a character named Golden Ruby. She
Speaker 3: is I think she's coming from the States maybe, but
Speaker 3: she's like entering the circuit for some reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I guess it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: territory sort of thing. So she's come down here to,
Speaker 1: you know, away from the American wrestling territories to work
Speaker 1: in Mexico for a little bit. And the whole vibe
Speaker 1: that we've seen thus far of the luchadora the scene
Speaker 1: here in this film is that it's just everyone's really pleasant.
Speaker 1: They're very support of each other, They're protective of each other.
Speaker 1: There's not really a technico rudo baby faced heel scenario
Speaker 1: going on here. Everybody's on the same team and they
Speaker 1: just want to get in there and compete. It has
Speaker 1: a real sports feel. I guess I agree like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the vibe between all of the luchadoras is wonderful. They're
Speaker 1: all kind of supportive of each other and they work together.
Speaker 1: There's one scene where this horrible like male wrestler comes
Speaker 1: into their gym and he's like, give me those weights
Speaker 1: and like punches one of them. I guess, yeah, he's like,
Speaker 1: I want that equipment and then just attacks them and
Speaker 1: then they all gang up and they just.
Speaker 3: Beat him down. It is a righteous rudo beat down,
Speaker 3: and I love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great scene because our two main luchadora
Speaker 1: characters are standing in the background and we see all
Speaker 1: the actual luchadoras that are in the film. They're the
Speaker 1: ones that jump in and start grabbing and flipping this guy.
Speaker 1: I think somebody puts him in a full nelson and
Speaker 1: somebody drop kicks in, and then there's just a huge
Speaker 1: pile up on him, like one does a jumping pin
Speaker 1: and then everyone else piles on top of that. And
Speaker 1: Gloria Venus and in Ruby they just have a nice
Speaker 1: laugh at this.
Speaker 3: But then they also get to bond, like they become
Speaker 3: fast friends. Because there's a scene right after this. Ruby
Speaker 3: clearly admires Gloria Vinas. She's like, you know, you're the greatest.
Speaker 3: You're just I wish I could be a wrestler like you,
Speaker 3: and Gloria Venus is like, oh no, you're great too,
Speaker 3: and then Golden Ruby asks her, what why do you
Speaker 3: have such a sad look in your eye despite being
Speaker 3: you know, despite being a wrestling machine. And then Gloria
Speaker 3: Venus says, it's just something I can't forget. My sister,
Speaker 3: she was murdered three nights ago. It's like would you
Speaker 3: expect her to forget.
Speaker 1: It by now?
Speaker 3: But anyway, they decide to be friends, and they decide
Speaker 3: Golden Ruby is going to move into Gloria's apartment.
Speaker 1: Makes sense. Makes sense.
Speaker 3: Now after this we get to watch a full on
Speaker 3: Luchadora match, and if this is the tag team match
Speaker 3: that played under the open credits, now we get to
Speaker 3: finally look at it. So it's Gloria Venus and Golden
Speaker 3: Ruby as a team versus the Gazelle and Bertha Galindo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was this was interesting to watch. Now
Speaker 1: for my taste, I would say that the actual lucha
Speaker 1: wrestling we see in Santo and the Treasure of Dracula
Speaker 1: is better and more entertaining. This wrestling, I don't know,
Speaker 1: It's hard for me to make out exactly how to
Speaker 1: feel about. I think like, on one hand, what they
Speaker 1: show us here again has no rudo technico distinction. There's
Speaker 1: no good guys or bad guys. So it has a
Speaker 1: you know, very has that real sports feel to it
Speaker 1: that certainly fits the vibe of the film, because again,
Speaker 1: this is not a film about superhero luchadors or Luchadora's
Speaker 1: saving the day. This is about like normal people, like
Speaker 1: they're just professionals working in a a in a real
Speaker 1: world scenario, and they just happen to fall into this
Speaker 1: this sci fi speculative plot line. And in terms of
Speaker 1: like trying to compare the wrestling that we're seeing here
Speaker 1: to existing footage, that's where you really run into some problems.
Speaker 1: And I hadn't really looked into this all that much before.
