Weirdhouse Cinema: Santo vs. the Martian Invasion

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe return to the wild world of lucha libre with the 1967 Mexican science fiction film “Santo vs. the Martian Invasion,” starring El Santo himself alongside Wolf Ruvinskis and Maura Monti.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today,
once more, we return to the realm of the great
and powerful Lucha doors 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

(00:33):
Mike 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 they're just not really
within our purview because they don't have either magic or
science fiction technology in it. I think we have to
limit ourselves just to those and even just walling off

(00:54):
that sort of subset. There's still so many riches to discover.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
All right. Yeah, every time we dive into Lucca 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

(01:21):
modern audiences outside of Mexico. Now.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
In the past, we've covered a couple of other supernatural
Mexican wrestling movies. One was Santo and the Treasure of
Dracula from nineteen sixty nine, in which I would say
easily the most popular ever lucid or hero Santo. He
invents a time machine which somehow leads to a vampire
being unleashed upon the world, and in the middle of

(01:47):
this chaos, Santo must simultaneously fight the unearthly evil of
the Dracool and avoid being photographed in any of the
gratuitous nude scenes that were added for the euro market.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
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.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
That was a real highlight, but also excellent was another
one we covered, the nineteen sixty three film Doctor of Doom,
which was mainly about two heroic luchadoras, Gloria Venus I
think that was the one played by Lorrain of Alaskaz
and Golden Ruby, who must defeat a mad scientist and
his plot too, I think kidnap women and transplant their

(02:31):
brains into a gorilla, or maybe put gorilla brains inside
the women's heads. I was a little fuzzy on that.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
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 Renee Cardona.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
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 full on time machine. But this

(03:10):
one is like your straight up alien invasion movie. Planet
Earth is in the crosshairs. The Martians are here and
they want full control. So this movie is Santo in
the Martian Invasion from nineteen sixty seven. I was thinking
for a while, I was a little confused, like, oh,
is this even technically a Santo in name movie? Because

(03:32):
a lot of the times in the movie they were
calling him Silver Mask, but I realize no, they also
call him Santo in the movie. They use both names
basically interchangeably.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, that was one of his monikers, the Man in
the Silver Mask. He gets confusing, I think, especially when
we're dealing with English language releases of some of the
Santo films, where they may call him something else, like Samson,
because the name Santo wasn't as firmly established in other regions.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
Oh okay, kind of like in other like in the
peplam subgenre, you might get like Hercules Versus Machiste or
Samson and in different releases.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
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 if this makes any sense, Rob,

(04:33):
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.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, it has a lot of things going for it.
None of those things going for it are its story
and character. They're virtually like no story and character beats throughout.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
But though Santo as always is flawless.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Santo's flawless. Santo doesn't need to grow as a character.
He is already, so like any criticisms about his character
is redundant because he is.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
Missing that point.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah. Yeah, what it lacks in those departments, arguably it
makes up for in just weirdness wackiness. I would say
the beefcake factor is pretty high in this one.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
The ladies are really gorgeous as well, so it seems
it gives the viewers a lot to look at. And
I think has more teleportation and disappearance and reappearance scenes
than perhaps some of the Star Trek movies. Uh, they
really like this effect. They pull it off well and
they it just happens all the time.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
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 turn a dial on their belt and
that makes them vanish and reappear at the spaceship.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
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 that. I like
it when there's a chonky button and a dial and
a big lever.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
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?

(06:44):
We never see that happen in the movie. They always
turn it to full crank.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
It's kind of reckless because I think maybe you used
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's not really concerned with those questions.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
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

(07:28):
keep this a secret.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah. Yeah. Oh. I will also add the Martian technology
is of course five hundred years ahead of ours, so
of course it is difficult to understand. Seems like magic.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
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.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
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.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
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?

Speaker 2 (08:35):
We don't know, but it's more than we got in
Santo and the Treasure of Dracula, Like there wasn't really,
I mean, they were like, we must not have time
machines or draculas. 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 we'll just give you just a little sample of

(08:57):
some of the sights and sounds here one of the sides,
but just the sounds.

Speaker 4 (09:04):
Hera miters a parison and you come for the portivo
right right era, there's a parison brisona e strano phenomeno
provocconcierto elpanico, ela steria Collectiva Asta Secretoso, Sequestras Cambinino purind

(09:26):
and Extranaturai stampidiendo He stays Lato Marcin Grablao Costa Ricola's
Yaman Mexico.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
Now.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
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 Santo appearing to hold a sort of green martian
in one arm, seemingly unconscious. Looks kind of like Blanca
from Street Fighter who got that under his one arm.

(10:11):
In the other hand, he's holding a gun, which what
would Santo wheeld a gun like that? It seems completely
out of character. 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.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
Movie, right, and he never brandishes a laser pistol or
a plasma rife or whatever this is. But yeah, this
is a great poster for a different movie. None of
this actually happens.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
Santra just shamelessly using the weapon of the enemy. It's yeah,
admire the art style, though it's lavishly realized.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, as we'll explore, Santo uses grapples, punches, kicks, especially
like well timed kicks, and legs scissors to an opponent's legs,
that sort of thing. He does not need a laser gun.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
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 Luca movie. I was
kind of surprised how many of these classic Santo movies
are apparently 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.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
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 the Reuter's News
article about that, like everyone's 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

(11:46):
color versions or anything like that. Nothing like we had
with the Treasure of Dracula. What we do have is
perfectly watchable. I watched it on a DVD release this
is I think like VCI and or Mech DVD rented
from Atlanta's own Video Drome. They have a number of
Santo films there you can rent again perfectly watchable quality.

(12:07):
He 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 of you.
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 Video Drum. All right,

(12:33):
shall we get into the people behind and in this film?

Speaker 3 (12:36):
Yes, I want to know more. So this is a
different director than our previous Lucha outings.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
That's right. The director here is Alfredo B. Crevena. He
lived nineteen fourteen through nineteen ninety six German born Mexican
film director and screenwriter who directed more than one hundred
and fifty films between the mid forties in the mid nineties.
An acclaim filmmaker in his own right of the Mexican
Golden Age of cinema. Among his most well received works

(13:03):
are the nineteen fifty six drama Talpa and the nineteen
fifty one film Girls in Uniform. Now this is a
boarding school drama based on a nineteen thirty one German
film of the same name. The German film I was
reading about it suffered multiple waves of censorship, but is
today held up as a cult classic of lesbian cinema.

