Weirdhouse Cinema: Santo vs. the Martian Invasion
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Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. And this is Joe McCormick. And today, once more, we return to the realm of the great and powerful luchadors, Mexican wrestling cinema, and the encounters of these wrestlers with villains of the supernatural, science fiction, and generally weird persuasion. You know, before we came on mic today, Rob, you and I in the chat were talking about just

other mexican wrestling movies that come up that look interesting but i guess we they're just not really uh within our purview because they don't have either magic or science fiction technology in it i i think we have to limit ourselves just to those and even just uh walling off that sort of subset there's there's still so many riches to to discover yeah

That's right. Yeah. Every time we dive into Lucha films, I feel like I'm discovering new, potentially tantalizing titles. And I mean, I think the same goes for just Mexican cinema in general. There's just so much there, so many different genres. And not all of it has really gone on to resonate, certainly with modern audiences, but also with modern audiences outside of Mexico. Right.

Now, in the past, we've covered a couple of other supernatural Mexican wrestling movies. One was Santo and the Treasure of Dracula from 1969, in which the I would say easily the most popular ever luchador hero, Santo, he invents a time machine which somehow leads to a vampire being unleashed upon the world. And in the middle of this chaos, Santa

Santo must simultaneously fight the unearthly evil of the Dracul and avoid being photographed in any of the gratuitous nude scenes that were added for the Euromarket. Yeah, yeah. Fun movie, fun episode. Definitely see the European version if you get a chance, though, because it is the one that is in glorious color and has been just lovingly restored.

That was a real highlight. But also excellent was another one we covered, the 1963 film Doctor of Doom, which was mainly about two heroic luchadoras, Gloria Venus, I think that was the one played by Lorena Velasquez, and Golden Ruby, who must defeat a mad scientist and his plot to, I think, kidnap women and transplant their brains into a gorilla or maybe put gorilla brains inside the women's heads. I was a little fuzzy on that.

I think maybe a little bit of both goes on. But yeah, that one was super fun. That one also had the excellent Roberto Canedo playing the villain, the mad scientist. And both of the pictures we just mentioned were directed by Rene Cardona. Yes. Now, today we are coming home to another El Santo adventure. But this time it's more directly in the science fiction realm, though I guess both of the other movies we talked about did have science fiction elements because it's always easy to forget the Dracula movie has time travel in it.

It's a full-on time machine. But this one is like your straight-up alien invasion movie. Planet Earth is in the crosshairs. The Martians are here, and they want full control. Yeah.

So this movie is Santo and the Martian Invasion from 1967. I was thinking for a while, I was a little confused, like, oh, is this even technically a Santo in name movie? Because a lot of the times in the movie they were calling him Silver Mask. But I realized, no, they also call him Santo in the movie. They use both names basically interchangeably. Yeah, that was one of his monikers, the man in the silver mask. It gets confusing, I think, especially when we're dealing with

Yeah.

Now, I would say, in my opinion, of the three Mexican wrestling movies with supernatural elements that we have watched, this, I think, is the least of the three. Doctor of Doom and Santo and the Treasure of Dracula are both really special in their own ways. But despite coming in third, the Martian invasion, I think, is still a lot of fun and fun.

If this makes any sense, Rob, I think it should win some kind of award for some of the funniest blocking in all of the movies we've watched. Just the way characters are kind of arranged on stage or on the set for the camera to look at is often in itself so funny. Yeah, it has a lot of things going for it. None of the things going for it are its story and character. There are virtually no story and character beats throughout. But yeah,

Though Santo, as always, is flawless. Santo is flawless. Santo doesn't need to grow as a character. He is already perfect. So like any criticisms about his character arc is redundant because he is missing the point.

Yeah. The perfect human.

They really like this effect. They pull it off well, and it just happens all the time. Yes, they're really into the teleportation, which they accomplish, by the way. I like just this little physical prop, not by way of a button or by way of a switch or a lever, but by a dial. It's like the oven dials. They turn a dial on their belt, and that makes them vanish and reappear at the spaceship. I love it. I love good tactile science fiction equipment.

Nowadays, you watch, it's all, you know, like virtual interfaces and floating holograms and, you know, or Star Trek Next Generation, like flat screen stuff. I like it when there's a chunky button and a dial and a big lever.

Well, the implications of the dial are kind of fascinating, especially for teleportation, because I would think teleportation is an on-off function. You either you teleport or you don't. But a dial is for graduated functions like the, you know, the power of a stove burner or something. So it makes you wonder, like, can do you kind of half teleport or do you two thirds of the way teleport? We never see that happen in the movie. They always turn it to full crank. Yeah.

It's kind of reckless. I was thinking maybe you slowly tune it so that you maintain consciousness between this incarnation and the next as this one is destroyed and the next one is created. But if you just turn it really fast, I don't know, maybe it still happens appropriately. This movie is not really concerned with those questions.

No, this glosses over a lot of the finer points of the Martian technology and the invasion plot and what the humans are doing. I've got to once we get into the plot, I really have questions about to what extent the people understand that a Martian invasion is happening. It seems to alternate scene to scene, whether people are like, yep, we're being invaded or whether it's like we've got to keep this a secret. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I will also add that Martian technology is, of course, 500 years ahead of ours. So, of course, it is difficult to understand. Seems like magic. Yes, they say that many, many times.

Rob, I don't know if you have an elevator pitch for this one, but I would say imagine War of the Worlds, but take out the heat ray and most of the social commentary and put in muscles, beefcake, and burlesque dancing. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. I will say one of the things I really liked about this one is that

Since it is, I guess, leaning into sci-fi of the time period, this is a film that does have a message to it. It does have a pretty persistent anti-war and anti-nuclear weapon standpoint, which I respect.

I guess that's right. I don't know why I said take out the social commentary. I guess take out any subtle social commentary. Instead, it's just like bluntly delivered morals. It's like, will humanity, a narrator comes on and says, will humanity ever stop these crazy nuclear experiments? We don't know.

But it's more than we got in, uh, Santo and the treasure of Dracula. Like there wasn't really, I mean, they were like, we must not have time machines or Dracula. It's like, they weren't really, you know, there wasn't really a message attached to that picture. All right. Well, let's go ahead and listen to just a little of the trailer audio. I believe this is Spanish language trailer. So, um, we'll just give you just a little sample of some of the, the sights and sounds here. Well, not the sites, but just the sounds. Yeah.

Extra! Mysterious disappearance in a sports field! Extra! Extra! Disappearance of thousands of people! What strange phenomenon causes the disconcert, panic and collective hysteria? In order not to alarm public opinion, until now the numerous kidnappings that have occurred among the inhabitants of the city have remained a secret. What strange adventure are you living?

Now, I don't know if the trailer tries to mislead you on this front, but the glorious poster for this film does definitely mislead as to the plot contents because it shows a

Santo appearing to hold a sort of green Martian in one arm, seemingly unconscious, looks kind of like Blanca from Street Fighter. He got that under his one arm. In the other hand, he's holding a gun, which what would Santo wield a gun like that? It seems completely out of character. Not well, it doesn't make sense at all. And he's standing on the surface of another planet, probably the moon, because we can see the earth in the background. Santo does not leave earth in this movie. Yeah.

Right. And he never brandishes a laser pistol or a plasma rifle or whatever this is. But yeah, this is a great poster for a different movie. None of this actually happens. Sandra just shamelessly using the weapon of the enemy. It's yeah. Admire the art style, though. It's it's lavishly realized.

Yeah, as we'll explore, Santo uses grapples, punches, kicks, especially like well-timed kicks and leg scissors to an opponent's legs, that sort of thing. He does not need a laser gun.

Now, here is where we often talk availability. I was kind of surprised when we were going into this week because I wanted to do another Lucha movie. I was kind of surprised how many of these classic Santo movies are apparently like hard to get in a good release these days. Like there are tons of them that do not have a solid remaster or good Blu-ray release.

Yeah, and a lot of times higher quality versions are really lacking. Like, Santo and the Treasure of Dracula, when they found that reel and were able to restore it, like, that was big news. I found a Reuters news article about that. Like, everyone was excited there. Like, this one, as far as I know, there are no Blu-ray versions of it, no restored versions of the footage, no color versions of it.

um, or anything like that. Nothing like we, we had with, uh, treasure of Dracula. Uh, what we do have is, is perfectly watchable. Uh, I watched it on a DVD release. This is, I think like VCI and or max DVD rented from Atlanta's own video drone. Uh, they have a number of Santo films there. You can rent, um,

Again, perfectly watchable quality. It was in Spanish with English subtitles. And the disc also had some extras also in Spanish, but with subtitles that are worth seeking. So that's worth seeking out if you want the physical media experience for this film. Yeah. I don't know how available it is right now, though, but you can rent it at Videodrome.

I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together on the really no really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor we got the answer will space junk block your cell signal the astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer we talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth plus is

Does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us tonight. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's what I'm talking about.

It's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, shall we get into the people behind and in this film? Yes, I want to know more. So this is a different director than our previous Lucha outings.