Speaker 1: But and I could be very wrong in this, because
Speaker 1: again I'm not an expert. But when I go looking
Speaker 1: around for non movie Lucha footage from before, say, the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, or even any indications that some of the
Speaker 1: biggest annual Luca shows of the year, like going back
Speaker 1: to like sixty two and I'm back in the fifties
Speaker 1: as well, any indication that those were recorded, I don't
Speaker 1: get anything. And then I looked a little deeper and
Speaker 1: I found there's an individual that on social media Luca blog,
Speaker 1: and Luca blog is also the blog it's a great
Speaker 1: English language Luca source. This individual points out that while
Speaker 1: there was Luca on TV in the nineteen fifties, it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like that footage has ever turned up, so
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's lost, if it needs to
Speaker 1: be restored or what. I know that with some of
Speaker 1: those older TV stations, like tapes were reused and stuff
Speaker 1: was just destroyed and without any really forethought in terms
Speaker 1: of you know, setting aside for the future. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe some of these big shows weren't even recorded.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're just you know, big gate live events. So
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to get to is like it's hard
Speaker 1: to compare this to what actual pure Lujah Libre was
Speaker 1: like and this time period, because I don't think that
Speaker 1: we have much footage outside of Luca films of male
Speaker 1: or female performers. And yeah, so some of the earliest
Speaker 1: Luca footage we have maybe from these films from going
Speaker 1: back into the nineteen fifties. I think the oldest Luca
Speaker 1: film in existence was the nineteen fifty two's Hurricane Ramirez.
Speaker 1: That's the name of the wrestler that is the star
Speaker 1: of it. So this was pre Santo, but I think
Speaker 1: Santo Pictures picked up not long after this, so I
Speaker 1: don't know. I find that kind of interesting to think of,
Speaker 1: like these are films about Lujah do and luchadors going
Speaker 1: up against monsters and scientists and and also like you know,
Speaker 1: criminal masterbinds and that sort of thing very much in
Speaker 1: the in the vein of the old serial adventures. But
Speaker 1: it also seems like that this that these films are
Speaker 1: also some of the only examples we have of what
Speaker 1: of what Lucia Libra looked like at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but at any rate, we see some grapples, there's some takedowns,
Speaker 1: there's you know, it's some fun action going on in
Speaker 1: the ring, and it gets it across for the audience
Speaker 1: what's going on here.
Speaker 3: And we get to see characters in the audience in
Speaker 3: the scene. So both the police detectives Mike and Tommy,
Speaker 3: and the professor come to watch, even though despite what
Speaker 3: the professor said, he's there at the match, and on
Speaker 3: the close ups of the professor he looks hilarious.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, these are definitely some of those scenes where
Speaker 1: you get that the effect of the big thick glasses
Speaker 1: making his eyes look enormous.
Speaker 3: And he does he does look kind of queasy observing
Speaker 3: the brutal violence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone around him is yelling and whot and and
Speaker 1: getting into it, and he is not so much. He's
Speaker 1: just quietly observing it, and you know, maybe it's making
Speaker 1: him feel bad.
Speaker 3: Here's another thing that you might understand. I didn't. Why
Speaker 3: are the detectives When they show up. Tommy encourages Mike
Speaker 3: to start booing, and they just boo as if that's
Speaker 3: like understood as something you're just supposed to do during
Speaker 3: the match, But like, why are they booing and who
Speaker 3: are they booing at? Were you just supposed to boo
Speaker 3: in these matches?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm guessing that you the booing would be
Speaker 1: for the bad guys, for the rudos, and you're cheering
Speaker 1: for the technicos. I mean that's the clear division, the
Speaker 1: moral division that would take place, and the passion play
Speaker 1: that you're observing in the ring. But again, we don't
Speaker 1: really have anything to indicate that either team is good
Speaker 1: or bad. They're just all working ladies doing their jobs
Speaker 1: up there.
Speaker 3: Well, the professor visits the locker room after so Gloria
Speaker 3: and Ruby I think they win. They make a great
Speaker 3: tag team. And then the professor comes to visit them
Speaker 3: in the locker room. I guess them something I don't
Speaker 3: remember what. The first thing they're like, oh, hey, did
Speaker 3: you like the fight? Professor?
Speaker 6: He's like, nah, I detest such spectacles, absolutely horrible.
Speaker 3: And then the detectives come in, and there's a funny
Speaker 3: moment when Ruby Golden Ruby shakes hands with Tommy, the
Speaker 3: short detective. She like crushes his hand and he buckles
Speaker 3: at the knees and he is immediately in love.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then we see the two wrestlers and the
Speaker 3: two detectives. They go out for supper and dancing after this.
Speaker 3: So love is in the air.
Speaker 1: And you really do think you're going to go and
Speaker 1: see this date like it sounds like it could be fun.