(13:25):
I haven't seen Crevenna'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 realized, 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.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
Yeah, I can see the phrasing could give the wrong idea.
It sounds like a like women in Prison type title.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
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, Curvenna also directed multiple santo
and other lucha libre movies, some zoro films, some Mexican noir,

(14:10):
and also some horror. A couple of titles that jumped
out of me include Planet of the Female Invaders from
sixty six. This starred Elizabeth Campbell Mari Monte who will
get into Loreno Valasquez, who we'd already mentioned, a nineteen
eighty film called The Dracula Dynasty. I'm already intrigued. A
nineteen seventy nine film called The Whip Versus Satan, which

(14:31):
is supposed to be a zoro esque adventure where the
zoro esque character has occult powers and battle Satan.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
Oh okay, so it really is the Whip Versus Satan,
It's not. Yeah, Satan has the whip. No, that's Pen's type.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah. Yeah. And then there's a nineteen ninety two 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.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
Okay, I'd be done for watching it.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Of these. Yeah, it sounds like I say every time
we dive into Mexican cinema. There are so many titles
that jump out and sound I booked I footnoted a
few of these to explore later.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
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 Lorraine of Alaskaz, and was
about women invaders coming to Earth to find the perfect
man to I don't know, like replenish their species.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yeah, that one was a musical that was great.

Speaker 3 (15:32):
Yes, which was wonderful.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
I love that movie all right. The writer for this
picture is Rafael Garcia Trevesi, who lived nineteen ten through
nineteen eighty four, Mexican screenwriter who wrote loads of Santo
films in addition to just seemingly loads of everything else.
His credits include nineteen sixty two Santo and the Vampires,
as well as non Santo movies like the horror film

(15:54):
Spiritism from sixty two and the historical thriller Black Wind
from sixty five.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
I don't want to be mean, but I will say
I don't think the writing is a huge highlight on
this one.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
No, No, you know it. It gave them something to shoot,
you know. Yeah, But like I said, at least some
of the films that this writer did, you know, are
are were well received and are you know the thing
about Luke, we should mention a lot of The thing
about a lot of these Lucha Libre films is that
they are they are essentially low budget, swiftly produced genre pictures.

(16:33):
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.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
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 we kind of like thread all that together?

Speaker 2 (17:01):
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 Ridolfo Guzman Herte and he lived nineteen seventeen
through nineteen eighty four. But it's worth noting that at
the time period, and during this time period and even today,

(17:21):
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 anywhere he went
and was known. I guess he would go to the
grocery store. I'm to understand, you know, he would not

(17:43):
be wearing the mask, but he would be incognito. Anytime
he was appearing as El Santo, he was wearing the mask,
no one saw his face. And it's still the same
today with some wrestlers in Mexico. The people don't have
their access to the details of their their non gimmick life.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
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.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
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

(18:34):
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 nineteen eighty four.

(18:55):
He was appearing on their mask and it wasn't something
they promoted. They were like, oh, Santo's 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.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
I've seen the footage. It's very brief. It's almost like
like he doesn't give you a real good look. He
just kind of peels it up and then pulls it
right back down.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, but it's still there's 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 as like in a
ceremonial fashion, reveal their face and revealed their full name
to the audience, and generally like tears are streaming, family

(19:37):
members are presents, very emotional, but there wasn't is no
bigger deal than Santo. It 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,

(19:59):
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 hul Kogan,
or he was like the Rock even, 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

(20:21):
the height of his fame and you'd probably get close
to what Santo was there.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
I mean, I am, by no means an expert in
the cultural reception of El Santo, but one thing I
noticed from all these movies is, Yeah, there is this
aura of absolute awe about him that I guess you
could compare to celebrities like Elvis. Except even with people
like Elvis, I don't know if there was also the

(20:46):
kind of holy veneration, Like there's just this understanding in
all the Santo stuff. I've seen that Santo is just
a perfectly honorable person. He is the ultimate law full good.
Even in a world where you can't trust anything else,
you can trust Santo.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
That's right. Santo is the best office without any question.
And yeah, he does seem to like stand at this
perfect place where all these different energies in Mexican culture
come together. Like there's this like sacred Catholic element to him.
I mean, he is the saint at the same time
he is the superhero. He is a like Superman, but

(21:28):
he is 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

(21:50):
then branch out into films, And there were so many
Santo films of the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and their
success allowed other luchador to crossover into cinema. And again,
these films are often cheap and fast, and they hopscotch
through different genres horror, science fiction, western, spy movies, crime,

(22:11):
flicks some outright comedies in the mix as well. All right,
so that's Elcento, but there are numerous other wrestlers in
this picture. There's there's quite a bit of grappling in
the movie, and I think that all the the other
main roles are also played by wrestlers.

Speaker 3 (22:28):
That's right when the Martians arrive and there they are
bringing body slams.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
All right. The essentially the leader of the Martian invasion
is a Martian who eventually takes on the human name
of Argos.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
We don't know what their original names are.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
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.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
They they transform themselves in something that lasts for about a.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
Scene, like, yeah, they don't stick to this concept at all.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
But yeah, 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.

