Weirdhouse Cinema: Doctor of Doom

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss René Cardona’s 1963 luchadora film “Doctor of Doom,” full of mad science and a sprinkling of lucha action. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob
Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today we're going
to be wrestling again. Because you may recall, if you've
been listening to the show a while, there was a time,

(00:25):
long ago, once in the world before that, I heard
a voice whispering in the darkness, and I listened and
it said to me, supernatural wrestling movies. And we of
course that that led to us covering Santo in the
Treasure of Dracula, one of my favorite movies we've watched,
pitting the ultimate good guy hero wrestler against the forces

(00:46):
of Satan and the undead in the form of a
actually a rather from what I recall square normal looking Dracula,
just kind of like Cape and you know, the classic
Belle to go see. Look right now it is time
once again the voice has called out to us, and
this time it said, not supernatural wrestling movies, but science

(01:09):
fiction Luca Libre. That's right, we're dipping back into the
wild world of Mexican Luca Libre cinema. And yeah, this
movie is a lot of fun. We're gonna be talking
about Doctor of Doom from nineteen sixty three. It's a
different beast and that yeah, it leans more ridiculous sci
fi as opposed to ridiculous supernatural elements. And also, while

(01:32):
Santo in the Treasure of Dracula was a lucadoor picture
starring El Santo himself, this is a luchadora picture focusing
instead mostly on female wrestlers. Oh and what a treat
it was to discover that there are science fiction luca
libre movies where the main lucadorra is played by none

(01:53):
other than Lorraine of Alasquez, who you may remember from
our episode on the movie Ship of Monsters. Another one
of my favorite films we've done on this show. Lorrainovelasquez
in that played one of the two aliens sent to
Earth to find Earth's greatest hunks, and she was an
absolute delight in that movie. I love her in this

(02:13):
movie as well. She is our heroine, our our butt
kicking luchadora hero. So today's movie, the version of it
I saw, was known with the English title Doctor of Doom.
But I wanted to raise an issue right here at
the beginning, because this movie is also known as Las
lucadoras contra el Medico Assassino, meaning I guess the lucadoras

(02:36):
versus the killer doctor or versus the medical assassin. And
there's a complication here with the fact that just before
we started recording, I was looking around on the internet
and I discovered that El Medico Assassino was also the
name of an actual Luca Door. But I don't think
he is in any way related to this movie, or

(02:57):
if he is, I couldn't tell how he was related
to the movie except in the overlapping idea of a
killer doctor. Yeah, because this film does not have outside
of one dude who shows up, there's not a male wrestler.
There's not a luchador proper in this film, So this
guy who I wasn't familiar with is not part of
the picture. So maybe it's just coincidence. I do remember

(03:19):
there's a good scene where a male wrestler just gets
beat up by a room full of lady wrestlers. I
loved that. Yeah. Oh, and there is a caveat there
is a There is an actor in this film who
who was a wrestler and may have been a wrestler
at the time of the film. We'll get into that,
but for the most part, none of the characters are
male luchadors. No male luchadors are showing up and saving

(03:42):
the day. It's all up to the ladies and of
course other men. We'll get into that in a second,
but yeah, I wasn't familiar with this particular luchador, though
there is. Interestingly enough, another guy was familiar with, whose
name was doctor Cerebro, I think, and his Luca mask
looked rather standard. Up on the top, it looked like
there was an exposed brain, like he had had open cranium,

(04:05):
you know, brain surgery. So he's just like going into
the ring with brain exposed. Well, you know, it's that's phrase.
It's not you're not supposed to believe that that's his
actual brain up there, but that's the way his mask
is decorated. So a lot of what was fun to
me about Santo and the Treasure of Dracula was that
that sort of like ludicrous collision of the different genres,

(04:26):
the fact that you are pitting a in one sense,
very mundane but exciting sport with a charismatic hero Lucha libre,
you know, Mexican wrestling, with these supernatural monster themes, and
this movie has exactly the same appeal. It pits uh,
you know, mundane earthly wrestlers against a science fiction murderer