Speaker 1: We've learned more about these characters. We'll get more of
Speaker 1: this Tommy and Ruby romance that is budding.
Speaker 3: No, we don't see that at all'll be cut straight
Speaker 3: to Gloria and Ruby asleep in bed, So I guess
Speaker 3: just skip over that. The Mad Doctor's goons show up.
Speaker 3: This is the I think we mentioned the scene earlier.
Speaker 3: They show up to like creep in through the window
Speaker 3: and kidnap them, I think, But they hear them coming
Speaker 3: and then they pretend to be asleep but then jump
Speaker 3: out and issue a brutal walloping on the bad guys.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they just beat the tar out of them.
Speaker 1: They just like take them down. It's like two hands
Speaker 1: that punch in at a time right in the face.
Speaker 1: They just drive them out. They're out the windows.
Speaker 3: They're like kicking them in the butt as they're going
Speaker 3: out the windows.
Speaker 1: So it's very satisfying.
Speaker 3: But then we see the henchmen go back to the
Speaker 3: mad Doctor and they're like, wellhy didn't you tell us
Speaker 3: those two girls were wrestlers. But after this, the police
Speaker 3: come up with the plan. The detectives are like, I
Speaker 3: know those men are going to come and try to
Speaker 3: kidnap you again because they want your brains obviously, So
Speaker 3: let's use the U two luchadoras as bait to draw
Speaker 3: out the mad doctor, you know. So we'll let you
Speaker 3: get kidnapped and then we'll follow close behind you and
Speaker 3: that way we'll catch him.
Speaker 1: All right, pretty standard, but seems all right. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the first point in the picture there where
Speaker 1: I was like, really, our luchadors are gonna be bait,
Speaker 1: like they're the tough ones. But all right, we'll go
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know it makes sense because they're the
Speaker 3: tough ones. I thought that was the whole one.
Speaker 1: That's true. Yeah, well that's true as well. I guess
Speaker 1: the thing is like This is the sort of scheme
Speaker 1: that would be employed in various other sort of serial
Speaker 1: action pictures of the day, you can imagine. So it
Speaker 1: feels like they're reusing a formula here. But yeah, like
Speaker 1: you say, it makes sense, and they're tough. They can
Speaker 1: stand up for themselves when things inevitably go wrong.
Speaker 3: Right, So they go out walking after midnight and then
Speaker 3: there comes here comes Gomar in his armor and he
Speaker 3: like grabs them. They get in the car just you know,
Speaker 3: the kneeja brains ladies. So they speed away to the
Speaker 3: Mad Doctor's secret hideout, pursued by the detectives once again.
Speaker 3: When everybody's gathered here in the Mad Doctor's lab, the
Speaker 3: Mad Doctor in his super creepy inquisitorhood, he's like, you
Speaker 3: did an excellent job, Gomar, excellent work. And Mike and
Speaker 3: Tommy track them down. They show up, They follow the
Speaker 3: car and they show up. They fight the Mad Doctor's henchman,
Speaker 3: but they are out numbered. Mike and Tommy not doing
Speaker 3: so hot. I mean, they put up a fight, but
Speaker 3: there's too many henchmen. Things look bad until Gloria and
Speaker 3: Ruby wake up. They were like laying on these operating
Speaker 3: tables and then they come to, they run in, beat
Speaker 3: up the henchmen and rescue the detectives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you end up taking back some of what
Speaker 1: I said here because they do whit more butt here
Speaker 1: and we get a nice Scooby Doo moment here.
Speaker 3: That's right. So they catch not the mad Doctor, but
Speaker 3: the Hinch Doctor, the second doctor, and they unmask him
Speaker 3: to reveal Wait a minute, we know this man. It's Boris,
Speaker 3: one of the guys who worked at the chemistry lab
Speaker 3: with Alice.
Speaker 1: Hmmm, all right, so now we're beginning to see how
Speaker 1: things come together here. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So then there is a police interrogation scene. I don't
Speaker 3: think this is how they do interrogations in real life,
Speaker 3: but like every character in the movie is in this room.
Speaker 3: They're all in the same room. All of the captured
Speaker 3: Mad Doctor henchmen are in the room, both detectives, the
Speaker 3: detective's boss, the professor, Gloria, and Ruby. Everybody's here.
Speaker 1: Well, they just didn't have one way glass technology yet,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So they initially think that this guy is the
Speaker 3: mad Doctor, but the professor suggests otherwise. They say, you
Speaker 3: know what, the professor.