(23:22):
I think I always knew who he was. This is
the Martian leader the Beefcake played by Wolf Ravinsky's.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah. Wolf Ravinsky's lived nineteen twenty one through nineteen ninety nine.
He was a luchador turned actor, a Latvian of Jewish
descent whose 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,

(23:51):
and I think he was generally a rudo. I was
looking at Sometimes information on this time period is a
little record keeping stunt, all that great, but it looks
like he was rudo, often going up against Santo in
his allies, and he was eventually able to spin this
off the end into success as an actor. His filmography
includes a couple of Santo films, also the serious wrestling

(24:12):
drama the serious lucha libre drama The Magnificent Beast from
nineteen fifty three, But his biggest success came as the
star of the Neutron films, in which he plays the hero,
a masked, caped atomic superman, and there are several of these.
His other credits include the nineteen fifty noir film The
man without a face, which looks really interesting. And eventually,

(24:36):
after acting and wrestling, he became a restaurant tour in
Mexico City, I believe. I think it was Argentinian cuisine.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
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 know if
that really connects, but I think he's I consense that
he would be a good actor in many a role,

(25:04):
but he's just he is placed within hilarious scenarios and
he looks hilarious acting them out.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Right right now. 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

(25:33):
to the lead female martian, though I don't know she's
actually the.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
Leader, but she I'd say she's the number one.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Yeah, Okay, this is Afrodita, played by Maramanti, who I
mentioned earlier. Born nineteen forty two. Now she's a familiar
face for fans of weird Luchadora movies because she was
the star of Renee Cardona's nineteen sixty eight film The Batwoman,
which I do not think was authorized by DC Comics.
This is a terrifically enjoyable film which also has fish

(26:02):
monsters in it and a mad scientist played by Roberto Canido.
Recent Mystery Science Theater three thousand coverage on this one,
with Emily being the human riffer on that one. A
lot of fun. Monty appears in a handful of Luca films,
including sixty eight's The Treasure of Montezuma, which had Santo

(26:23):
in it as well as Jorge Rivera, and she was
also in nineteen sixty nine is the Vampires in nineteen
seventy one's Alien Terror.

Speaker 3 (26:30):
Now I feel like I've seen The Batwoman, but I
don't remember anything about it as just a complete blank
in my brain.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
There's a lot of running around in a really skimpy
batwoman costume, fish monsters, and like driving it's it's it's good.
I mean, it's it's very fun.

Speaker 3 (26:49):
Well, I get to say Mara Monty is a striking
screen presence in this movie. Her aura is off the charts.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
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 nineteen forty four through two thousand and six,
Norwegian born actress who went on to achieve greater success

(27:21):
as a professional dominatrix, but also award winning documentarian for
the nineteen eighty film Born Without I haven't seen this,
but I was reading about it. It's about handicapped Mexican
actor and musician Jose Flores. It also features some content
with Alejandro Jodrowski, and she served as a consultant on

(27:42):
nineteen ninety nine's The Thomas Crown Affair. I think she
was involved. She was like a Renee Russo's consultant on
something about her characters, like dominance or something. I'm not
sure if the full story is there.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
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.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
That's a remake of an older Steve McQueen movie, I believe.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
Yeah, I remember Renee Russo and Pierce Brosnan after he
was coming off of being James Bond.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yeah. Yeah, I never saw the remake. I did see
the original, and because I think it has this sung
like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within
a wheel. And 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

(28:33):
are played by some of Santo's fellow luchador's.

Speaker 3 (28:36):
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.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yes, a played by an actor billed as l Nazi.

Speaker 3 (28:52):
When I saw that in the credits, I was I
didn't know what to think. We just see the names.
It's like Wolf Ravinsky's Hamiley l Nazi.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yes, l Nazi. This was, of course the Luca name
for a guy by the name of Ignatio Gomez. He
lived nineteen thirty two through two thousand and eight. 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

(29:25):
called the swastiko. I think it's like a variation of
the abdominal stretch. It was a different time, but there
are many examples of Nazi themed villains from Lucha libre history.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
Yeah, but so we shouldn't 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
actor is playing the Nazi villains in the Indiana Jones movies.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah. Yeah, I think if you think of like Red
Skull from Marvel comics, that kind of Okay, that's that's
probably the reference point here. All right, there's another guy now.
He takes on the name mor Morphio, and he is
played by ham Lee. This was his wrestling name anyway.
He lived nineteen thirty two through twenty eleven. He was

(30:09):
a Mexican luchador of Korean descent. I think he only
ever did two films, both of them Santo films. But
he's a memorable presence here. According to Luchawiki, which is
a great English language reference for anything and everything lucha libre.
He apparently actually wrestled unofficially as Santo in Japan, I

(30:31):
think in the early seventies, 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. And I guess they made it
back because I believe he ran a gym in Mexico

(30:54):
City for a long time.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
Well, this is, I guess the 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.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
I mean, it's it can be an issue and it
gets throughout.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
Oh, in fact, it happens in this movie.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah, it happens in this movie in a 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

(31:36):
to alter their name slightly, that sort of thing. And
then there's been cases too where somebody passes away 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 a luchador especially
like it is a real person, but it is also
a fictional character. It's also a gimmick, and yet at

(31:57):
the same time, it doesn't always feel a appropriate that
someone else should play that role 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.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
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

(32:36):
talking in the middle of a sentence and kind of
go limp.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah. Other times he's wearing a suit and looks very dapper. Yes,
one more wrestler, I'm gonna mention, and we may we'll
rest We'll mention some more later on. But there's a
bald wrestler that shows up in the training sequences. This
is a guy whose real name was Nathaniel Leone who
of nineteen fifteen through two thousand and one, but his
wrestling name was Frankenstein. I don't think he wore a

(33:01):
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 Lucca and Mexican genre movies, you know,
just because he had a great look.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
Yeah, he also has an interesting face.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
Yeah. And oh, and I'll mention. There's a professor character,
Professor d Rica, played by Manuel Zozaiah. He lived nineteen
thirteen through nineteen eighty seven, but he was in a
number of films, often in a supporting role. But I
don't have much else to stay about him other than
he's in it, and they talk a lot about what
a great scientist he is.

Speaker 3 (33:35):
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

(33:56):
the film has a theme, it is the schism between
his view of the world and Santo's view of the world.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
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 Diez. Condi died in nineteen seventy six, prolific
Mexican composer who worked on a ton of beat pictures
during his time period. In fact, we previously mentioned him
in our episodes on Doctor Doom and Santa Claus. I

(34:24):
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.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
I would say, that's how to hook, Rob, get plenty
of beat boops in there.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
I know, I'm kind of a cliche. You just add
some beets and some boots and then I'll be like,
all right, this one's good.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
No.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
I like the beat boops too. They got us both.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
All right, Well let's get into the plot.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
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

(35:21):
by side in the outline with the opening shots from
the film. Think it looks pretty close.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
What do you think?