That's right. The director here is Alfredo B. Cravena. He lived 1914 through 1996. German-born Mexican film director and screenwriter who directed more than 150 films between the mid-40s and the mid-90s.

uh, an acclaimed filmmaker in his own right of the Mexican golden age of cinema among his most well-received works are the 1956 drama, uh, Talpa and the 1951 film girls in uniform. Now this is a boarding school drama based on a 1931 German film of the same name. Um, the German film I was reading about, it suffered multiple waves of censorship, uh, and, but is today held up as a cult classic of lesbian cinema. Uh,

I haven't seen Cravena's version of this, but I'm to understand it grapples with these themes as well, while also pushing up against its own censorship issues at the time. I realize Girls in Uniform may sound like a sketchy title, but this is like, this is a serious, these are serious film projects. And I think the original German film was based on a play. Yeah, I can see the phrasing could give the wrong idea. It sounds like a like women in prison type title. Yeah.

Yeah, but nothing of that sort. I have not seen either of these films, but they are very well regarded, or at least the German version is very well regarded. And people seem to like the Mexican version as well. Now, outside of dramas and comedies, Corvena also directed multiple Santo and other Lucha Libre movies, some Zorro films, some Mexican noir, and also some horror.

A couple of titles that jumped out at me include Planet of the Female Invaders from 66. This starred Elizabeth Campbell, Mari Monti, who we'll get into, Lorena Velasquez, who we already mentioned. A 1980 film called The Dracula Dynasty. I'm already intrigued.

A 1979 film called The Whip vs. Satan, which is supposed to be a Zorro-esque adventure where the Zorro-esque character has occult powers and battles Satan. Oh, okay. So it really is The Whip vs. Satan. It's not that Satan has The Whip. No.

That's playing against type, yeah. Yeah. And then there's a 1992 film called On the Edge of Terror, said to be a very weird and disturbing ventriloquist horror film with Robert Canedo in a supporting role. Hmm, okay. I'd be down for watching any of these. Yeah, like I say, every time we dive into Mexican cinema, there are so many titles that jump out and sound. I footnoted a few of these to explore later.

Man, just from the title and cast list, Planet of the Female Invaders sounds like it may have a lot in common with another show favorite that we did, Ship of Monsters, which also had Lorena Velasquez and was about women invaders coming to Earth to find the perfect man to, I don't know, like replenish their species. Yeah, that one was a musical. That was great. Yes, which was wonderful. I love that movie.

All right, the writer for this picture is Rafael Garcia Trevesi, who lived 1910 through 1984, Mexican screenwriter who wrote loads of Santo films, in addition to just seemingly loads of everything else. His credits include 1962's Santo and the Vampires, as well as non-Santo movies like the horror film Spiritism from 62 and the historical thriller Black Wind from 65.

Hmm. I don't want to be mean, but I will say I don't think the writing is a huge highlight on this one. No, no. You know, it gave them something to shoot, you know. Yeah. But like I say, at least some of the films that this writer did, you know, were well received and are, you know, the thing about, we should mention a lot, the thing about a lot of these Lucha Libre films is that they are essentially low budget films.

swiftly produced genre pictures. So, yeah, they're not necessarily, you know,

Great examples of what everyone involved was capable of, especially when you're talking about the people behind the scenes. Yeah. I mean, you can tell from a business perspective. I think a lot of times the idea was like we have an extremely popular and charismatic wrestler. We want to find a way to string together a number of different fight scenes with some unusual texture and costumes. How can how can we kind of like thread all that together? Mm hmm.

All right. The star of this one, and of course we've talked about him before in our previous episode, is El Santo. Now, we know now that El Santo's given name was Rodolfo Guzman Herta, and he lived 1917 through 1984, but it's worth noting that

At the time period, during this time period, and even today, Lucha Libre stars, their actual name is not necessarily a matter of public record. And during El Santo's day, like this guy like lived the gimmick. You did not see pictures of El Santo without the mask anymore.

anywhere he went and was known, like he, I guess he would go to the grocery store. I'm to understand, you know, he, he would not be wearing the mask, but he would be incognito. But if, but he, anytime he was appearing as El Santo, he was wearing the mask. No one saw his face. And, uh, it, and it's still the same today with some wrestlers, uh, in Mexico, people don't have their, uh, access to the details of their, their non gimmick life.

Seems like there could be some advantages to that from the wrestler's point of view. I mean, if you're like, it's a way of being a famous person while still being able to have some privacy in your regular life. Yeah.

So, yes, El Santo, the saint, probably the most famous and instantly identifiable luchador of all time. He was active for five decades. And in addition to being a superstar in the ring, he was able to spin that off into becoming a comic book superhero. And that led to numerous films.

where he's generally playing the role of a superhero or a crime fighter, taking on everything from crime and corruption to supernatural evil and, of course, invasions from other planets, as we'll be discussing today.

He was the ultimate good guy or technico. He never lost his mask, but he did famously reveal his face on TV prior to his death from a heart attack in 1984. It was he was appearing on their mast and it was wasn't something they promoted. They were not like, oh, Santa is going to reveal his face today. It was like almost casually. He's like, this is my face. And he showed his face and then put his mask back on.

I've seen the footage. It's very brief. It's almost like he doesn't give you a real good look. He just kind of peels it up and then pulls it right back down. Yeah, but it's still, there's an emotional quality to it. Not as emotional as some of the footage you'll find of older luchadors losing their mask in a match where they put their mask on the line and they lose it and then they have to, in a ceremonial fashion, reveal their face and reveal their full name to the audience and generally tears fall

uh, are streaming, family members are present. It's, it's very emotional. Hmm.

But there was and is no bigger deal than Santo. He wasn't just a lucha star. He was and is a cultural icon. I mentioned this the last time we talked about him, but wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer has pointed out that it's difficult to really point to a figure quite like Santo in American culture. Like, you can't really compare him to any American wrestling name in terms of how important he was and is. So you can't say, oh, well, he was like Hulk Hogan or he was like The Rock even. Right.

No, you'd have to point to a superstar like Muhammad Ali or Elvis Presley to even get close. And again, especially during their heyday. Like, you'd really have to look to Elvis Presley during the height of his fame, and you'd probably get close to what Santo was there. I mean, I am by no means an expert in the cultural reception of El Santo, but one thing I notice from all these movies is...

Yeah, there is this aura of absolute awe about him that you I guess you could compare to celebrities like Elvis, except even with people like Elvis. I don't know if there was also the kind of holy veneration like there. There's just this understanding and all the Santo stuff I've seen that Santo is just a person.

perfectly honorable person. He is the ultimate lawful good. Even in a world where you can't trust anything else, you can trust Santo. That's right. Santo is the best of us without any question. And yeah, he does seem to stand at this perfect place where all these different energies in Mexican culture come together. There's this sacred Catholic element to him. I mean, he is the saint of

At the same time, he is the superhero. He is like Superman, but he is also in that area where he is both a comic book character and a real person. He is a performer. Yeah, and he is absolutely good. There are no shades of gray to this character. Everything is silver. Beautifully said, yes.

So the comics came first again, and this allowed this larger-than-life character to then branch out into films. And there were so many Santo films of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and their success allowed other luchadors to cross over into cinema. And again, these films were often cheap and fast, and they hopscotch through different genres, horror, science fiction, Western spy movies, crime flicks, some outright comedies in the mix as well.

All right. So that's El Centro. But there are numerous other wrestlers in this picture. There's quite a bit of grappling in the movie. And I think that all the other main roles are also played by wrestlers. That's right. When the Martians arrive and they are bringing body slams. Yeah.

All right. The essentially the leader of the Martian invasion is a Martian who eventually takes on the human name of Argos. We don't know what their original names are. Yeah. They as we'll discuss, there's a point in the film where they're like, all right, we all have names now. We've taken them from human cultures. And they would they transform themselves in something that lasts for about a scene? Like, yeah, they don't stick to this concept at all. Yeah.

But yes, the Martian leader, he transforms into Argos. And I got to say right at the beginning, when we get to the plot section,

I apologize because I may misattribute which of the male Martians I am talking about at any given time because I was getting several of them mixed up, but not this one. The main Martian, I think I always knew who he was. This is the Martian leader, the Beefcake, played by Wolf Ravinsky's. Yeah, Wolf Ravinsky's lived 1921 through 1999. He was a luchador, turned actor,

a Latvian of Jewish descent. His family fled Europe for Argentina during the Second World War. Eventually got into Lucha Libre and became established there. Now, obviously, Wolf was too handsome to wear a lucha hood. And I think he was generally a rudo. I was looking at sometimes information on this time period is a little the record keeping is not all that great, but it looks like he was a rudo often going up against Santo and his allies.

And he was eventually able to spin this off into success as an actor. His filmography includes a couple of Santo films, also the serious wrestling drama, the serious Lucha Libre drama, The Magnificent Beast from 1953. But his biggest success came as the star of the Neutron films in which he plays the hero, a masked, caped, atomic Superman. There are several of these. His other credits include the 1950 noir film The Man Without a Face,

which looks really interesting. And eventually, after acting and wrestling, he became a restaurateur in Mexico City, I believe. I think it was Argentinian cuisine. Oh, interesting. If this makes any sense, I feel like his presence in this movie is most often...

funny in a way that is not necessarily intended, but that's not because he's not a good actor. I don't, I don't know if that really connects, but like, I think he's, I can sense that he would be a good actor in a row in, in many a role, but he's just, he is placed within hilarious scenarios and he looks hilarious acting them out.