Speaker 5: Is like, he's not the real mad Doctor.
Speaker 6: He must be covering up for him who's the real
Speaker 6: mad Doctor.
Speaker 3: I don't know why he suspects this, but the cops
Speaker 3: just kind of go with it, and they interrogate him
Speaker 3: on that, and Boris is about to reveal the real
Speaker 3: Mad Doctor's identity when he suddenly is like oh, and
Speaker 3: he gasps and collapses. So we get some autopsy results,
Speaker 3: and we learned that Boris was killed by some kind
Speaker 3: of tiny weapon, almost like a James Bond movie kind
Speaker 3: of weapon, a cylinder that fires a poison needle into
Speaker 3: the heart when someone bites down on it. So the
Speaker 3: true Mad Doctor, we find out, was in the room
Speaker 3: with them and had a cylinder in his mouth and
Speaker 3: must have bit down on the cylinder to shoot the
Speaker 3: poison needle into Boris's heart and then spit the cylinder
Speaker 3: out somewhere.
Speaker 1: All right, I like it. It's complicated, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: we have some spy gadgetry going on here.
Speaker 3: And we also learned that the real Mad Doctor escaped
Speaker 3: through a secret passageway with Gomar when the when the
Speaker 3: police came in, Yeah, footage not found, right, So they say, oh,
Speaker 3: we come back. We see the mad Doctor in his
Speaker 3: disguise and he's talking to his main hinchman, I guess,
Speaker 3: the one that the police didn't catch, and he says,
Speaker 3: you know, Boris tried to turn me in, but he
Speaker 3: paid dearly for his treachery. Once again, I have made
Speaker 3: the police look like fools.
Speaker 1: Rob.
Speaker 3: I just know they're standing really close in the scene. Why,
Speaker 3: I don't know. They're in a big room and they're
Speaker 3: standing almost like right at each other.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and it's a wide shot too. I guess
Speaker 1: it's the thing because you get used to seeing people
Speaker 1: having conversations way too close to each other in films,
Speaker 1: but oftentimes it's sort of that tighter shot here. You know,
Speaker 1: we could have had folks stand a little further back
Speaker 1: from each other here and it would have been fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's so much negative space, I wonder. Oh but anyway,
Speaker 3: He's like, okay, so I punish people who betray me,
Speaker 3: and the Hinchman's like, I'm no stool pigeon chief, I'm loyal.
Speaker 3: So what's next for the mad Doctor, Well, reorganize the gang.
Speaker 3: And then he thinks I'm gonna eliminate those pesky detectives.
Speaker 3: Mike and his stupid sidekick will die. And then these
Speaker 3: were some good things from the English stub. He says,
Speaker 3: I'm going to make a good trap, and then he says,
Speaker 3: I'm sure his death is not going to be pretty.
Speaker 3: But the way he says good trap makes me think, wait,
Speaker 3: did he make a trap before? That was like not
Speaker 3: a good trap?
Speaker 1: You know, he's maybe he's just kind of building himself up.
Speaker 1: I'm going to make a good trap. I can do it.
Speaker 1: This is the goal I set for myself.
Speaker 3: So after this, Mike and Tommy visit the Luchadora Gym
Speaker 3: and they give special watches to Gloria and Ruby, which
Speaker 3: are we find out are transponder watches so that they
Speaker 3: can always be found. And we learned that Mike and
Speaker 3: Tommy are wearing them too, so you can activate them
Speaker 3: and they'll produce like a homing signal.
Speaker 1: So everybody's kind of engaged to each other now via
Speaker 1: side technology.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when they give them out, Gloria is like, hey,
Speaker 3: these are cute. There's more a tall short romance humor
Speaker 3: with Ruby and Tommy. She's like, Oh, I couldn't stand
Speaker 3: to be lost from you, my five foot lightning bolt.
Speaker 3: But what is the Mad Doctor's trapp going to be? Well,
Speaker 3: the Professor calls the police. He calls up Mike and
Speaker 3: says he's got to arrange a meeting with the detectives.
Speaker 3: But then the camera pulls back to reveal that he's
Speaker 3: calling at gunpoint. There are some bad guys pointing guns
Speaker 3: at him, and it turns out the Mad Doctor's goons
Speaker 3: are using this as a setup to catch Mike and Tommy.
Speaker 3: So the Mad Doctor catches them. He's like, you have
Speaker 3: interfered with my work. Take them to the death chamber.