(04:50):
who wants to steal people's brains for his ungodly experiments. Yes,
I think the other interest in comparison to make is
Santo and The Treasure of Dracula. Yes, you had absolute
evil in Dracula, but then you have absolute goodness in
the Ultimate Technico El Santo, who is so good and

(05:11):
so capable, like it's never really in doubt, who's going
to come up on top. He's a superman, he's he's
a living legend. Um. And then as far as female
characters go in that film, they're mostly just there to
look beautiful and stand in the background. This picture is
kind of it's it's interesting, you know in the way
that it sort of attempts to depict feminine strength because, um,

(05:34):
you know, on one hand, this is nineteen sixty three
and it's you know, an obvious genre picture B movie.
It's it's it's only going to do so much, um,
and we end up with this weird mixture of female
character traits both um, you know, very stereotypical but then also, uh,
you know, these are luchadoras. They're supposed to be strong,
capable women. Oh yeah, well, once again, i'd love Lorraine

(05:57):
Velasquez and she she's great as the heroine in this
U two thumbs up. Yeah yeah. However, it's still again,
it's nineteen sixty three, so things are only going to
be so progressive because despite the fact that the various
female characters in the film, including a female scientist, uh
you know, get to show that they're capable, the lucadoras

(06:17):
get to beat up a bunch of men and that's
pretty great, But still we ultimately end up in the
place plot wise where men have to save the women.
And I would say that ultimately that's that's the weak
link in the picture. M Are you talking about what
are you referring to there? Like the detective character, the
detective characters will show up, yeah yeah, yeah, So it

(06:39):
ends up they end up having like more of a
role in ultimately defeating the villains than I think we
would want today as as modern viewers. And I think
maybe even in sixty three, like it's a film about lucadoras,
I want to see the lucadoras doing more in the finale.
But you know, that's that's my take on it. Oh,
I don't know. I mean Loraina and uh and Golden

(06:59):
Ruby opened quite a few cans in the film. They do, Yeah,
they do. They do not hold back on just beating
the tar out of some some Hinchman. But I don't know.
We'll see what, We'll see where we get with this
when we start talking about the plot, all right, elevator pitch,
I don't know that we really need one at this point.
But basically it's a brain transplant mad science picture, but

(07:20):
with female wrestlers in it. There's a wonderful scene in
this film where a news report shares the information with
the public that the police were able to determine from
markings on the victim that their brain had been removed. Yes,
it's it's pretty clear that they're not removing the brains
through the nose. No, they're going right in the top. Yeah,

(07:42):
doctor Cerebro style. So um, yeah, it's I think the
markings would be pretty obvious. They don't show you the markings.
What do those markings look like indicating the brain who've
been removed? Yeah, I'm picturing open skull and an ice
cream scoop bloody ice cream scoop laying next to it,
you know, all right, Well, when it comes to the
trailer for this film, I wasn't able to find an

(08:06):
obvious example of either the English or the Spanish language trailer,
so instead we're going to feature just a clip here
from the English dub of the picture. Joe, this is
going to be the one failure after another monologue between
the two mad scientists, one failure after another, bars the

(08:33):
operation is tremendously difficult. Doctor. There isn't there any human
being that can stand shock. Perhaps a stronger type of woman,
an athlete, the one that can take more punishment than
the average. If we could find a woman like that, doctor,
she probably lived through the operation. You know, they really

(08:57):
give the murderous mad doctor a lot of pathos. Yes, yes,
he is a very fun character. Though he has a
secret identity. You don't know who he is. There's a
lot of Scooby Doo action going on in this picture,
so we're gonna treat that with kid gloves at least
for a while. We're gonna try and retain the spoiler,

(09:19):
keep it fresh for you. Well, yeah, we'll warn you
at the end before we do the reveal though it's
not very hard to figure out. You'll you'll see it
coming miles away. You'll see it on the horizon with
the sun rising behind it. But it's but yeah, it's
still fun when it gets there. I totally agree. Yeah,
it's not much of a mystery, but it's a great
reveal anyway. All right, Well, if you want to take