Speaker 3 (35:26):
Yeah, I'm convinced this one was from the launch of
Friendships seven in nineteen sixty two, 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

(35:49):
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, yea, why we have it here, and then
thinking about how many other mid century low budget space
invasion movies have plot elements or include something however small,

(36:12):
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

(36:33):
element of humans launching something first? 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?

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yeah, that 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 set there. Why
not use it? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (37:02):
But anyway, the movie proper starts with some voiceover narration
while showing astronauts in mid space walk don't know 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

(37:22):
is gonna sound kind of confusing, but I'm reading the
sub subtitles directly. If so, will we conquer those other worlds,
or on the contrary, will their inhabitants come to rule us?
I think maybe that should have been If not, I'm
not sure. But anyway, we start to see out in

(37:42):
space something approaching. It's almost like the beginning of you know, Predator,
one of these movies where you're out in the starfield
and you just see something coming toward the planet Earth.
In this case, it looks kind of like a kettle grill.
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,

(38:05):
maybe a kind of shallow Dutch oven. I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
Yeah, yeah, it does seem like it came from the kitchen,
that's for sure.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
But then, oh lord, we get a look inside the ship,
and this is so first glimpse of the Martians. 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 ships has windows that look
out into space that have like wooden slats, you know,

(38:32):
coming in between them. And then standing around a table,
are all these people in shiny gold, gold looking. 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

(38:55):
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

(39:16):
is quite funny. And 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.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, everyone here is jacked or voluptuous, and their golden
helmets are blocking 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, bicuspits,
yeah yeah, but with an eyeball on the front, which
on the forehead reminds me a lot of Santa Claus

(39:46):
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 five hundred years ahead of ours. You know,
they're beyond cybernetics at this point.

Speaker 3 (40:02):
Yeah, there'll 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 then 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

(40:23):
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

(40:45):
at the same circle and they're like watching Santo do
a wrestling match.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
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.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
Our puny brains can't even begin to comprehend.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:59):
But then we cut some Earth TV, so we see
some households, presumably in Mexico, you know, sitting around on
the couch watching television. So there's a nice program where
there is a band playing and a man singing a
love song.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
And the family is there on the couch. The mother's
doing some sewing, the father is reading a newspaper, or
the kids are watching TV. The boys taking like these
big slugs of some kind of soda from a bottle.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
I think it's a oh.

Speaker 3 (41:27):
Yeah, I couldn't tell on mine. Yeah, you must have
had higher res.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
I think maybe i'd slightly higher res on my version. Yeah,
it's ata.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
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 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 there's suddenly the TV is full of

(41:57):
full of just like jacked, half naked peeple wearing kind
of tenfoil outfits with these big goofy helmets on, and
the dad says, don't be frightened, it's a new program.
And when we see everyone visibly relieved.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Real Homer Simpson moment there like yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:15):
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

(42:38):
laughing at the TV and all this, and the alien
message goes on while we see all the different households watching,
they say, this is our actual appearance. We are from
the planet that you call Mars, using scientific advancements surpassing
yours by more than five earth centuries. We have intercepted
transmissions from all across your planet. I loved this line.

(43:01):
The radar you are so proud of was powerless and
detecting our arrival. 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

(43:23):
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.
That means something. But then the speech continues. When you
wage war with your conventional weapons, you are the only

(43:43):
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 is delivered very forcefully. Wolf is like

(44:06):
looking right into the camera and he like barks it.
I will disintegrate all the inhabitants of Earth.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
He goes on to keep talking. He says, knowing the
skeptical attitudes of the Earthlings, we understand that you may
doubt the message and not take our warning seriously. Beginning now,
we will be forced to use the country called Mexico
to show our determination and power. We have weapons one
hundred times more powerful than yours. Here are our demands.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (44:33):
And by the way, this is first of all, like
man sucks, sucks for Mexico. Why did they pick Mexico?
Are they going to use the weapons on Mexico?

Speaker 2 (44:40):
I had I have a lot of thoughts about everything
they've been saying thus far. What but concerning Mexico. On
one hand, you can imagine in Mexico was like, well,
we're honored first of all that you would 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.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
I don't think of Mexico as the most responsible for
nuclear warfare.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (45:12):
That seems completely the opposite of what they should be doing.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
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

(45:35):
centric plot here as opposed to something we're more used to.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
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
doesn't make a lot of sense, and seems incredibly unfair
that the Aliens would decide to make an example of Mexico.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
Yeah, when they start get into the whole making examples off,
you would think that Mexican officials would be like, look,
can you take this like one north of here, because
that seems like a better focal point for whatever you're planning. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
I can think of at least two other countries who
are doing more cold warring.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
Yeah, okay, but then their demands.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
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 will repeat throughout
the movie, Santo, even when at home on his own
leisure time, is in full costume, wearing a cape and
a mask.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
Right, and no shirt. And he never wears a shirt
in this. Yes, in other Santo movies he'll wear like
a slick suit with his mask, but in this he's
always ready to grapple.

Speaker 3 (46:38):
Yep, yep. But here are their demands. They say, all
governments of Earth completely disarmed, 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 be

(47:00):
included under total disarmament, but I guess this goes a
step further in outlaws war using only like punching and sticks. Right,
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

(47:21):
like what the John Birch Society was.

Speaker 2 (47:23):
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 these alsound like fine points, and
we're obviously not going to do any of these things
on our own, So I think maybe Martian Big Brothers
should come and threaten us and make us do it.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
Unfortunately, it's not so. 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 nine from
Outer Space. This is almost an exact copy of the
idea of Plan nine from Outer Space. It's like, you
are doing atomic weapons and all that stupid Earth mind, stupid, stupid,

(48:01):
Now we must destroy you.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
I believe Plan nine also mentioned the idea that our
nuclear weapons might destroy the Earth and beyond the Earth
like planets. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
Yeah, well it's because they think that 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,

(48:36):
and there is a principle where it's like if we
respond with just unnecessary violence and militarism, they will destroy
us possibly.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Yeah, I mean it's it works well in science fiction
because there's so many different ways of looking and on
one hand, the longing for an alien force to come
and solve our problems like this is this is a
regular part of many different strains of ufology and related
like new religious movements, you know, and it certainly ties

(49:04):
into other religious ideas that something beyond us will come
and tell us what to do and tell us how
to do things. And 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

(49:27):
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

(49:47):
like the idea, like the one main bullet point that
I wrote that I 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.