Speaker 3: So what's the death chamber? Well, first they have to
Speaker 3: walk through the basement that's got all the upside down
Speaker 3: chairs in it. But then they throw them in a chamber,
Speaker 3: which Rob how would you describe this contraption? I loved
Speaker 3: it all right.
Speaker 1: So basically, we have the walls closing in here. This
Speaker 1: is one of the this is something we've seen in
Speaker 1: so many films, right, this is the trash compactor scene
Speaker 1: from Star Wars, you know, in Star Wars, and of
Speaker 1: course George Lucas was drawing on older cinematic traditions here,
Speaker 1: and we have two walls moving into to squash squash
Speaker 1: our heroes between them. Sometimes you get spikes thrown into
Speaker 1: the mix as well. And on the spike front, we
Speaker 1: do have a great example of that from Krawl. It
Speaker 1: was maybe not just two walls, but there was some
Speaker 1: spike action going on in that movie as well.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, the bandits who end up allying with Oh, Crolls,
Speaker 3: not the hero, Crolls, the bad guy whatever his name is,
Speaker 3: the hero.
Speaker 1: No, crolls the planet.
Speaker 3: Crols the planet. That's right, Yeah, No, the bandits who
Speaker 3: Alan Armstrong's buddies. Wait, it is Alan Armstrong, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I remember, Yeah, Yeah, he's in there. He's inky.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those guys. They end up in a spike room
Speaker 3: that's got spikes coming out of the walls.
Speaker 1: Now. I had to look into this a little bit
Speaker 1: because I'm like, I wonder how far back this goes,
Speaker 1: And I'm not entirely sure. What's the first film to
Speaker 1: have walls moving in on our heroes? But it does
Speaker 1: show up in nineteen thirty five's The Raven. These are
Speaker 1: just blank walls that are going to squish our hero
Speaker 1: and the damsel in distress. But you also have red
Speaker 1: hot walls closing in. In Edgar Allan Poe's story The
Speaker 1: Pit in the Pendulum from eighteen forty two, So at
Speaker 1: the very least, I think we can safely say this
Speaker 1: is an idea that predates cinema. This film has its
Speaker 1: own unique take on it because we have a wall
Speaker 1: with spikes on one side and that's moving. On the
Speaker 1: other side, we have a stationary cage wall. But on
Speaker 1: the other side of that cage wall is Gomar, and
Speaker 1: Gomar is all riled up. He's reaching through the cage
Speaker 1: with his monster arms, trying to grab our hero. So
Speaker 1: you know, what are they gonna do. Are they gonna
Speaker 1: they're going to give in to Gomar and let him,
Speaker 1: you know, tear them to pieces, or are they gonna
Speaker 1: let the spikes skewer them? And if they don't make
Speaker 1: up their mind, they're going to get the worst of
Speaker 1: both worlds.
Speaker 3: Right, So they are trapped between a spike wall and
Speaker 3: a Gomar place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just like the saying goes.
Speaker 3: But then we remember that while the detectives originally presented
Speaker 3: these watches to Gloria and Ruby as like something that
Speaker 3: could save them, tables are turned because they need help.
Speaker 3: So the detectives radio Gloria and Ruby with their watches.
Speaker 3: They activate a sound beacon so that the luchadoras can
Speaker 3: track them down, and track them down they do. When
Speaker 3: the Luchadoras arrive at the lab, the lab is covered
Speaker 3: in cobwebs. Like, wait a minute, they were just they
Speaker 3: were just there. It seems like a day before and
Speaker 3: it didn't have any cobwebs.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, these are some fast acting spiders, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But Gloria and Ruby to the rescue. They beat up
Speaker 3: the Mad Doctor's thugs and they free the helpless cop
Speaker 3: boyfriends and they get into a big fight there. They're
Speaker 3: they're they're sort of fighting their way out of the hideout,
Speaker 3: and in the end, Gloria Venus throws acid into the
Speaker 3: Mad Doctor's face. He's still masked, but he gets the
Speaker 3: acid on him, and the Mad Doctor screams, and then
Speaker 3: there's like a there's suddenly a raging fire and they say,
Speaker 3: oh no, the Mad Doctor. He's done for. He's trapped
Speaker 3: in the spurning building. We have to escape. No time
Speaker 3: to find out the Mad Doctor's real identity before we leave.
Speaker 1: But this is a big moment for Gloria. This is
Speaker 1: their first opportunity to actually physically strike out against the
Speaker 1: man who murdered her sister.