(09:41):
a break here and go watch the film, Uh, it's
pretty widely available. You can currently stream it on just
to name some of those, Amazon Prime fandor to be
Flicks fling I'm something. I don't know if some of
those are real. Some of those I might be making
up on the fly. You can also rent or buy
it several places digitally as well. If you're looking for
a DVD copy. I think something Weird put it out

(10:02):
on disc a while back, alongside Wrestling Women Versus the
Aztec Mummy. All right, let's get into the cast and
the people involved in making this picture, starting at the
top with our director, Renee Cardona, who lived nineteen oh
five through nineteen eighty eight. Cardona was a director, actor, producer, writer,

(10:23):
and editor, but thus remembered as a director in the
Golden Age of Mexican cinema. He was born in Havana, Cuba.
He began medical school there but had to flee the
country for New York City. He was unable to continue
his studies, but he got involved in filmmaking, which took
him to Hollywood, and then he made the move to
Mexico City. First as an actor, but then he went
on to direct I think one hundred and forty six

(10:44):
different pictures, or at least that's the credit number on IMDb.
As an actor, he was in some really well received
Mexican films, such as The Priest's Secret from forty one
and The Rock of Souls from forty three. As a director, however,
he mostly made his splash directing I think seven different
Santo movies, including Santo and the Treasure of Dracula from

(11:05):
sixty nine, as well as such titles as She Wolves
of the Ring and nineteen seventy two's Night of the
Bloody Apes, which is sort of a nastier retread of
this film, Like basically he came back around and like,
what have I made Doctor of Doom except sleazier for
the nineteen seventies. I recall looking at that one to see, oh,

(11:26):
maybe this would be good for the show, but thinking
it looked just gross. Yeah, yeah, same. Sometimes I'll forget
and I'll go back and it's like, oh, Night of
the Bloody Apes sounds good, and then I look at
the details, like no, no no, no, not this one. But
he also made an absolutely unforgettable Christmas classic, Oh Yes,
Santa Claus from nineteen fifty nine, in which Santa Claus

(11:47):
and the devil battle for the soul of poor Lupita
in Mexico City. Can you imagine if they had gotten
Santo and Lupita together in the same movie, like just
the pure goodness would like it would like blind you,
oh man, that that would be good. I was speaking
of Santa Claus. If memory serves the actor who played

(12:08):
Santa Claus, and that is also in Night of the
Bloody Apes. I think he plays a doctor in that,
maybe the mad doctor in that picture. Well. As far
as story and adaptation credit, this goes to Alfredo Salazar,
who lived nineteen twenty two through two thousand and six.
Brother of Mexican director Abel Salazar. Alfredo scripted a number
of notable Mexican B pictures, including the Aztec Mummy movies,

(12:32):
multiple Santo movies, including Santo and the Treasure of Dracula.
He also wrote The Batwoman from sixty eight nineteen sixty
seven's The Panther Women as well, which is another well
regarded Lucadora film, But this one starred exotic dancer Tongolella.
I was I was interested in this one. This was
a close pick for this week. I was looking for

(12:52):
a good Lucadora picture and that was the runner up. Well,
maybe we'll have to check that out in the future
as well. Now, when I'm thinking about the writing of
wrestling films like this, obviously, one thing I love is
the combination of the genres and the subject matters, you know,
the science fiction horror or the supernatural horror with the wrestling.

(13:15):
But the other thing is, I'm wondering how you're going
to find new ways every time to work in a
wrestling match as the climax, because it's hard to make
that fit. In this movie, they do it pretty well. Yeah, Yeah,
it is an interresting challenge. I was thinking about this
a lot while watching it as well, Like, okay, they
they had the mandate, it's got to be probably, I'm

(13:37):
assuming they were probably, Like it's got to be a
luchadora film. People want to see luchadoras the luchador films
are very successful, so just do that. And they're like, okay, well,
well all right, we got we gotta somehow work it in. Okay,
what's our what's our villain going to be? Yeah? How
do you weave it together? And you'll end up with
a situation where of course your mad brain transplant doctor