Speaker 3 (50:01):
Because of course it's going to be French, right, I mean,
too bad for all the.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
Others, esperanto. Right, that's all it said. Oh, yeah, we
got to come what's the William Shatner movie? That's completely annis. Yeah,
I'll have to come back to that.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
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 Martian enforcement mechanism of these demands quite hypocritical.
In fact, this is all just a ruse. There will
be a twist coming.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
Yeah, And if you know, even if you take them
at their word, they just step off completely on the
wrong foot. Yeah, step one in making Earthlings follow this
plan is just a disastrous misstep.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
So after this big speech, we see Santo kind of
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.
Why not? Well, apparently we learned that the Earthlings didn't

(51:21):
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 called the astral Eye. It's

(51:44):
the only way they're going to take their order seriously.
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'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

(52:04):
take the pills or they will asphyxiate in the Earth's atmosphere.
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.

(52:26):
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 surpassed
the Earths by more than what is.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
It, five hundred years?

Speaker 3 (52:40):
Five hundred 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, like yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
Yeah, you know, it's a the to have the whole
They learn too late that man is a feeling creature
until the end of the picture. But they just want
to go ahead to make sure we have that in
our minds before we proceed.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
But I don't know, maybe at least they wanted to
make clear that the irony of like end all wars
and practice brotherhood, practice worldwide brotherhood, or we will kill you,
that the irony is not lost on the filmmakers.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
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, we need to
couch that a little bit.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
So anyway, here we see a man in a lucha mask.
This is Santo helpfully coaching a bunch of young children
in This looks like tumbling and acrobatics on the playground.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
Yeah yeah, but also it's Luca Like they're grappling, they're
doing little flips and whatnot. So he's training the next
generation of Luciadors to some extent, and.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
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

(54:11):
not to inflict deliberate harm? And after this, Luis has
to affirm sort of the Santo school credo, which is
that these cutting edge rastling skills should never be used
in attack. They should only be used to counter aggression
or to protect the weak and defenseless. So it's kind
of the Santo School of good sportsmanship.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
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

(54:55):
the victory of good over evil, of technicos over rudo's,
and of righteousness over evil. So so yeah, I can
see I can see this lining up with actual Santo theology.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
Here, I guess, did I already mention there's a big
soccer match going on nearby?

Speaker 2 (55:11):
I think, oh, yeah, there's like a big soccer match
in the background. There's so much sport happening I.

Speaker 3 (55:15):
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.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
This one is played by Benny Gallant, who was a
he was I think he was always billed as a Frenchman,
but he was actually born in Spain, I think so. Yeah,
the Martians have it's it's a it's really a cross
continental cast here in many respects.

Speaker 3 (55:47):
Big stable.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:49):
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. We don't
see how it works exactly yet, but he has. 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.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
Do you see that, Yeah, I can see that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:12):
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

(56:34):
on one hand, the effects that we see are not
very gory, that we just see people like vanish from
the frame, but it implies something even more devastating than
like the heat ray in War the Worlds, which I
don't remember if this was in the novel, but in
the in the Spielberg adaptation, the movie adaptation, it would
leave this pile of empty clothes behind. When it hits you,

(56:55):
these people seem to disappear completely, not even leaving dust.
It's like they never existed.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Yeah, he just completely disintegrates loads and loads of people,
like men, women and children. Like it just it's 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 they're completely disintegrated.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
No, he totally. He vaporizes children in the scene, 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. And so there's like one point
where the Martian throws Santo and then he stops and
takes a moment to vaporize four of Santo's students, and

(57:39):
then the fight resumes. And I was thinking the same thing, like, well,
is Santo gonna go Like did he teleport them? Santo's
gonna 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.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
Yeah, it's a very fun lucha fight scene, especially considering
it just takes place in the middle of a field.
It like, as far as the location for a fight
in a film in general, if this is the most
mundane place it could ever go down. And yet it's
really good, Like it's just really good lucha grappling by
guys who really knew their craft. And I would say,

(58:17):
you know, half jokingly but half serious. The best storytelling
in this film is told in these little Luca fight scenes. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
Now I had questions about what I'm seeing here, because
you know a lot more about the conventions of wrestling
in Luca than I do. The Martian uses a full
nelson on Santo here, and I was wondering, is the
full nelson like a dirty move or is that part
of the legitimate move set.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
It's a legitimate move. It's I mean 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 like cowboy brawls
in pictures. But you know, I think the big thing
is that it's dramatic. You can see both wrestlers' faces,
and it has a number of cool Luca counters. Yeah,

(59:03):
and we see some of those here, several of those here.
I think Santo busts out all his favorite counters to
the full melson we see.

Speaker 3 (59:09):
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 that goes
into a somersult throw.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
Yeah. Yeah. The Luca 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 is more as
a setup move for some sort of a bomb or
a soup lex.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
Well, anyway, finally Santo gets the upper hand in this fight.
He puts the Martian in a choke hold of some kind,
but then suddenly the Martian fiddles with something on his
belt and then de materializes and Santo is left grasping
it air Like. I thought back to that footage we
saw the raccoon who tried to wash the wad of
cotton candy and it just disappears and he's there switching

(59:55):
around in the water looking for it. Yep, yep, yeah, like,
what happened? Where is it? I gotta say this several times.
This happens throughout the movie, when the Martian disappears and
Santo's 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,

(01:00:18):
Santo looks a bit made a fool of, and I
feel like, that's not what you want to go for.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Well, yeah, he's he has trained exclusively. I'm grappling opponents
that cannot vanish into thin air, so it just throws
him off his game, at least for a few seconds.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Anyway, after this, we get a long slow pan as
Santo surveys the empty athletic field, and it's kind of like,
what was that? What new terror am I facing?

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
Now?

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
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 rangely and covers his
face with a silver mask, and he almost managed to

(01:01:04):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
And they'll expand this project as the film commences, where
they'll realize, well, there are other humans that are kind
of Santo's of the mind, and we should also bring
them back as well, but Santo's the main one. If
we could only bring one, it would be el Santo.

Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
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?

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
Maybe? The establishing shot is that we're at Arena Mexico
in Mexico City, which is a very prestigious home of
Luja de Libra. It is built in nineteen fifty six,
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 in traditional digital libret promotion
in Mexico. You can still go there and see shows

(01:02:05):
Lucha Libre shows at Arena Mexico. So maybe Santo has
an office in the building.

Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
Yeah, but Santo has a friend here. This is when
we first meet the professor we will later learn this
is Professor Orto Rica, and they're discussing theories on what happened.
Professor Orto Rica is a professor of nuclear physics, and
they're Santo is saying, what cruel monster would vaporize even
innocent children? So they talk it through, but it's not

(01:02:33):
much of a talk because 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. So then we check in
with some of the families who were watching TV earlier.

(01:02:56):
They're all watching cowboy stuff. Now when suddenly broadcast signal
Intrusion again. The Martians are back and they say, listen
to 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

(01:03:16):
we see a priest and 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

(01:03:37):
of people who also had the astral eye. I was like, oh, really, wow,
I wonder where they're going with this. But I don't
think you know what never comes up again.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
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 explained that they selected
Mexico because it is a country dedicated to pacifism. And
then the professor I thought this was great. He snaps

(01:04:21):
a photo of the TV while the Martians are on TV.
How's that going to come out?

Speaker 2 (01:04:27):
I mean, you can't push record at this point in
no vc RS, Yeah, I guess so.

Speaker 3 (01:04:31):
But the Martian muscle guy says resistance is futile, and
then they just returned to the regular schedule programming. It's
back to the Cowboys 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

(01:04:53):
the Martian kind of waves away the criticism. He's like, hey, listen, YouTube, 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

(01:05:14):
the Professor are going to be like Adam and Eve
of a new humankind?

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
Sort of? Okay, I have to say in the screenshot
that you grabbed a wolf here, he really looks like
John Cena in the face.

Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
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 Martian argue. Santo is like, no, no, no,
you're not going to tell me what to do. Also,
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 they learn to

(01:05:47):
live in peace. And then here it ends up with that,
you know, 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 erlin Meyer flasks.

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):
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,

(01:06:29):
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

(01:06:50):
Darth Vader were just offscreen 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 app sphere. The
effects of the martians 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

(01:07:11):
his belt. It's like, can I get down another one
in time? I think in D and D terms, or
at least Boulder skate terms, I think it would work
like this in D and D. This seems to break
his concentration on the paralyzed lucha spell, and Santo starts
to come unfrozen.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 3 (01:07:28):
And so while the Martian is struggling for the pills,
Santo comes up behind him and applies a choke hold,
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?

(01:07:48):
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. All right, now, here

(01:08:12):
begins a segment where just there's random kidnappings, like some
shirtless Martian hulksters appear in children's bedrooms while they're sleeping
and just kidnap them. A bunch of the families we
saw watching TV earlier just get kidnapped and taken back
to the Martian spaceship. And then they get placed in
this Martian spaceship jail that has one cool thing about

(01:08:32):
it is an S shaped bench inside it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
Oh, yes, the estering.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
It's like super jail. But here we get more Martian scheming.
So after they put the people in the jail, the
Martians talk about how they talk about how their appearance
frightens Earthlings and somehow this is delaying their plans. I
didn't understand why, but one of them says, why do
we frighten them when our bodies are more perfectly evolved

(01:08:58):
than their own? I don't know. But then one of
them explains it is all in the mind, and then
that 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

(01:09:21):
they all go into this adjoining room with big glass windows,
and then it quickly fills up with smoke, and then
they I was wondering, like, what are they going to
be transformed into, like bunny rabbits to be, you know,
not non threatening.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:09:43):
No, not at all.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
No.

Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
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 sheet, they're wearing some kind of
Greek peplham wrestler costumes. And all of the lady Martians

(01:10:06):
now have big hair as well, like voluminous mid century
updues and that kind of bouffont helmet hair.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
Yeah there, I guess. With the women, you could say
to their costumes are like a little less revealing than
they were earlier, 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.

Speaker 3 (01:10:30):
They changed out of the tinfoil and now they're all
dressed like masheiste.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
Yeah yeah with and the helmets are all gone obviously.

Speaker 3 (01:10:37):
Yeah. So the head Martian explains that they now will
begin using names taken from the Earthlings mythology. 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 I think

(01:10:59):
it's ham Lee who's going to be called Morphio because
of his hypnotic powers. There is this might be the
Benny Gallant guy who they are gonna call Hercules because
of his physical strength. They say that the lady Martian
with the hugest hair is Aphrodita because of her great beauty.

(01:11:19):
Another Martian lady is Selina because she has the serenity
of the moon. And then the last two Martian ladies
are Artemisia and Diana. No explanation why, Yeah, it's like
and the rest. 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

(01:11:40):
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 gonna
have to rely on our strength and our wits and
our belts whatever those do. We are only told that

(01:12:01):
the belts cannot make them invisible, but we're not told
what they can do apart from teleportation.

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
Now, all of this is I love it when a
movie gives us the rules. No, but these rules are
more guidelines. Yeah, play pretty fast and loose with all this.

Speaker 3 (01:12:17):
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 hair style and color.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
Yeah, these references would have made a lot more since
had they been in like monster costumes earlier on. But no,
it's just it's not that different.

Speaker 3 (01:12:48):
But somehow this is going to help them capture some Earthlings,
and especially capture Santo and Professor Orto Rica and take
them back to Mars to create the perfect human.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
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 like key male captives, scientists, heads
of industry, prominent sci fi writers, that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:13:12):
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 hollo, and then she just hypnotizes him,
and then they're at the spaceship.

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:23):
So, anyway, what's going on with Santo and the Professor Now, well,
the Professor's research figures out what the alien's 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

(01:13:47):
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 twenty four 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

(01:14:07):
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, all that all makes sense, and
now I've got to go practice wrestling, get to the gym.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
Yeah, it's like it's more important now than ever. I've
got to work out.

Speaker 3 (01:14:27):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
Yeah, because it really does flow like that the movie.
It's kind of like highlight after highlight until the movie ends. Yeah,
it doesn't. This film doesn't have a lot of I
don't know, intentional flow to it, but it's still it's
it's entertaining the whole way.