Speaker 3: Right she's she's got her revenge, or so she thinks,
Speaker 3: and here you're sport. Spoiler warning, The Mad Doctor's identity
Speaker 3: reveal is coming in just a moment, so if you
Speaker 3: don't want to know it, you can you can pause here.
Speaker 3: But so we have Gomar comes to the rescue. Surprisingly,
Speaker 3: he shows up. He drags the mad Doctor out of
Speaker 3: the building, so the Mad Doctor is not killed in
Speaker 3: the fire, and then we we cut to another scene
Speaker 3: where the professor and the professor he's doing a phone call.
Speaker 3: He calls in to check on Gloria. He's like, hey,
Speaker 3: how are you feeling, and then he says strangely, he.
Speaker 5: Says, well, I call it because I'd like to watch
Speaker 5: you wrestle again.
Speaker 3: And she offers to send him tickets. He doesn't need tickets.
Speaker 3: He I don't know why he called. Then he's just like,
Speaker 3: I just want to see you wrestle. So he we
Speaker 3: learn he's going to do that, and then suddenly there's
Speaker 3: a reveal. He turns his head and one half of
Speaker 3: the Professor's face is scarred like two face in Batman,
Speaker 3: and he says, I want vengeance.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Whole scene here is inside profile until he turns
Speaker 1: and takes his glasses off, and we see that that
Speaker 1: that he has in fact scarred by the acid, that
Speaker 1: the Professor all along has been the mad doctor. And
Speaker 1: like we said earlier on, you can kind of see
Speaker 1: this twist coming miles away.
Speaker 3: There's no other character it really could have been that
Speaker 3: I can think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there wasn't a really they they did. They
Speaker 1: did some interesting things to try and throw you off
Speaker 1: the scent, but they never really developed or portrayed a
Speaker 1: proper additional suspect, Like who were we supposed to think
Speaker 1: it was Tommy? Now?
Speaker 3: I mean the only other character I think you could
Speaker 3: have because you see him with a mask on. The
Speaker 3: only character who like fits the physical profile might have
Speaker 3: been Armando. Maybe you know Maya, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: That it makes sense. There's no real evidence for that,
Speaker 1: you know, to be the case. So but still like
Speaker 1: seeing it coming not and knowing how it's going to
Speaker 1: roll out, it's still pretty great because Canado is terrific.
Speaker 1: He's been terrific the whole film as the Professor, but
Speaker 1: now he gets to go into just pure maniacal mode. Unmasked,
Speaker 1: half scarred, He's just a full blown super villain at
Speaker 1: this point and he's delightful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love it. And now he's only using his
Speaker 3: non James Mason voice, he's only using the mad doctor voice,
Speaker 3: the deep sonorous version. So he announces his plan. He's
Speaker 3: going to take Gomar's physical strength. He's going to transplant
Speaker 3: it into the body of a luchadora so he can
Speaker 3: create a murderous, superhuman luchadora to destroy Gloria Venus.
Speaker 1: So we're putting the medical goals on the back burner
Speaker 1: for the time being, and we're switching to vengeance mode here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's like doing monologues into the camera. He says,
Speaker 3: she'll blow her body to pieces, Yes, a little killing
Speaker 3: in the ring for all the audience to see. And
Speaker 3: then he did, you know, cackling laughter. But it makes
Speaker 3: me think he's still maybe like he might have been
Speaker 3: kind of sincere about his hatred of wrestling from that line,
Speaker 3: like maybe he's part of his goal is to get
Speaker 3: revenge on Gloria Venus, but the other part is to
Speaker 3: make the audience feel bad for watching wrestling.
Speaker 1: Did you get out? Kind of because to carry out
Speaker 1: this plan of vengeance, and again, it's kind of an
Speaker 1: unwarranted vengeance because like, are you really allowed to have
Speaker 1: vengeance against the person who scarred you while you were
Speaker 1: trying to take their brain? I don't know. But at
Speaker 1: any rate, he's going to have to become a wrestling manager,
Speaker 1: a lucha libre manager, and wear a lucha libre mask
Speaker 1: in order to carry this out.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think vengeance often works that way. I mean, okay,
Speaker 3: so Captain Ahab wants vengeance against Moby Dick, but he
Speaker 3: was trying to kill Moby Dick. He was the aggressor.
Speaker 3: He was, he was the initial attacker. I think that's
Speaker 3: just often how it is.
Speaker 1: People.
Speaker 3: It was your fault the whole time, but still you
Speaker 3: came out badly and now you want revenge.