(13:58):
needs strong women, so he's going to target or attempt
to target Luca Doors. Right, So in this film they
managed to do it by having like, oh, she think
our heroine thinks she's just going into a regular wrestling
match against a human wrestler, but in fact this is
a superpowered, brain transplanted monster of science. But like, how

(14:19):
do they usually I mean, every time is it just
like the hero or heroine gets tricked into a wrestling
match with somebody they think is a human but turns
out to be a monster or something. Well with I
think in a lot of those Santo pictures it also
comes down to characters realizing, hey, we've got some sort
of problem, We've got a threat. We need to call
El Santo Santo because he's like a superhero he's larger

(14:40):
than life. He's solving crimes and defeating evil in this picture, though,
Gloria Venus, who will talk about in just a minute,
like she's just a working Luca Doora. That's true. Yeah,
so they just gets sucked into this whole situation. They
don't call her, she's not a crime fighter. So in
a way, this film is a lot more believable, it's

(15:01):
a lot more realistic that. Yeah, I guess that's a difference.
Now I can't recall actually did the climax of Treasure
Santo and The Treasure of Dracula even involve a match
in the ring. Maybe it didn't. Maybe it was just
a bunch of wrestling and fighting in like actual locations
relevant to the plot. Yeah, there there are other Santo
pictures where where where that is the factor? Like though

(15:24):
there's a like, oh, the evil Rudo is actually a werewolf,
but I don't think that happened at all in Treasure
of Dracula. Okay, so I maybe it's a well, I
don't know. I wonder if it's a thing. Over time,
they are more comfortable just having the climax to be
some kind of conflict outside the ring. But maybe in
earlier pictures. They're they're they're like, Okay, we got to

(15:45):
bring it back to the ring somehow for the big showdown. Yeah. Yeah,
and and perhaps as they go, yeah, they have to
keep thinking of ways to spice it up. What can
we do differently? We can't just have the same format,
even though these are you know, the expectations are there
for the audience. I'm sure this has been commented on
a million times, but I can't help but notice it
seems to me like the great sort of fantastical, over

(16:09):
the top dramas the fictionalized stories in these Mexican wrestling
films from the middle of the century must have contributed
to the elaborate fictional storylines that come to fill in
between the matches in like American professional wrestling circuits. Does
that make sense, Yeah? Maybe so. Yeah. It's interesting though,

(16:30):
because I don't think you see much of that in
Luca Libre. But then again, you end up having this
thing where, you know, American wrestling ends up influencing Luca
Libre and so forth. So there's a lot of exchange
going there between these different styles, you know, a lot
more than me, I guess I had assumed maybe maybe

(16:51):
I was wrong that the like all the elaborate fictional
backstories and the soap opera aspect of it is a
more recent thing in America and professional wrestling. That like,
if you go back to the mid century, they didn't
have as much of the like supposed backstage drama and
the kind of super the meta stories, right. I believe
that is the case. That's my understanding. Yeah, that you

(17:12):
go back far enough and a lot of these pro
wrestling products are based are going to be very similar.
Um that all originally based on kind of a US
euro model where it's more about the action in the
ring and there may be some you know, backstage stuff,
radio stuff, etc. But it's not as much of a
focus as it is today in American wrestling. Another question

(17:35):
you might not know the answer, I don't know, but
does like does modern American pro wrestling at all rope
in any of these like supernatural or science fiction themes,
is they're like a wrestler in the WWE today that
wants to remove people's brains. Uh, yeah, I think there
is one guy. There's there's always there's always room for
a supernatural gimmick in wrestling, especially American wrestling. And and

(18:00):
sometimes in Japanese it just it kind of varies, but
definitely in American wrestling, you'll always have at least one,
maybe two guys that are doing some sort of supernatural gimmick.
And you know, it's one of those things that some
people love. Some people. Hey, I guess it's it's great
for great for the kids. If nothing else, I don't know.
I enjoyed. I think there should always be some sort