Right, right. But on the other hand, he always looks jacked and handsome. And I don't know if this is actually his voice that we hear. I don't know if it's dubbed by another actor. But at least as we experience it, he sounds commanding as well. Yeah. Now, moving from the lead male Martian, I guess we're going to the lead female Martian, though I don't know if she's actually the leader. I'd say she's the number one, yeah. Okay.

This is Aphrodite, played by Mara Monti, who I mentioned earlier, born 1942. Now, she's a familiar face for fans of weird luchadora movies because she was the star of Rene Cardona's 1968 film, The Batwoman.

which I do not think was authorized by DC Comics. This is a terrifically enjoyable film, which also has fish monsters in it and a mad scientist played by Roberto Canedo. Recent Mystery Science Theater 3000 coverage on this one with Emily being the human riffer on that one. A lot of fun. Monty appears in a handful of Lucha films, including 68's

The Treasure of Montezuma, which had Santo in it, as well as Jorge Rivera. And she was also in 1969's The Vampires and 1971's Alien Terror. I feel like I've seen The Batwoman, but I don't remember anything about it. It's just a complete blank in my brain. There's a lot of running around...

in a really skimpy Batwoman costume, fish monsters, and, like, driving. It's good. I mean, it's very fun. Well, I gotta say, Mara Monti is a striking screen presence in this movie. Her aura is off the charts. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, all the Martians are very charismatic. The sort of the second in command, and if there is a ranking system for the Martians here, second in command of the female Martians, we have Selene, played by Eva Norvind.

lived 1944 through 2006, Norwegian-born actress who went on to achieve greater success as a professional dominatrix, but also award-winning documentarian for the 1980 film Born Without. I haven't seen this, but I was reading about it. It's about handicapped Mexican actor and musician Jose Flores-Montes.

It also features some content with Alejandro Jodorowsky. And she served as a consultant on 1999's The Thomas Crown Affair. I think she was involved...

She was like a Rene Russo's consultant on something about her character's like dominance or something. I'm not sure the full story is there. That's a movie that I remember seeing when I was way too young for it and finding it almost disturbingly weird and not what I expected. That's a remake of an older Steve McQueen movie, I believe. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I remember Rene Russo and was it Pierce Brosnan after he was coming off of being James Bond? Yeah, yeah. I never saw the remake. I did see the original because I think it has this song like a circle and a spiral like a wheel within a wheel. Okay. Anyway, Norvind is striking in this as all the Martians are striking. Yeah. And some of them, of course, do actually strike because all the male Martians are played by some of Santo's fellow luchadors.

That's right. So the male Martians are, I think, yeah, they are all wrestlers. And the main one is Argos, but the sort of second in command is Kronos, right? Yes. Played by an actor billed as El Nazi.

When I saw that in the credits, I was, I didn't know what to think. We just see the names. It's like Wolfer Vinsky's Hamley L. Nazi. Yes. L. Nazi. This was, of course, the Lucha name for a guy by the name of Ignacio Gomez.

He lived 1932 through 2008. Obviously, if it's not obvious, he was a rudo. He was a bad guy. He made his career using a German Nazi gimmick. And his finishing maneuver, his finishing hold was called the swastika. I think it's like a variation of the abdominal stretch technique.

It was a different time. But there are many examples of Nazi themed villains from Lucha Libre history. Yeah. But so we should understand this guy not as like a wrestler who actually had Nazi sympathies, but who is playing a villainous character. He would be like the actors playing the Nazi villains in the Indiana Jones movies. Yeah. Yeah. I think if you think of like Red Skull from Marvel Comics, that kind of thing, that's that's probably the reference point here.

All right. There's another guy. He takes on the name Morpheo, and he is played by Ham Lee. This was his wrestling name anyway. He lived 1932 through 2011. He was a Mexican luchador of Korean descent. I think he was a

I think he only ever did two films, both of them Santo films, but he's a memorable presence here. According to Lucha Wiki, which is a great English language reference for anything and everything, Lucha Libre, he apparently actually wrestled unofficially as Santo in Japan, I think in the early 70s.

because he was stranded there with some of his coworkers after like a shady promoter like brought them in but didn't pay them. And so they had to get enough money to fly themselves back to Mexico. And so he's like, well, I guess I'll dress up as Santo.

and do the style and do some of the moves, then I guess they made it back because I believe he ran a gym in Mexico City for a long time. Well, this is, I guess, a serious question. If you are a masked wrestling celebrity, how do you prevent somebody else from coming in and saying they are you just by using an identical costume? I mean, it depends.

It can be an issue. And it gets throughout... Oh, in fact, it happens in this movie. Yeah, it happens in this movie in a rather unbelievable way. But it happens in real life, too, especially when you get into disputes between companies. Like one company is like, well, we own the rights to this mask and this character. But then the guy who plays it, he leaves for another company. And now you have two guys...

doing the same gimmick, but maybe one has to alter their name slightly, that sort of thing. And then,

And then there've been cases too, where somebody passes away and, but they keep the gimmick going with somebody else under the same mask. You get into that again, you get into that weird space with a luchador or luchador, especially like it is a real person, but it is also a fictional character. It's also a gimmick. And yet at the same time, it doesn't always feel appropriate that someone else should play that role. Um,

if something happens to the original unless it is passed down like officially from like a father to a son or one relative to another or even from like a maestro to a mentor.

I was a little unclear on exactly his powers because they say the main thing about him is that he has great powers of hypnotism. But I think all of the Martians can hypnotize people. I think he can hypnotize them better than everybody else. Allegedly, yes. Yeah. But there are a lot of good scenes of him just like standing there looking very like stern while people just stop talking in the middle of a sentence and kind of go limp. Yeah. Other times he's wearing a suit and looks very dapper. Yes. Yeah.

Um, one more wrestler I'm going to mention, and we may, we'll rest, we'll mention some more later on, but, uh, there's a, a, a bald wrestler that shows up in the training sequences. Um, this is a guy whose real name was Nathaniel Leon who lived 1915 through 2001, but his wrestling name was Frankenstein. Um,

I don't think he wore a mask or anything. It's just like they're like, you look kind of like Frankenstein. So you're Frankenstein. He pops up in a lot of Lucha and Mexican genre movies, you know, just because he had a great look. Yeah. He also has an interesting face. Yeah.

And oh, and I'll mention there's a professor character, Professor Ororica, played by Manuel Zosaya. He lived 1913 through 1987, but he was in a number of films, often in a supporting role. But I don't have much else to say about him.

other than he's in it and they talk a lot about what a great scientist he is. Well, he's kind of an ambiguous character because he is portrayed in this movie as like Santo's best friend. He's the only guy who really we see Santo spending off time with. I mean, we see him training with his wrestling buddies, but, you know, they're like hanging out together and discussing things.

But then really by the time you get to the end of the movie, to the extent the film has a theme, it is the schism between his view of the world and Santo's view of the world. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is true. They could have maybe built it up more, but it is there.

All right. And finally, the music here is once more the music of Antonio Diaz-Condi. He died in 1976. Prolific Mexican composer who worked on a ton of B pictures during his time period. In fact, we previously mentioned him in our episodes on Dr. Doom and Santa Claus.

I was kind of dismissive of his work in those previous films, but this one had a lot of sci-fi electronic sound effects going on. So I enjoyed the sonic aspects of this picture more, I would say. That's how to hook Rob. You get plenty of beep boops in there. I know. I'm kind of a cliche. Just add some beeps and some boops, and then I'll be like, all right, this one's good. No, I like the beep boops too. They got us both.

I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together on the really no really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor we got the answer will space junk block your cell signal the astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer we talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth plus is

Does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's right.

It's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, well, let's get into the plot. Oh, boy. Well, we begin with stock footage of a rocket taking off. So it's time to play the game we've played before. Which mission is this public domain government footage from?

I can't be positive, but I do have a best guess, and it's that it was one of the Atlas rockets used in Project Mercury. Rob, I found a photo to compare it to that I put side by side in the outline with the opening shots from the film. I think it looks pretty close. What do you think? Yeah, I'm convinced. This one was from the launch of Friendship 7 in 1962, which was before this film was released. But anyway, after we fiddle around with a bunch of rocket stock footage,

We get the title, which appears over shots of spectators observing the space launch. And the title here is Santo the Silver Mask versus the Martian Invasion. Now, I think it's interesting that we see the space launch at the beginning here because this plays no role in the plot at all. But I was thinking about why we have it here and then thinking about how many other mid-century, low-budget space invasion movies exist.

have plot elements or include something, however small, about humans first sending a mission into space, which then somehow triggers or provokes or leads to an alien attack on Earth. Why do we so often have this element of humans going into space and then the aliens, like, retaliate or they come here? Why do you need the element of humans launching something first and

I don't know, but I wonder if it's because actual human rocket launch footage was easily obtained and that's going to look more realistic than any spaceship special effects we can throw together. So why not work in a space mission of some kind so we can use the tape? Yeah, that sounds just seems reasonable to me. Yeah, because these films can and will create their own spaceship effects. But you got all this rocket footage. It's just sitting there. Why not use it? Yeah.

But anyway, the movie proper starts with some voiceover narration while showing astronauts in mid spacewalk. Don't know what what this is from. But the narrator says, with the advance of science come new mysteries. Is our planet the only one inhabited by rational beings like us? And then this is going to sound kind of confusing, but I'm reading the subtitles directly.