Speaker 1: There's a good point. It's a good point. And like
Speaker 1: we they have this is the mad quest for revenge.
Speaker 1: Now it's all encompassing. You know, Gloria Venus wanted vengeance,
Speaker 1: she swore vengeance, but she's still was keeping up her
Speaker 1: day j yeah, in her social life.
Speaker 3: But so they do the procedure and they create the
Speaker 3: super luchadora named Vendetta, and so he tests her out.
Speaker 3: He says, like, destroy that table there, and she flips
Speaker 3: over the table and she's she's wearing Oh, this is
Speaker 3: now a masked luchadora. I don't think any of the
Speaker 3: luchadoras we've met so far have been masked.
Speaker 1: No, they hadn't, and it's it's a pretty It's also
Speaker 1: the first costume we see that has any pizazz to it,
Speaker 1: because then the mask has like a lightning bolt on it.
Speaker 1: Lower face is revealed in the mask, and then we
Speaker 1: get kind of a sparkly looking cake, which is very jaunty,
Speaker 1: even if the basic jumpsuit underneath is the same gray
Speaker 1: jumpsuit that everyone else has.
Speaker 3: All Right, so Vendetta is now on the scene, and
Speaker 3: we learned there's like a TV announcer saying, okay, she's
Speaker 3: called Vendetta. She's from Paris. Was there a big wrestling
Speaker 3: scene in Paris? Maybe there was.
Speaker 1: I think there was wrestling. There was wrestling in France
Speaker 1: at some point. I'm not sure what was going on
Speaker 1: there in sixty two, but huh, okayber Andre the Giant
Speaker 1: came from France. That's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've just never heard of French wrestling before, but
Speaker 3: I guess it must have been a thing. But we
Speaker 3: learned that she challenges Gloria Venus for the championship, and
Speaker 3: there's gonna be The numbers here are fuzzy. They say
Speaker 3: first that they're fighting for a purse of two thousand,
Speaker 3: four hundred currency unspecified. They just say the number, and
Speaker 3: then later they say that the fight is for twenty
Speaker 3: five thousand dollars. Do you understand what's going on there?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I mean, you know, I probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: pick this apart too much because also, like this is
Speaker 1: the main event. Vendetta is complete unknown, They're just gonna
Speaker 1: reveal her and now she has a main event slot
Speaker 1: over everybody else. She instantly gets a challenge for the championship.
Speaker 1: I guess I assume does.
Speaker 3: The originally work like that, like you're not a rookie
Speaker 3: and you get to go fight stone cold or whatever?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I guess it does kind of work
Speaker 1: like that sometimes, But even for the like the real
Speaker 1: sports feel we're going for here, there has to be
Speaker 1: some sort of build up, right, some sort of a
Speaker 1: win lost record established, but now we're going straight for it.
Speaker 3: So there's a funny scene where they like sign the
Speaker 3: contract and oh, the Mad Doctor is there also wearing
Speaker 3: a Lucha mask for the contract signing scene, and he
Speaker 3: looks creepy in his his mask is teeth.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, has kind of a skull vibe going on.
Speaker 3: But we go to the match and when Vendetta enters
Speaker 3: the ring, she's just like kicking spectators in the face.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So finally in this match we get that that
Speaker 1: proper rudo technico vibe going on. One wrestler is clearly
Speaker 1: the villain and the other is clearly the hero. One
Speaker 1: is honorable and the other one is just all fighting
Speaker 1: and nastiness. Wants you know, not only wants to hurt
Speaker 1: her opponent, but will hurt anyone else that gets in
Speaker 1: her way.
Speaker 3: That's right, because we see Vendetta like suplexing the referee, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, just I think throws the referee.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she eventually throws the referee out of the ring,
Speaker 3: and so oh he's Gloria done for. Well, ultimately, it's
Speaker 3: a movie where where Friendship comes to the rescue because
Speaker 3: Golden Ruby comes in to help her. She I don't
Speaker 3: know if she used the tag rope correctly, but Golden
Speaker 3: Ruby comes into the ring and together they beat up Vendetta.
Speaker 1: Oh you know where this is completely no rules at
Speaker 1: this point. This is a straight up run. I mean
Speaker 1: that basically any order in the match has fallen apart.
Speaker 1: I mean, and that was that was the Professor's plan
Speaker 1: all along. Right, It's like he doesn't want her beat
Speaker 1: in the ring. He wants her killed in the ring.