Speaker 3 (01:14:59):
So one thing is attempt to 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 brain wave 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.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
Yeah, because they're like, oh, the fire, it's eating up
the oxygen so forth. So yeah, yeah, but he also
clearly burns his whole lab down in the process.

Speaker 3 (01:15:29):
I was just thinking of the line in the Attack
of the Crab Monsters, you know, pity is all fires
must one day burn out, let's see.

Speaker 2 (01:15:38):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:15:38):
I also want to note that in this scene, the
Martians who come for him, which I believe are Argos
and Chronos, 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.

Speaker 2 (01:15:53):
Yeah, so we will almost immediately abandon all.

Speaker 3 (01:15:56):
Yes, 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.

Speaker 2 (01:16:07):
No, They're like, we didn't like the way those felt,
so we're just ticularly the old customs.

Speaker 3 (01:16:12):
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 Luchadors is good, really good. In this sequence, Santo
is training with a couple of his Lucca buddies and
it's a tough fight, but they're all friends and it's
good sportsmanship all around. So you know, he's wrestling with

(01:16:32):
people they're they're fighting hard, but no hard feelings. These
are all friends here.

Speaker 2 (01:16:37):
Yeah, and Frankenstein is one of the friends.

Speaker 3 (01:16:39):
Yes, and I should know that Santo is masked, but
his two training partners are not anyway, So Santo's here
and then suddenly disguised as beautiful Earth women and revealing Leotard's.
The Martians are Temsa and Diana come into the gym
to execute a plans. They walk through the doors as

(01:17:00):
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 the ladies walk up and they end up hypnotizing
them so that when Santo comes back into the room later,

(01:17:22):
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. 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 tin foil cheek.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
Yeah, they didn't like that old like it was gross.

Speaker 3 (01:17:43):
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 across the two saddles on
a bench press rack and start kicking his arm like

(01:18:06):
to break it between the two metal hooks, and I
was like, oof, that is a I don't know, that
has much more kind of gory and brutal implications than
a lot of Luca moves. I don't know if you
felt the same way, but that it really struck me.

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. This fight here, it does have
Luca 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
like leaning into it, working a little stiff here for
the camera. But yeah, it's it's a brutal fight scene. Santo,

(01:18:42):
of course is up up for the fight.

Speaker 3 (01:18:45):
Yes, yeah, oh, and I should say 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. But however,
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 gotta get

(01:19:07):
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, gorsh, we were trying to kill you.
Wonder why, and it's there aren't a lot of questions
about it. It's just kind of like, h, no harm,
no foul. They shake it off and then yeah, we're
all good.

Speaker 2 (01:19:25):
Santo knows it's good. Santo knows your heart.

Speaker 3 (01:19:27):
There's a scene after this where the Martians kidnaps more
regular Earthlings. It's like a there's a cocktail party of
these various scientists and government leaders, just various important big wigs.
This is one of the scenes where I was getting
really confused about what people understood about the Martian invasion.

(01:19:48):
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.

(01:20:09):
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 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.

Speaker 2 (01:20:30):
Yeah, yeah, it's 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.

Speaker 3 (01:20:48):
Well, it's also not portrayal. So like the big wigs
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 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 Afrodita and Selena.

(01:21:10):
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 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.

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:21:42):
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. You they get teleported.

Speaker 2 (01:21:53):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:21:53):
But it is through the sci fi writers attempt to
escape the spaceship that we learn the ship has a
big level 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 rider knew this. Maybe he's just randomly
pulling it levers, but the Martians start yelling, no, that
will make the ship blow up.

Speaker 2 (01:22:14):
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 an emotion picture,
and it just makes all of these scenes where folks
are grabbing at it all the more hilarious.

Speaker 3 (01:22:31):
It's a big just like a handle that is protruding
from a large round bass that looks like hips.

Speaker 2 (01:22:40):
Like it's somebody. This had to have been intentional on
some level. Somebody designing this thing puts some thought into it.

Speaker 3 (01:22:48):
So yeah, it makes the ship will up. I wonder
if this will come up again later. They do not
succeed in blowing up the ship, but so then we
just move on. Oh, we get some stuff with the
people in the space jail. They're fed concentrated food and
things like that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:01):
Oh yeap pills for dinner, kind of like Santa conquers
the Martians. There's a lot of shared DNA between these
two films.

Speaker 3 (01:23:07):
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 they we get a twist,
we learn more about the Martians motivations. So they're talking

(01:23:29):
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. They must so,
like they're five hundred years ahead of us, and yet
Santo's still ahead of them. So how many years ahead
of regular humanity is Santo? I don't know, six hundred years.

(01:23:54):
So they've got to study him. And the reason is this,
they want to make copies of Santo use as super
soldiers for the armies that they will soon use to
launch a full scale invasion of Earth. Doun dun duh.
Who could have seen this this twist coming? Because it
turns out all that stuff about improving humankind, fostering universal brotherhood,

(01:24:18):
all that it was just it was just for show.
It was whoy. They don't actually care. They're just trying
to soften us up so they can invade and take
our planet.

Speaker 2 (01:24:26):
With an Army of dark Santo's Like, that's that's that's awful.

Speaker 3 (01:24:30):
Evil Santo's by the millions.

Speaker 2 (01:24:33):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:24:33):
Also after this, uh, we just get like a radio
announcer we got 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 rastling.

Speaker 2 (01:24:53):
This is such a weird sequence. Yeah, because they're building
us up, like just go to go to watch your
local Lucas show as usual. Well, don't let this fear
of alien invasion steer you in a different direction. But then,
as we see, nobody actually shows up for resting that night.
It's the arena they.

Speaker 3 (01:25:10):
Do in the first one. There are two. There are two.

Speaker 2 (01:25:12):
People don't show up the second. What's going on by
the second one?

Speaker 3 (01:25:15):
The second one is when people don't show up the
first one, it's a huge crowd.

Speaker 2 (01:25:19):
Oh, that's true. It is a big crowd for the first.

Speaker 3 (01:25:21):
They may be discouraged for the second one because martians
show up at the end of the first match and
start vaporizing people.