If so, will we conquer those other worlds? Or on the contrary, will their inhabitants come to rule us? Hmm.

I think maybe that should have been, if not, I'm not sure. But anyway, we, we start to see out in space, something approaching. It's almost like the beginning of, you know, predator or one of these movies where you're out in the star field and you just see something coming toward the planet earth. In this case, it looks kind of like a kettle grill. I've, I've,

I don't know. I've seen different people online discussing what this could be. Some people say hubcaps. I don't see hubcaps. I see more of a cooking device of some kind, maybe a kind of shallow Dutch oven. I'm not sure. Yeah, yeah. It does seem like it came from the kitchen. That's for sure. But then, oh, Lord, we get a look inside the ship. And this is so first glimpse of the Martians outside.

I was rolling. I don't even know how to begin to describe the energy of this house party, but it is wild. So the inside of the ship has windows that look out into space that have like wooden slats, you know, between them. And then standing around a table are all these people in shiny gold clothes.

I mean, it's in black and white, but I imagine based on the sheen of these things that it's all gold stuff. They're wearing gold outfits with these big upside down teapot helmets on. They've all got long blonde hair, kind of, you know, classic Hulkster energy. And then just...

these gold sort of foil looking capes and the women are in leotards with belts and the men are just in pants and shirtless with their big muscles bulging out, also wearing wrestling style belts. And the blocking from the very beginning is quite funny. And they, they all, especially because when we first see them, they just stand there not moving or speaking for a good long while, I guess. So we can take it all in.

Yeah, everyone here is jacked or voluptuous. And their golden helmets are blocky in a way that kind of looks like their heads are big teeth, you know? Like each head is a big tooth, a big gold tooth. Yeah, bicuspids, yeah. Yeah, but with an eyeball on the front, which on the forehead...

Reminds me a lot of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians in this respect, because we have a lot of questions I had anyway about whether this is a helmet or part of their anatomy or both. Again, their technology is 500 years ahead of ours. So, you know, they're beyond cybernetics at this point. Yeah, there will be a lot of questions about how we're supposed to understand what we're looking at when we see them. But anyway, so they stand there. We get a look at them. And the main beefy dude says...

From now on, we will speak in Spanish for it is the language used in the country we are traveling to the country the earthlings call Mexico. And then we got a sort of Chekhov guy who tells them they're approaching the planet and the beef alien says it is time to transmit their message to the people of Earth or at least to the people of Mexico.

And then we see them looking at this circular screen up in the wall. And I really could not tell, is this a window where they're looking out at Earth or a TV screen? I think it's a TV screen because later they're looking at the same circle and they're like watching Santo do a wrestling match. Yeah. I mean, it's hard for us to say what this is because, again, their technology is so far ahead of where we are. Our puny brains can't even begin to comprehend. Yeah. Yeah.

But then we cut to some earth TV. So we see some households presumably in Mexico and,

you know, sitting around on the couch watching television. So there's a nice program where there is a, a band playing and a man singing a love song. Uh, and the family's there on the couch. Uh, the mother's doing some sewing. The father is reading a newspaper or the kids are watching TV. The boy's taking like these big slugs of some kind of, uh, soda from a bottle. I think it's a Dorito. Oh, I couldn't tell on mine. Yeah. You,

You must have had higher res. I think maybe I had slightly higher res on my version, yeah. It's a Dorito. But then there's... So, uh-oh, there's a TV malfunction. They're trying to watch this music program and it starts shorting out and the TV's making weird sounds. And mom asks what's happening. So we see the father get up and he goes to adjust the TV. And then what comes on the TV is all of the weird Martians we just saw. So suddenly the TV is full of...

full of just like jacked half-naked people wearing kind of tinfoil outfits with these big goofy helmets on. And the dad says, don't be frightened. It's a new program. And then you see everyone visibly relieved. Real Homer Simpson moment there. And the first thing that the aliens say is, what you are watching on your screen is not a fantasy. It is real.

We are not just actors performing in a scary movie. And then we start here like cutting around and seeing not just this family watching TV, but like people all over like different households watching the same thing. People in a bar watching a TV drinking and like laughing at the TV and all this. And the alien message goes on while we see all the different households watching.

I loved this line. Yeah.

Earthlings famously proud of their radar. They say, instead of using your scientific advancements to better humanity, you earthlings use them for your own destruction. And then once again, we see the earthlings not just watching, but mostly laughing at this. We see the drunks at the bar laughing. We see a scientist in a lab coat kind of watching pensively and rubbing his chin. Then we also see a priest in a frock watching pensively and rubbing his chin. Yeah.

That means something. But then the speech continues. When you wage war with your conventional weapons, you are the only victims of your ambition and selfishness. But with the discovery of nuclear energy and your mad experiments with the atomic bomb, you are on the verge of destroying the entire planetary system. Before this happens, we warn you that we are prepared to disintegrate all the inhabitants of Earth.

And this last line is delivered very forcefully. Wolf is like looking right into the camera and he like barks it. I will disintegrate all the inhabitants of Earth.

Then he goes on to keep talking. He says,

And by the way, this is, first of all, like, man, sucks for Mexico. Why'd they pick Mexico? Why are they going to use the weapons on Mexico? I have a lot of thoughts about everything they've been saying thus far. But concerning Mexico, on one hand, you can imagine that Mexico was like, well, we're honored.

first of all, that you would come here. But secondly, like, a lot of this is not on us specifically, so it's kind of weird that you're singling us out. I don't think of Mexico as the most responsible for nuclear warfare. Yeah. But later on, they do come back around to this, at least briefly, and they mention that they've singled out Mexico because of Mexico's commitment to pacifism. That seems...

completely the opposite of what they should be doing. But yeah. At the same time, I will add, though, it is always refreshing to watch a science fiction film in which global considerations are in play and the United States or the UK or maybe the Soviet Union are not the primary focal point, you know? So it is kind of, it is nice that we have a Mexico-centric plot here as opposed to something we're more used to.

Oh, sure. I mean, yeah, of course I want the Santo movie to be focused on Mexico. It just seems like within the logic of the film, like it makes, it doesn't make a lot of sense and seems incredibly unfair that the aliens would decide to make an example of Mexico. Yeah. When they start, get into the whole making examples off, you would think that, that, uh, Mexican officials would be like, look, um,

Can you take this like one north of here? Because that seems like a better focal point for whatever you're planning. Yeah, I can think of at least two other countries who are doing more Cold Warring. Yeah.

Okay, but then there are demands. They've got demands. So this is the first moment we see Santo sitting in a chair watching the TV broadcast as well. And in a theme that we'll repeat throughout the movie, Santo, even when at home on his own leisure time, is in full costume wearing a cape and a mask. Right, and no shirt. He never wears a shirt in this. In other Santo movies, he'll wear like a slick suit with his mask. But in this, he's always ready to grapple. Yep, yep.

But here are their demands. They say all governments of Earth completely disarm, surrendering all weapons, eliminate all borders, establish a universal language, establish a global government that does not discriminate by race or religion.

foster earthly brotherhood, give up war forever, which I would have thought that would be included under total disarmament. But I guess this goes a step further and outlaws war using only like punching and sticks. And I love this list. It's like they're trying to like make the new world order conspiracy theories, theorists like go berserk, which I, you know, it's weird. I think of that as a more recent thing, but that was like that, that ideation existed even at the time. It's like what the John Birch society was. Yeah.

I mean, I was kind of nodding my head on a lot of these. Aside from establish a universal language, I'm like, yeah, these all sound like fine points. And we're obviously not going to do any of these things on our own. So I think maybe Martian Big Brother should come and threaten us and make us do it.

Unfortunately, it's not. I mean, you get different versions of this premise in different movies. This is not the first movie to do this. So you get everything from The Day the Earth Stood Still to Plan 9 from Outer Space. This is almost an exact copy of the idea of Plan 9 from Outer Space. It's like you are doing atomic weapons and all that. You're stupid, Earth mind. Stupid, stupid. Now we must destroy you. I believe Plan 9 also mentioned the idea that

our nuclear weapons might destroy the earth and beyond the earth, like destroy other planets. Yeah. Well, it's because they think the next after nuclear weapons, we will discover the solar night bomb, which he says will explode the sunlight itself. Oh, that's right.

But I guess that's the sillier version. I mean, you can also think of like the day the earth stood still, which I think maybe is a little less explicit, but it's still kind of the idea that aliens try to establish contact. And there is a principle where it's like if we respond with just unnecessary violence and militarism, they will destroy us possibly. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it works well in science fiction because there's so many different ways of looking at it. On one hand, the longing for an alien...

force to come and solve our problems. Like this is a regular part of many different strains of ufology and related like new religious movements, you know, and it certainly ties into other religious ideas that something beyond us will come and tell us what to do and tell us how to do things. And then if you're getting into like positioning it as

the itinerary of an enemy, then, yeah, it serves as like a supernatural version of what you might perceive as a threat in whatever your sort of political opponent happens to be. Like you can apply it to like, oh, this is what the communists want or this is what the –

You know, this is what the capitalists want or, you know, what have you. Somebody has a script for a way to make the world a better place, but it doesn't respect who I am and what I want. And, yeah, I mean, it's kind of like the one main bullet point that I wrote that I was like, well, that doesn't sound so great. Establish a universal language. That inevitably means destroying other languages and, you know, cultural associations within those languages. Yeah.