(18:20):
of undead zombie man in wrestling. Of course, always got
to have a vampire, gotta have a brain thief. Yeah,
oh hey, But I want to say one thing about
the particular version of this movie that I watched that
I really enjoyed was the English dub of it. So
I haven't I couldn't speak to the Spanish audio version,

(18:42):
but the English dub on this movie was great, fun
and highly amusing. Oh yeah, I really enjoyed the dub.
Unlike Treasure of Dracula Trade with Treasure of Dracula, I
also enjoyed the dub, but that was, as you might recall,
a modern dub that attempted too and I think mostly
succeeded in capturing the feel of a of a nineteen

(19:03):
sixties dub. Yes, but you could tell it was modern
from what I could tell it. The one I was
watching I think was vintage. Yeah, this is vintage. This
is because this film was distributed in the US by
Kay Gordon Murray of nineteen twenty two through nineteen seventy nine,
American producer best known for dubbing and releasing foreign films

(19:27):
for the US market, including such films as The Robot
Versus the Aztec Mummy from fifty seven Santa Claus we
just talked about, Oh, and The Brainy Act from sixty two,
which is a really fun Mexican vampire movie in which
the in which the vampire is is very monstrous has
a long tongue. Am I right about that? Yeah? Yeah,

(19:56):
all right, Well let's get into the cast here. We've
we've mentioned her several times already, but yeah, Gloria Venus
played by the beautiful and talented Lorrain of Alaska's born
nineteen thirty seven and as of this recording still around.
I don't think she's been active in the last few years,
but she had a very long career. I think she
was still showing up occasionally in films or TV shows.

(20:19):
I love Lorrain of Velasquez in this movie, and I
loved her in the other when we watched Ship of Monsters.
In both cases, it's a very interesting kind of performance
in that she is not chewing the scenery, like she's
not doing an over the top, you know, high energy
acting performances. She's very reserved, you might say, in the

(20:41):
character kind of like economical with her movements and her expressions,
but to a very pleasing effect. Like she just kind
of wears this expression of ironic, almost inappropriate amusement almost
all the time. And it plays so well in these scenes. Yeah,

(21:02):
and it's not like she's cracking up or or whatever.
They're corpsing as I think it's the modern term for
it's not like that, but it's just she strikes this
nice balance of amusement. But I think a big difference
here is that while while she's great in this movie,
Lorraine Velasquez was not a wrestler first, and you don't

(21:22):
I don't think see her do much, if any, actual
wrestling in this movie. She is frequently replaced by an
obvious stunt double. Yeah. I mean they might have taught
her a few things, just for some of these scenes
where she's applying a submission hold and you see her
face rather clearly. But yeah, she was. I think she
was a model turned actor and plays a wrestler here.

(21:46):
Very different from these scenarios where someone like Alsanto or
Blue Demon or Luchador's first and they become a big
enough name that they transition into acting as well. And
I guess you could argue, of course that you know,
being a luchador is already that gives you kind of
a leg up into the acting world because it is
both an athletic art and a performance art at the

(22:07):
same time. It's like having to be an athlete and
an actor rolled into one. Yeah, though with with some
some key differences, and you know, I imagine it's not
a seamless transition, um but but but great for the
stunt scenes. Like I will say that that the wrestling
that we see in Santo and the Treasure of Dracula

(22:28):
is far superior to what we see in this picture,
um and and part of that I think has to
do with the fact that you it's centered around a
non wrestler an actor playing the key role. Agree, So
it's like there there's less Uh, I don't know, I
guess technical flair, but I nonetheless greatly enjoyed the beat
him up scenes. Oh yeah, yeah, certainly. So. Yeah she

(22:51):
was a model, she was, but she was also step
daughter of actor Victor of Velasquez and a former beauty
pageant competitor I believe from Miss Mexico. She was in
two different Santo movies from nineteen sixty two, Santo Versus
The Zombies and Santo Versus The Vampire Woman or Women.
I can't remember which one it is, but at any rate,
she is a vampire woman in that she plays Zorina,

(23:13):
Queen of the Vampires. Oh, I gotta see that one.
She was also in another Santo movie as well, in
nineteen sixty five, The Diabolical Acts. So this is her
first portrayal of Gloria Venus, and she went on to
play that character again in nineteen sixty four is Wrestling
Women versus the Aztec Mummy, and she played Loretta Venus.