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):
Well that's understandable.

Speaker 3 (01:25:28):
But this first one it's is rob Is there a
formal term in Lucca 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 with somebody else.

Speaker 2 (01:25:41):
I don't know if there's any kind of lingo for it. Yeah,
but but it is a trope, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:25:45):
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 That's not every fight in Luca, right.

Speaker 2 (01:26:03):
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 in your previous identity.
But then also it is mask ripping, and the unmasking
is also a common shenanigan that takes place in Luca masks.

(01:26:24):
So like the rudo's will start tugging at the technico's mask,
the raff will get on to 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

(01:26:45):
they did have matches like this in the fifties and sixties,
but it also kind of felt I don't know, I
didn't fully understand it. Yeah, but for some reason it
seems to be the case that you can end this
match by pulling off your opponent's mask.

Speaker 3 (01:26:58):
Well, I thought this was a solid fight, and it
had a lot of twists and turns and some weird
interesting moves and rules. What 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
head butt to the perineum.

Speaker 2 (01:27:17):
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 gonna do a belly to
back suplex, but then you bring the opponent down so
that their butt lands on your knee. Okay, And you know,

(01:27:39):
it's like it makes sense in a wrestling world, you know,
because it's like, oh, impact of 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.

Speaker 3 (01:27:53):
Okay, Okay, I accept it. I mean I don't want
to be head butted in the butt either.

Speaker 2 (01:27:58):
Yeah. I'd never seen an attack like this before. This
was pretty great.

Speaker 3 (01:28:09):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:28:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:28:21):
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.
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

(01:28:42):
I guess that's a that is a legitimate counter argument,
and he proves this by pinning him and ripping off
his mask, 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 in, vaporizing them yep. And then of course they

(01:29:06):
turn the dial again and escape.

Speaker 2 (01:29:09):
So clearly some other form of attack is going to
be necessary to defeat Santa.

Speaker 3 (01:29:14):
That's right. Now they try a seduction as well. How
well do you think this is going to work on Santo?

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):
Oh, this is not going to work. In fact, I
was a little it seems like it's working, and I
was shocked.

Speaker 3 (01:29:25):
Yes, but it's it turns out it's like a dream
fake out. 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 Afrodita, the most powerful
seductress of the Martian operators, and she's like, hey, Santo,
and then she blows some smoke into the air and

(01:29:46):
the Martian love goddesses they I think they're 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, s it can't be true.
It can't be Santo is he cannot be defeated in
this way. But it turns out it's all like a

(01:30:06):
horrible dream. He wakes up and she's still there, but
he hasn't actually kissed her or anything, and his mask
is still on, 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.

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
Then they just back away and then teleport.

Speaker 3 (01:30:25):
Next there is a scene where Marsh 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 there is
a weird kind of discussion of whether or not they
should fight inside the church. I think they have to

(01:30:46):
take the fight outside.

Speaker 2 (01:30:47):
Yeah, Like the basically the priest here is like he
pulls out some highlander lord 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.

Speaker 3 (01:30:59):
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.

(01:31:19):
But then of course there are four burlesque dancers who,
of course they get hypnotized by the Martian ladies, who
then steal their costumes and do the dance themselves. The
costumes are hilarious. It's like something out of Doctor Seuss.
It looks like the lore Axe.

Speaker 2 (01:31:36):
Yeah, I mean, it's really it's really classy stuff. It's
I guess it's kind of chorus line, right.

Speaker 3 (01:31:42):
Yeah, yeah, I guess. So I don't know 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, uh, oh, we're in trouble now, all out
of our atmosphere pills, and it's it's do or die.

(01:32:03):
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, So they get that going. Uh,
there's not a whole lot to explain here, It's just

(01:32:23):
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 he 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

(01:32:44):
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. It
felt a little anti climactic. But he frees the hostage.
Is they all run outside, and here is where they get.
We get a brief discussion between Santo and the professor,

(01:33:06):
because the professor is like, hey, we should save the
Martian ship. We've got to use it to advance Earth
technology by five hundred years, right, and Santo says, no, no, no,
we must destroy it because we are not ready for
such power. It must be eliminated.

Speaker 2 (01:33:20):
I mean, this is this is a part of the
film where it's like, all right, this is they're cooking
a little bit here with these ideas. Yeah, Santo's like, like,
we're going out there to destroy it, not to bring
back and.

Speaker 3 (01:33:32):
Right, yeah, he's the ripley in the scenario nukid for morbid,
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

(01:33:54):
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 Santo turn around
and wander into the woods, leaving the freed prisoners alone
by themselves.

Speaker 2 (01:34:12):
I really like this sending, though, because it's like Santa's 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.

Speaker 3 (01:34:29):
Great, Yeah, all right, So that was Santo in the
Martian invasion.

Speaker 2 (01:34:33):
Yes, he successfully defeated the invasion, did not find it
necessary to then go and conquer the Martians. Leave that
for Santa Claus.

Speaker 3 (01:34:47):
Someday we'll have to come back and explore all of
the parallels between Santo and Santa Claus.

Speaker 2 (01:34:52):
Number Yeah, like the attempt to kidnap Santo and Santa
Claus the head, 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 heather at
that time.

Speaker 3 (01:35:08):
You never see them out of costume. They're paragons of virtue.

Speaker 2 (01:35:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:35:14):
Yeah, they teach the children to do right.

Speaker 2 (01:35:17):
Yeah. But we had no divisions this time in Martian
the Martian camp. You know, we didn't have like pro
Santo anti Santo camp. That would have been interesting. But
oh yeah, there's no dropo. 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 SIDEKICKO. Yeah, parago,

(01:35:38):
and we didn't have a perago. We didn't have a
dropoh in this in this picture, I'm not sure we
had room for.

Speaker 3 (01:35:43):
Can't have everything, Rob, that's true, that's true.

Speaker 2 (01:35:46):
All right, we're gonna 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. Write in.
We would love to hear from you. Just a reminder
of the stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily a
science and 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.

(01:36:06):
You can find us on a letterboxed we are Weird House,
and you can also find us on Instagram, where we
are STBYM podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:36:13):
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 stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:36:33):
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