Because, of course, it's going to be French, right? I mean, too bad for all the others. Esperanto, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. We got to come... What's the William Shatner movie that's completely in Esperanto? Incubus. Yeah, we'll have to come back to that. But to come back to the list of alien demands here, I mean, yeah, as much as the next guy, I like the idea of earthly brotherhood, no discrimination, no more war. That sounds great. But we will learn that not only is the

enforcement mechanism of these demands quite hypocritical. In fact, this is all just a ruse. There will be a twist coming. Yeah. Even if you take them at their word, they just step off completely on the wrong foot. Step one in making Earthlings follow this plan is just a disastrous misstep.

I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together on the really no really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor we got the answer will space junk block your cell signal the astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer we talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth plus is

Really? That?

The opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So after this big speech, we see Santo, he leans back in his chair and he thinks about what he has just witnessed. And then we go straight back to the Martian mothership where the number two goes up to the main beef Martian and says, our electronic interstellar brain indicates the Earthlings do not take our warning seriously. Yeah.

Why not? Well, apparently we learned that the Earthlings didn't realize they were real Martians. Most Earthlings thought that they were just watching a comedy skit on TV. So they come up with a new plan. They got to convince the people of Earth. So they're going to land the spaceship in a forest, go out and find a populated area, let the Earthlings see them, and then melt the Earthlings with a weapon that they call the astral eye. It's the only way they're going to take their order seriously. Yeah.

So, oh, but before coming down, we learn an important piece of exposition. So the Martians talk about how Earth's atmosphere is toxic to them. So they will need to take capsules to survive. So they they they're like, here are all your pills. They've all got a little pouch on their belt that has pills in it. They got to take the pills or they will asphyxiate in the Earth's atmosphere.

It sounds like a good planet for them to invade, you know. So they land amidst some model trees. And then we cut to a big athletic complex with tennis courts, volleyball nets and a track and a bunch of onlookers in this arena seating around a soccer game. And the narrator comes back. I forgot about him for a second. The narrator tells us.

The Martians, who claim to come from a world much more civilized than ours and whose scientific advancements surpass the Earth's by more than, what is it? 500 years. 500 years. Nonetheless, commit the same fatal error when they accuse us, attempting to impose peace and brotherhood through fear and force, forgetting that violence only promotes destruction and hate. I feel like maybe the narrator is explaining a little too much. Yeah. I don't know.

Yeah, you're not supposed to...

uh, have the whole, they learned too late that man is a feeling creature until the end of the picture. But they just want to go ahead and make sure we have that in our minds before we proceed. But I don't know, maybe at least they wanted to make clear that the irony of like, uh, end all wars and, and practice brotherhood, practice worldwide brotherhood, or we will kill you. That the irony is not lost on the filmmakers. I don't know if they had test audiences, but maybe that was like a point. Like too many people are agreeing with the Martians at this point. Um,

We need to couch that a little bit. So anyway, here we see a man in a lucha mask. This is Santo helpfully coaching a bunch of young children in this. This looks like tumbling and acrobatics on the playground. Yeah. Yeah. But also it's it's lucha like they're grappling. They're doing little flips and whatnot. So he's training the next generation of luchadors to some extent. And he's instilling not just physical lessons. This is not just training in the techniques, but he's also instilling an ethos.

He says, everybody grab a partner, begin to wrestle each other without hurting anyone. Let's see how it goes. And we see one boy named Luis who really just starts wailing on another kid. And Santo has to stop him. He says, Luis, how many times have I told you not to inflict deliberate harm?

And after this, Luis has to affirm sort of the, the Santo school credo, which is that these cutting edge wrestling skills, uh, should never be used, uh, in, in attack. They should only be used to counter aggression or to protect the weak and defenseless. So,

So it's kind of the Santo school of good sportsmanship. It kind of gets into sort of like the heart of Lucha Libre as well, too, because this is not a legitimate competitive like martial art combat sport. It is a highly athletic, collaborative, cooperative entertainment product.

that ultimately affirms the victory of good over evil, of technikos over rudos, and of righteousness over evil. So yeah, I can see this lining up with actual Santo theology here, I guess. Did I already mention there's a big soccer match going on nearby? Oh yeah, there's like a big soccer match in the background. There's so much sport happening.

I don't know what they're training like right next to the field, but suddenly we hear a buzz and yonder materializes one of the beef Martians. I don't remember which one this is. It's either, I think it's either Kronos or the one that will later be called Hercules. This one is played by Benny Gallant, who was, I think he was always billed as a Frenchman, but he was actually born in Spain, I think. Yeah.

So, yeah, the Martians have, it's really a cross-continental caste here in many respects. Big stable, yeah. Yeah.

Uh, and this guy has the thing on his head called the astral eye. It's like a third eye up on his forehead, the forehead part of his helmet. Uh, we, we don't, uh, see how it works exactly yet, but he has very, this is the guy I was calling this murder Corey energy. He somehow looks a little bit like a super jacked Corey Feldman, adult Corey Feldman in the face. Do you see that? Yeah, I can see that. Yeah.

But anyway, he approaches the bleachers of the soccer game and with a cruel smirk, the Martian activates his astral eye. It flashes with an internal light and then the spectators see him. They begin to scream and run away. And then they suddenly start to vanish into thin air. Now, the astral eye.

I think is an interesting weapon because on one hand, the effects that we see are not very gory that we just see people like vanish from the frame, but it imparts

implies something even more devastating than like the heat ray in War of the Worlds, which I don't remember if this was in the novel, but in the Spielberg adaptation, the movie adaptation, it would leave this pile of empty clothes behind when it hits you. These people seem to disappear completely, not even leaving dust. It's like they never existed. Yeah, he just completely disintegrates everything.

loads and loads of people like men women and children like it just it's um i mean it's at this as i was watching and i'm like well surely they're just disappearing and they'll be back later but no like it's completely disintegrated no he totally he vaporizes children in the scene

Um, and so Santo is looking on from the nearby playground and he, when he realizes what's happening, he springs into action. He tackles the Martian killer and they start to wrestle out on the grass. Uh, and so there's like one point where, uh, the Martian throws Santo and then he stops and takes a moment to vaporize four of Santo's students. And then the fight resumes. And I was thinking the same thing. I'm like, well, is Santo going to go? Like, did he teleport them? Santo is going to go rescue them later. Nope. They're just vapor now. Yeah.

A lot of throwing, flipping, and tumbling takes place in this fight. I thought it was a good fight. Yeah, it's a very fun lucha fight scene, especially considering it just takes place in the middle of a field. As far as the location for a fight in a film in general, this is the most mundane place it could ever go down. And yet, it's really good. It's just really good lucha grappling by guys who really knew their craft. And I would say...

you know, half jokingly, but half serious. The best storytelling in this film is told in these little Lucha fight scenes. Now, I had questions about what I'm seeing here because, you know, a lot more about the conventions of wrestling and Lucha than I do. The Martian uses a full Nelson on on Santo here. And I was wondering, is the full Nelson like a dirty move or is that part of the legitimate move set? Yeah.

It's a legitimate move. It can be used in a dirty way if you're going to hold somebody so that someone else can punch them in the face. And I think in that respect, you see the full Nelson pop up in all sorts of cowboy brawls in pictures. But I think the big thing is that it's dramatic. You can see both wrestlers' faces, and it has a number of cool lucha counters.

And we see some of those here, several of those here. I think Santo busts out all his favorite counters to the full Nelson. We see him throughout the movie. And in this case, I think he gets out of it by flipping the guy over top. What you call it, like throws it, goes into a somersault throw.

Yeah, yeah. The lucha holds are really fun in this film and in this fight in particular. The Martian here busts out the rare butterfly hold, which you don't see much anymore as a standalone hold. It's usually used more as a setup move for some sort of a bomb or a suplex. Mm-hmm.

Well, anyway, finally, Santo gets the upper hand in this fight. He puts the Martian in a chokehold of some kind, but then suddenly the Martian fiddles with something on his belt and then dematerializes and Santo is left grasping at air. Like, uh, I thought back to that footage we saw of the raccoon who tried to wash the wad of cotton candy and it just disappears and he's there swishing around in the water looking for it. Yeah. Yep. Um,

You know, like, you know, what what happened? Where is it? I got to say this several times. This happens throughout the movie when the Martian disappears and Santa is just like looking around frantically.

it is the rare it is the rare exception to the rule of Santo always looking like totally like in control in these moments Santo looks a bit made a fool of and I feel like that's not that's not what you want to go for well yeah he's he has trained exclusively on grappling opponents that cannot vanish into thin air so it just throws them off his game at least for a few seconds anyway after this we get a long slow pan as Santo surveys the empty athletic field and

And it's kind of like, what was that? What new terror am I facing now? Yeah.

But anyway, we go back to the spaceship and we check in with the Martians and they're like, good, good job. Mission accomplished. The Earthlings are afraid now. However, the Martian who was out there and just had the fight has a little bit of a footnote to report. He says there is one Earthling who dresses strangely and covers his face with a silver mask and he almost managed to disrupt our plans. Should we disintegrate him?

And then the head Martian says, no, in fact, he is such an extraordinary specimen, really the perfect biped. The only thing to do is capture him and take him back to Mars for study. Hmm.