Speaker 3: Right, But ultimately this is not the final showdown. I
Speaker 3: kind of wish they had somehow found a way to
Speaker 3: do the final like ultimate showdown in the ring. Instead,
Speaker 3: the action moves elsewhere because the Mad Doctor has to
Speaker 3: run away, I think, because the police arrives. So he's like,
Speaker 3: oh no, and he runs away, and then he summons
Speaker 3: Vendetta to help him, and they both end up climbing
Speaker 3: a water tower and the police put like, you know,
Speaker 3: high beams on them. They put like lights up on them,
Speaker 3: and Mike climbs up the water tower to I guess,
Speaker 3: tell them to come down or something. But they start
Speaker 3: attacking Mike and they're like stomping on his fingers as
Speaker 3: he's hanging on for dear life. So what do they
Speaker 3: have to do. Well, they've got to they've got to
Speaker 3: shoot them. So Tommy shoots the Mad Doctor and Vendetta
Speaker 3: with a rifle and that's the end. I feel like
Speaker 3: that's kind of an unsatisfying ending to this. I wish
Speaker 3: they'd had a different kind of final confrontation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I absolutely agree. I feel like the ending here
Speaker 1: is the ultimate Week Week link because it ends up
Speaker 1: taking place outside the Ring after we've built up to
Speaker 1: that in ring encounter, and.
Speaker 3: Then doesn't involve the main characters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't involve our lutadoras at all. It's just
Speaker 1: as police shooting the villains off a water tower. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so like our villains end up looking a bit dumber
Speaker 1: for having gone up there, and then it's just kind
Speaker 1: of they're just kind of dispatched with ease, and then
Speaker 1: it's the end of the picture. So I wish they
Speaker 1: had done something something a little different here at the end.
Speaker 3: I agree. I think this movie overall is deserving of
Speaker 3: a much better ending confrontation. I feel like they could
Speaker 3: have found a way to make it all happen in
Speaker 3: the Ring, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or if they had to go to one last location,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe a secondary layer, Maybe it's a
Speaker 1: they try to there's a getaway car, a submarine, I
Speaker 1: don't know. There's so many places you could go why
Speaker 1: the water tower.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're totally right, And then it wraps up so quick.
Speaker 3: After that, the mad doctor like falls to his death
Speaker 3: off the water tower, and I think the detective comes
Speaker 3: in and he says to Gloria Venus, it's all over.
Speaker 3: Now your sister has been avenged, the end, and that's it.
Speaker 1: I do like that about a lot of these old pictures.
Speaker 1: When it's time to close up to the shop, they
Speaker 1: just turn the sign around and near out the door.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm gonna say I really had a great time
Speaker 3: with this movie. Doctor Doomed tremendously fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, ending aside is a lot of fun, fun performers,
Speaker 1: well shot. Like we've been saying, you know, nice, nice,
Speaker 1: attractive black and white, because a lot of the film
Speaker 1: is about like creeping around in alleys and creeping all
Speaker 1: around in mad science layers. So the black and white
Speaker 1: fits it really well and they do a good job
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 3: I think we have gone on really long about this one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we may have to cut some of
Speaker 1: my diatribes there about Lucia Libra history there, but at
Speaker 1: any rate, it was fun to return to the world
Speaker 1: of lucha in this picture. So if you enjoyed this
Speaker 1: one and you didn't listen to our episode about Santo
Speaker 1: and the Treasure of Dracula, go back and listen to
Speaker 1: that one, because you'll probably enjoy it as well. Just
Speaker 1: a reminder that we're primarily a science podcast here. It's
Speaker 1: saying science for the most part, not mad science. And
Speaker 1: with it we have our core episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind publishing and the Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays
Speaker 1: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 1: a weird film. If you want to see a complete
Speaker 1: list of all the movies we've discussed on Weird House Cinema, well,
Speaker 1: you can go to a couple of places. I blog
Speaker 1: about these films at s Immuta music dot com. But
Speaker 1: also if you use letterbox, that's L E T E
Speaker 1: R B O x D dot com. We have a
Speaker 1: profile there. The profile is weird House. You can look
Speaker 1: us up. We have a list there and you can
Speaker 1: see all the all the movies we've covered, the poster
Speaker 1: arts cascading across the screen, and you can sort through them.
Speaker 1: You can look at them by by decade, by genre,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. It's pretty fun to toy around with.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our audio producer Jjposway. If you would
Speaker 3: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 3: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 3: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 3: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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