And they'll expand this project as the film commences, where they'll realize, well, there are other humans that are kind of Santos of the mind, and we should also bring them back as well. But Santos is the main one. If we could only bring one, it would be El Santo. Yeah. So next we reunite with Santo at a wrestling event. I think he's...

I don't know if this makes any... Is he, like, in his office at the wrestling arena? Maybe. The establishing shot is that we're at Arena Mexico in Mexico City, which is a very prestigious home of Lucha Libre. It was built in 1956, so I guess it was...

relatively young building at the time, but it's still in operation. It's the home of CMLL, which is like the biggest and most traditional Lucha Libre promotion in Mexico. You can still go there and see shows, Lucha Libre shows at Arena Mexico. So maybe Santo has an office in the building.

Yeah.

Uh, so they, they talk it through, but it's not much of a talk because they, they just briefly consider, well, what if it was a warmongering foreign country trying to dominate them? And they both agreed that it can't be that. And then they both immediately go to the conclusion that the man with the astral eye must have come from another planet. That's just logic. Uh,

So then we check in with some of the families who were watching TV earlier. They're all watching cowboy stuff now. When suddenly broadcast signal intrusion again, the Martians are back and they say, listen, earthlings, you doubted the reality of our existence. Well, you shouldn't have done that. Now you've seen our power. No scientific or military authority can stand up to us. We can destroy you all if we want.

And then we see a priest in a church who's like under a crucifix and he begins to pray. Now, meanwhile, the Santo professor friendship really starts cooking. They're thinking more about their theories. Now they're in the professor's lab. And one of them says, you know, something makes me think that the lost continent of Atlantis was inhabited by a race of people who also had the astral eye. It's like, oh, really? Wow. I wonder where they're going with this. But I don't think it never comes up again. Yeah.

In a normal conversation, this would be the point where you would suddenly doubt your source, where you're like, this guy's talking about Atlantis now. I don't know if he should really be my guy, my consult for the situation. Oh, but while they're hanging out talking about Atlantis, the professor gets a call from the university and they're like, hey, the Martians are on TV. Watch them. Turn the TV on. So, you know, Santo and the professor tune in.

And this is the part where the Martians explain that they selected Mexico because it is a country dedicated to pacifism. And then the professor, I thought this was great, he snaps a photo of the TV while the Martians are on TV. How's that going to come out? I mean, you can't push record at this point. There are no VCRs. Yeah, I guess so. But the Martian muscle guy says resistance is futile. And then they just return to the regular scheduled programming. It's back to the cowboy show.

Well, after this, we finally get a confrontation here. The beefy Martian teleports into the room with Santo and the professor. Santo is unhappy with him because of all the people he vaporized earlier, but the Martian kind of waves away the criticism. He's like,

Listen, you two guys are the best humanity has to offer with your intelligence, strength and integrity. You will, quote, be the seed of a new humanity, more scientifically and morally advanced. So there I was like, what? So are they suggesting Santo and the professor are going to be like Adam and Eve of a new humankind? Sort of. Maybe. Okay. Yeah.

I have to say in the screenshot that you grabbed a wolf here, he really looks like John Cena in the face. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I can see that. I don't know. What is it in the face I'm seeing, but I know what you're talking about there. But anyway, so Santo and the, the Martian argue, Santo is like, no, no, no, you're not going to tell me what to do. Also, it was wrong to kill innocent people like you did earlier. And the Martian is like, it was necessary to do so because only by killing earthlings will we, will they learn to live in peace? Yeah.

And then here it ends up with the Martians like, you must come with me. And so Santo does a leg sweep and the fight begins. It's another fight. I noticed the professor does not tag in. He does not help at all. He just watches, hiding behind a bunch of Erlenmeyer flasks. Yeah, he doesn't go and try and break something over the villain's head. He knows he's an egghead and he should stay out of this. Yeah. Now, Santo holds his own in a fair fight, but then the Martian uses a dirty trick.

He turns on his astral eye and doesn't disintegrate, but paralyzes our hero, leaving him frozen, standing straight up.

So then the Martian enforcer approaches the professor who's now defenseless. And he says, all you have to do is touch my hand. The dial on my belt will transport us to the spaces. I think he means to the spaceship. He says, do not resist me. But then while he's there holding his hand out, waiting for the professor to hold his hand so they can go to Mars.

something happens the Martian is suddenly gripped by pain and surprise as if like Darth Vader were just off screen doing a force choke on him what's going on well this is the first payoff of the little talk earlier about Earth's toxic atmosphere and

The effects of the Martian's protective capsules are wearing off. So he starts struggling. He's clutching at his throat and the Martian begins to reach for the pouch of pills on his belt. It's like, can I can I get down another one in time? I think in D&D terms or at least Baldur's Gate terms, I think it would work like this in D&D. This seems to break his concentration on the paralyzed Lucha spell. And Santo starts to come unfrozen. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so while the Martian is struggling for the pills, Santo comes up behind him and applies a chokehold. And then the professor watches as they struggle. But once again, the Martian escapes. He escapes the anaconda-like grip of Santo by flipping the dial on his belt buckle and teleporting back to the ship. And once again, Santo is swiping around in the air like, where did he go?

But now, now they are armed with knowledge because the professor has a clue as to the weakness of the Martians. Several of the atmosphere capsules were spilled on the floor and he promises Santo to examine them thoroughly and to report back with what he finds.

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Right.

Uh, and then they get placed in this Martian spaceship jail, uh, that has one cool thing about it is an S shaped bench inside it. Oh yes. The S-shape. It's like super jail. But here we get more Martian scheming. Uh, so after they put the people in the jail, the Martians talk about how the, they talk about how their appearance frightens earthlings and somehow this is delaying their plans. I didn't understand why. Uh,

But one of them says, why do we frighten them when our bodies are more perfectly evolved than their own?

I don't know. But then one of them explains it is all in the mind. And then that's the end of that. And so then they go, they say, what we've got to do is go into the transformation chamber to transmogrify our bodies into a less threatening form that we will find disgusting, but the earthlings will find appealing. And so what this means is they all go into this adjoining room with big glass windows and then it quickly fills up with smoke and

And then I was wondering, like, what are they going to be transformed into? Like bunny rabbits to be, you know, non-threatening? I was expecting that they would walk out, like, in street clothes, looking like they would blend in. Yes. And later on in the film, we do see them in street clothes, but that's not what we get initially. No, not at all. No. So they come out.

And they look exactly the same, except with shorter, darker hair and with different costumes on. So now instead of golden space wrestler costumes with the kind of the tinfoil chic, they are wearing some kind of Greek peplum wrestler costumes. And all of the lady Martians now have big hair as well, like voluminous mid-century updos and that kind of bouffant helmet hair. Yeah.

Yeah, I guess with the women, you could say that their costumes are a little less revealing than they were earlier. Yeah. And their hair is bigger. And...

As for the guys, I don't know. They still look ridiculous. They still look like they're about to wrestle a match. They changed out of the tinfoil and now they're all dressed like machiste. Yeah. Yeah. The helmets are all gone, obviously. Yeah. So the head Martian explains that they now will begin using names taken from the Earthlings mythology. So

So the captain of the ship is going to be Argos. There's the sort of Kirk Douglas looking Martian. They say because he is a scholar excelling at the studies of time and space, he will be named Kronos. There's there's I think it's Ham Lee who's going to be called Morpheo because of his hypnotic powers. There is this might be the Benny Gallant guy who they are going to call Hercules because of his physical strength.

They say that the lady Martian with the hugest hair is Aphrodite because of her great beauty. Another Martian lady is Selina because she has the serenity of the moon. And then the last two Martian ladies are Artemisa and Diana. No explanation why. Yeah, it's like, and the rest. Yeah.

So Captain Argos gives him a few reminders. He says, of all of you, only Hercules has the strength to match Santo. So he's the only one who's going to go toe to toe with him in a wrestling match.

And they say, now that we have taken on these disgusting, undesirable human forms, we will no longer have the power of the astral eye. So we can neither vaporize nor paralyze humans at will. So we're going to have to rely on our strength and our wits and our belts, whatever those do. We're only told that the belts cannot make them invisible, but we're not told what they can do apart from teleportation.

Now, all of this is... I love it when a movie gives us the rules. But these rules are more guidelines. Yeah, exactly. The movie's going to play pretty fast and loose with all this. Yeah. And I can't stress enough, it will be repeated many, many times that the Martians find their current hot body forms hideous and grotesque. But like, hey, this is what the Earthlings like. But...

The thing is, they don't really look very different. Like, it's mostly just costume changes and some changes to, like, hairstyle and color. Yeah, these references would have made a lot more sense had they been in, like, monster costumes earlier on. But no, it's not that different. Yeah.

But somehow this is going to help them capture some earthlings and especially capture Santo and Professor Ordurica and take them back to Mars to create the perfect human. Yeah, they don't really lay it out here, but the female Martians, their main goal is to use siren-like powers to bring in key male captives. Scientists, heads of industry, prominent sci-fi writers, that sort of thing.

Yeah, we'll see this in several scenes where just like a beautiful Martian lady walks up to a dude and he's like, oh, hello. And then she just hypnotizes him and then they're at the spaceship. So anyway, what's going on with Santo and the professor now? Well, the professor's research figures out what the aliens' pills are for. He figures out atmosphere is poisonous to them. They're going to die without the pills. So they can use that information.

But he also tells Santo that because the Martians have such smart brains, he can make a machine that will be able to locate them by detecting the mental vibrations that their brains put out. These are produced during moments of high tension or emotion, such as when they are on the attack. But it will be 24 hours before this device is functional. So Santo can't have that device yet.

The professor also mentions an additional way that Santo could locate the Martian hideout, though this would be so impossible it's ridiculous to even imagine. But that way would be to take control of one of their almost wrestling championship style belts and to use the dial on it.

Santo is like, okay, that'll make sense. And now I've got to go practice wrestling. Get me to the gym. Yeah. He's like, it's more important now than ever. I've got to work out. Yes. So here the movie kind of transitions into what feels less continuous and more just like a series of alien encounter episodes and fight scenes. So I thought here we can just kind of like talk about some highlights. Yeah.

Yeah, because it really does flow like that for the rest of the movie. It's kind of like highlight after highlight until the movie ends. This film doesn't have a lot of intentional flow to it, but still, it's entertaining the whole way.

So one thing is attempt number two to kidnap the professor. This one comes pretty much right after what we were just talking about. The professor is left alone. He's working on the Martian brainwave detector. When the Martians come back to get him, fortunately, he has a brilliant idea. He knocks a bunch of chemistry beakers on the floor at the Martians feet, causing a fire in his lab. And this makes them go away. Quick thinking, professor.

Yeah, because they're like, oh, the fire, it's eating up the oxygen and so forth. But he also clearly burns his whole lab down in the process. I was just thinking of the line in Attack of the Crab Monsters. You know, pity is all fires must one day burn out. Let's see. Oh, I also want to note that in this scene, the Martians who come for him, which I believe are Argos and Kronos,

They are already changed out of their new Greek hero clothes and back into essentially the original gold Martian outfits, except without the helmets on. Yeah. So we almost immediately abandoned all of that. There's this huge like transformation scene and then it has...

almost no effect in the rest of the film. And I don't think, do the Greek costumes ever return? No. They're like, we didn't like the way those felt, so we're just sticking with the old costumes. So there is, the next thing is, ooh, I think this is a really good scene. This is one of my favorites in the movie. The hypnotic attack at Club de Luchadores.

So good. Really good. In this sequence, uh, Santo is training with a couple of his Lucha buddies and it's a tough fight, uh, but they're all friends and it's good sportsmanship all around. So, you know, he's wrestling with people. They're, they're fighting hard, but no hard feelings. These are all friends here.

Yeah, and Frankenstein is one of the friends. Yes. And I should know that Santo is masked, but his two training partners are not. Anyway, so Santo is here, and then suddenly, disguised as beautiful Earth women in revealing leotards...

The Martians, Artemisa and Diana, come into the gym to execute plans. They walk through the doors as this is right after Santo's sparring matches over and Santo leaves for a minute. And the two space ladies make eye contact at his two sparring partners. And they're, of course, both of these guys are like, hey, what's up? Hello. And

Uh, the, the ladies walk up and they end up hypnotizing them. Uh, so that when Santo comes back into the room later, his two sparring partners suddenly pounce on him with deadly intent. I think they say, and now you are finished. No, no, sorry. They say your end has come. Hmm.

Also, I don't know if this even needs to be said, but the Martian ladies are no longer in their Greek outfits either. They're just wearing the tinfoil chic. Yeah, they didn't like that old look. It was gross. So this fight, I think, is pretty good. It's like a no holds barred two on one fight with what I thought were some surprisingly brutal moments and moves. Like at one point, the other two wrestlers, they grab Santo and they pin Santo's arm

arm across the two saddles on a bench press rack and start kicking his arm, like to break it between the two metal hooks. And I was like, Ooh, that is a, I don't know, that has much more kind of gory and brutal implications than a lot of Lucha moves. I don't know if you felt the same way, but that, uh, it really struck me. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. This fight here, it does have Lucha moves in it, but it also has these, these brutal moments.

I think on one hand, you have, of course, performers here who are used to portraying violence in a way that is convincing. But then also, maybe they're leaning into it, working a little stiff here for the camera. But yeah, it's a brutal fight scene. Santo, of course, is...

is up, up for the fight. Yes. Yeah. Uh, Oh, and I should say we, during the fight, we see Diana and Artemisa over at the other side of the room watching intently. And I don't know, it seems like they are enjoying what they see. Um,

Um, but however, uh, Santo prevails against it. Even these odds, even two on one, he wins. And when the Martian ladies see that he is going to win, they're like, Oh, we got to get out of here. And they use their belt dials to disappear. The spell immediately wears off. And then Santo's two buddies are just like, gosh, we were trying to kill you. I wonder why. Yeah.

And there aren't a lot of questions about it. It's just kind of like, no harm, no foul. They shake it off and we're all good. Santo knows it's good. Santo knows your heart. There's a scene after this where the Martians kidnaps more regular Earthlings. It's like there's a cocktail party of these various scientists and government leaders, just various important bigwigs. This is one of the scenes where I was getting really confused about

what people understood about the Martian invasion. I'm not sure if I missed something or if this really is just inconsistent or nonsensical in the movie.

Everybody usually seems to be aware of the Martians. Like everybody saw the message on TV and then they found out about the astral eye vaporizations. We see newspapers with headlines about the Martian invasion. Everybody seems to be talking about it whenever we get scenes of just regular people talking. And yet there is also a B plot that like these big wigs are trying to keep the Martian attack a secret to avoid causing mass panic. And.

And throughout the rest of the movie, the Martian invasion seems to be both common knowledge and a secret and the subject of a cover-up. Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, it's kind of commendable that the movie is acknowledging some of the complex dynamics that would be in play with a situation like this. But at the same time, it's like this is not the place where you really get to explore those concepts to their fullest. Yeah.

Well, it's also not portrayed. So like the bigwigs who are deciding that there must be a cover up, they stand around with their martinis and cigars and they're like, yes, we must lie to everyone and we must start by lying to our wives. Yeah.

But then they don't really get a chance to lie to their wives yet because instead suddenly Martian women come into the room. It's Aphrodite and Selina. They wander into the party. They get ogled by the conspiracy dudes. They get some nasty looks from the conspiracy dudes wives and then they teleport the big wigs away to space jail.

Oh, and then also, and I didn't understand why this was, but they kidnap a science fiction writer from a restaurant and take him to spaceship jail. That sounds like something written by a writer. Yeah, I have a feeling that the screenwriter was like, I'm just not connecting with any of these characters. I've got an idea.

Why can't I be kidnapped by the space women? Well, he's like, yeah, I want to get seduced by Artemisa. So, you know, she makes eyes at him at the restaurant and he follows her away from the table and then they just blink. Yeah, they get teleported. Oh,

Oh, but it is through the sci-fi writers attempt to escape the spaceship that we learn the ship has a big lever in the center of the room that causes the ship to explode if it is pulled. And so he goes and reaches for it. I don't know how the sci-fi writer knew this. Maybe he's just randomly pulling at levers. But the Martians start yelling, no, that will make the ship blow up.

You know, I'm really one of the last people to sexualize everything in a film. But this is the most phallic looking lever I think I've ever seen in a motion picture. And it just makes all of these scenes where folks are grabbing at it all the more hilarious. It's a big, just like a handle that is protruding from a large round base that looks like hips. Yeah. Yeah.

Like if somebody, this had to have been an intentional on some level, somebody designing this thing, uh, put some thought into it. Uh, so yeah, it makes the ship blow up. I wonder if this will come up again later. Uh, they do not succeed in blowing up the ship. Uh, so then we, we just move on. We, oh, we get some stuff with the people in the space jail. They, they're fed concentrated food and things like that. Oh yeah. Pills for dinner. Kind of like, uh, Santa Conkers, the Martians. There's a lot of shared DNA between these two films. Yeah.

We also get more scenes. There are some repetitive things here. More scenes of the Martians all standing around looking sexy. They're all like, you know, flexing their muscles and looking at their bodies. And they're like, I don't understand what Earthlings see in this disgusting appearance. And in this scene, this is the part where we get a twist. We learn more about the Martians' motivations. So they're talking about they have to kidnap Santo. And they say, you know, when we get him to Mars, we're going to kill him and dissect his body for study.

And it's like, why would they do that? Well, because Santo, it turns out, is even more advanced than the Martians themselves. So like they're 500 years ahead of us and yet Santo is still ahead of them. So how many years ahead of regular humanity is Santo? I don't know, 600 years?

So they've got to study him. And the reason is this. They want to make copies of Santo to use as super soldiers for the armies that they will soon use to launch a full scale invasion of Earth. Dun, dun, dun. Who could have seen this possible?

this twist coming because it turns out all that stuff about improving humankind, fostering universal brotherhood, all that, it was just for show. It was hooey. They don't actually care. They're just trying to soften us up so they can invade and take our planet. With an army of dark Santos. Like, that's awful. Evil Santos by the billions. Yeah.

Oh, also after this, we just get like a radio announcer guy talking into a microphone who says that the authorities, in an effort to calm the public, decided to use every tool in their arsenal, including letting people, quote, enjoy their favorite pastimes again. I think that means wrestling. This is such a weird sequence. Yeah, because they're building this up like, just go to watch your local Lucha show as usual. Don't let this happen.

fear of alien invasion steer you in a different direction. But then, as we see, nobody actually shows up for wrestling that night. It's an empty arena. They do in the first one. There are two. There are two. People don't show up the second one. I'm confusing my scenes here. What's going on by the second one? The second one is when people don't show up. The first one, it's a huge crowd. Oh, that's true. It is a big crowd for the first one. They may be discouraged for the second one because Martians show up at the end of the first match and start vaporizing people in the crowd. Well, that's understandable.

But this first one, it's is Rob, is there a formal term in Lucha for the villain swap out? Like when the villain is you think it's one person behind the mask, but then the mask comes off and it turns out it was somebody else. I don't know if there's any kind of lingo for it. Yeah. But but it is a trope, I guess. Yeah.

Well, anyway, here, one of the beef aliens, I think it's Hercules, he beats up and steals the mask of Santo's scheduled opponent for the night, a wrestler called Black Eagle. And this appears to be the kind of fight where the goal is to take off the opponent's mask. I think that's not every fight in Lucha, right? No, in fact, I don't, I was kind of scratching my head at this because generally a mask is on the line.

officially, in which if you lose the match, you have to give up your mask and your previous identity. But then also, it is mask...

and unmasking is also a common shenanigan that takes place in Lucha Mask. So like the rudos will start tugging at the Technico's mask. The ref will get onto them for it. They may pull off a mask and then get a quick pin while the hero's distracted. And then also, if memory serves, like actually snatching the mask off your opponent's face is a DQ. So honestly, maybe it was different back then. I don't know.

Maybe they did have matches like this in the 50s and 60s, but it also kind of felt... I don't know. I didn't fully understand it. But for some reason, it seems to be the case that you can end this match by pulling off your opponent's mask. Well, I thought this was a solid fight, and it had a lot of twists and turns and some weird, interesting moves and rules. Yeah.

The weirdest move I think in the entire movie is this match has a clear, I'm not exaggerating, there is a move that's like a headbutt to the perineum. Yes. Yeah, this was great. I'd never seen it before.

But there used to be a lot more butt-based combat. You know, like the atomic drop used to be big money back in the day. That's the one where you do like, it's like you're going to do a belly-to-back suplex, but then you bring the opponent down so that their butt lands on your knee.

And, you know, it's like it makes sense in a wrestling world, you know, because it's like, oh, impact to the spine. Like that's a full body, you know, effect right there. But it also is kind of funny because you're hitting somebody in the butt. So you don't see it as much anymore. Okay. Okay. I accept it. I mean, I don't want to be headbutted in the butt either. Yeah. I'd never seen an attack like this before. This was pretty great.

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At one point, Hercules gets the gets the better of Santo, though, and he rips off Santo's mask. Oh, no. Only to reveal that Santo is wearing a second mask underneath. Yeah. And then somehow Hercules, the alien knows to, like, throw the first mask that he took off. He throw it on the ground and stomp on it and squish it off.

Um, and somebody starts to rebuke Santo for this. He's like suggesting it's some kind of cheating, I think, to be wearing more than one mask. But Santo counters that his opponent is not actually an earthling, but a Martian. And I guess that's a, that, that is a legitimate counter argument. And he proves this by pinning him and ripping off his mask and

And for some reason, this makes the Martian transform into his original Martian hair and helmet, which causes the people in the arena to freak out and scatter. And then the Martians appear and start astral eye blasting everybody and vaporizing them. Yep. And then, of course, they turn the dial again and escape. So clearly some other form of attack is going to be necessary to defeat Santa.

That's right. Now, they try a seduction as well. How well do you think this is going to work on Santo? Oh, this is not going to work. In fact, I was a little... It seems like it's working, and I was shocked. Yes, but it turns out it's like a dream fakeout. So we see Santo at home in his full outfit with the mask on, lying on his bed reading a book.

And then who should appear at the opposite end of the room but Aphrodite, the most powerful seductress of the Martian operators. And she's like, hey, Santo. And then she blows some smoke into the air. And the Martian love goddesses, I think there are multiple of them there, and they hypnotize Santo.

start kissing him and remove his mask. Now we don't see his face. We only see from behind, but we see like his hair. And I was just like you, I was thinking it can't be true. It can't be. Yeah. Santo is, he cannot be defeated in this way, but it turns out it's all like a horrible dream. He wakes up and she's still there, but he hasn't actually kissed her or anything. Uh, and his mask is still on. Uh,

And he's like, you know, if you try to kidnap me, I might steal your belt and your Martian technology. And that threat alone is enough to make her be like, oh, never mind. And then she leaves. They just back away and then teleport. Next, there is a scene where he ends up using the device that the professor made to track the Martians to a Catholic church where they're there arguing with the priest about, I don't know, they're just like having a moral argument with the priest and

And, uh, and there is a weird kind of discussion of whether or not they should fight inside the church. I think they have to take the fight outside. Yeah. Like the, the, basically the, uh, the, the priest here is like, he pulls out some Highlander lore and he's like, this is holy ground. You can't actually fight here. And they're like, fair enough. Yep. We respect holy ground.

Then one of the most baffling things in the movie after this is the professor is invited to some kind of celebration of scientific achievement, which takes the form of a party with burlesque dancing. So it's there. It's like people there with their families to receive awards for scientific achievements there.

Uh, but then of course there are four burlesque dancers who, of course, uh, they get, uh, hypnotized by the Martian ladies who then steal their costumes and do the dance themselves, uh,

The costumes are hilarious. It's like something out of Dr. Seuss. It looks like the Lorax. Yeah, I mean, it's really classy stuff. I guess it's kind of chorus line, right? Yeah, yeah, I guess so. I don't know all the terminology here. But what are the dancers going to do here? Obviously, they're here to kidnap the professor. And so they take the professor. They send him back to the ship as well.

Now, later we see the Martians at the ship and they're like, oh, we're in trouble now. We're all out of our atmosphere pills and it's it's do or die. It's this is our last chance chance to capture Santo before we must leave this planet because we you know, the atmosphere is killing us. So Santo comes up with a plan that involves. Guess what? What's it going to be? It's another wrestling match wrestling match, right? So.

They get that going. There's not a whole lot to explain here. It's just like they have another match. This time there's nobody in the arena, but it still manages to trick the Martians into showing up. Santo beats them up and they fall right into his trap. He beats them up and he manages to steal one of the belts, which earlier they said that would be impossible.

So now he's got a belt and that man and that allows him to teleport to where the ship is. So it's on now. He goes back to the Martian ship and arrives actually to find the Martians all generally asphyxiating. And he like fights them in the state, which I don't know, felt a little anticlimactic there.

But he frees the hostages. They all run outside. And here is where we get a brief discussion between Santo and the professor because the professor is like, hey, we should save the Martian ship. We've got to use it to advance Earth technology by 500 years, right? Yeah.

And Santos says, no, no, no, we must destroy it because we are not ready for such power. It must be eliminated. I mean, this is this is a part of the film where it's like, all right, this is they're they're cooking a little bit here with these ideas. Yeah. Santos like like we're going out there to destroy it, not to bring back.

And right. Yeah, he's the Ripley in the scenario. New kid from orbit, which he does by running back into the ship once more and pulling the lever, pulling the lever. We talked about the lever of death.

He pulls it real good. He jumps out of the ship. There's a big explosion. Santo and the freed prisoners watch the ship burn. And then the narrator comes in and says, the human race has been saved for the moment. Will we learn our lesson or insist on carrying on crazy nuclear experiments until we disappear from the face of the earth?

And the narrator is saying this as we just watch her watch Santo turn around and wander into the woods, leaving the freed prisoners alone by themselves. I really like this ending, though, because it's like Santa saying, look, I'm not always going to be here to fight your battles for you and to clean things up for you. You've got to figure this out for your own humanity. You've got to decide what you want for this world and for your lives. And yeah, so Santo leaves them there.

Great. Yeah. All right. So that was Santo and the Martian invasion. Yes. He successfully defeated the invasion. Did not find it necessary to then go and conquer the Martians. Leave that for Santa Claus.

Someday we'll have to come back and explore all of the parallels between Santo and Santa Claus. Yeah, there are a number. Like the attempt to kidnap Santo and Santa Claus, the headgear, the food pills. I mean, you know, I guess they're both pulling on a lot of sci-fi ideas that were very much in the ether at that time. You never see them out of costume. They're paragons of virtue. Yeah, yeah.

They teach the children to do right. Yeah, but we had no divisions this time in the Martian camp. We didn't have like pro-Santo, anti-Santo camp. That would have been interesting. Oh, yeah.

There's no drop. Oh, this movie needed to drive. That would be my other main criticism is that Santo and the Treasure of Dracula had a nice comic relief sidekick. Perico. Yeah, Perico. And we didn't have a Perico. We didn't have a drop. Oh, in this in this picture. I'm not sure we had room for can't have everything. Rob. That's true. That's true.

All right. We're going to go ahead and call it for this episode, but we'd love to hear your thoughts on this and other Santo movies, luchador movies, luchadora movies. Right in. We would love to hear from you. Just a reminder, the stuff to blow your mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

You can find us on Letterboxd, we are Weird House, and you can also find us on Instagram where we are stbympodcast. Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.