(23:33):
In nineteen sixty five she Wolves of the Ring, also
from Cardona. I haven't seen that one, so I don't
know if it's just basically the same character, or if
the name gets changed by accident, or if it's supposed
to be her sister. I'm not sure it takes place
a generation in the future and she plays her own daughter. Yeah,
I'm not sure what the angle is there, but at

(23:56):
any rate, yeah, she's a delight. She was a huge
star in Mexican cinema, also had a presence on Mexican
soap operas and was active up until I believe about
twenty twenty. All Right, just because it's a it's a
it's a sixties film centering around female characters doesn't mean
you get away without having some sort of a hunky
man hero in the picture. And that's what we have

(24:17):
in this character. Armando played by Armando Silvestri. Ladies and gentlemen,
meet your jawline. Yes, he was born in nineteen twenty six,
and I think it's still still around. He was apparently
a bullfighter turned actor who was active from nineteen forty
seven through twenty seventeen as an actor. Apparently he left

(24:39):
bullfighting for acting after being badly gored. Oh, and I
have to say had had a quite an acting career,
played a lot of hunky leading men in Mexican cinema,
but also played various parts in American westerns. So his
credits include numerous Cardona pictures, including Night of the Bloody
Apes and The Wrestling Women Versus the Aztec Mummy. But
he also pops up in nineteen seventies, Two Meals for

(25:01):
Sister Sarah, nineteen sixty eights, The Scalp Hunters, and in
some other pictures as well, so multiple Luca films in there. Though.
To be clear, now, we've got another major character to mention,
which is that our heroine in this film does not
fight alone. She ends up developing a great friendship with
another Lucada and it becomes kind of a buddy picture

(25:23):
in a way. And that is with the the Luchadora
Golden Ruby. Is that ruby spelled with the why or
ruby spelled with an eye? Oh, I don't remember. But
Golden Ruby is played by Elizabeth Campbell or nineteen forty
two American actor who is with a number of films.
I think a lot of a lot of her filmography
is Mexican cinema, so she was in all of the

(25:47):
Luchadora movies that we've mentioned so far in this episode,
as well as Las Lobo still Ring, and she pops
up in at least one US Western nineteen sixty six
is the professionals. She and Lorena make a great team.
There are multiple scenes of There's like one scene where
they're I think they're temporarily roommates for some reason, and

(26:08):
they're both just like sleeping in these twin beds and
what looks like an apartment and they're like, hey, wait,
somebody's about to break in and try to steal our brains.
So they like pretend to be asleep, and then when
the guys sneak in the window, they just pop up
and whip their butts. Yeah, and they're not even I
don't think they're even doing They might have thrown some
arm drags or something, but for the most part, they're

(26:29):
just like pummeling these guys in the face with their fists. Yeah, okay. Now,
another major actor in this picture is Roberto Knado who
lived nineteen eighteen through nineteen ninety eight. He plays the professor.
I loved this guy's performance as well as and and
also whoever did the English dub for him, big big

(26:50):
thumbs up on both agree this is a very fun dubbing.
Oh yeah, so he quite often it gets extremely close
to the James Mason voice comes in and says it's terrible.
How they've been stealing everyone's brains, isn't it. Oh yeah,
yeah that this this character is a lot of fun.
He gets he's invited to attend the Luca and and

(27:13):
he's like, oh no, I absolutely deployed. It's it's so violent.
I can't stand it. I don't have the constitution for it.
He walks backstage after watching a Glory of Venus match.
He's like, there to see her and um he comes
into her locker room or whatever. She's like, oh, did
you like my match, professor. He's like, it's terrible. I

(27:33):
can't just stand violence. Just disgusts me. I don't to
vomit right now. Oh yeah, it's yeah, it's it's a
really fun performance from a very talented Mexican performer, again
from the golden age of Mexican cinema. He acted in
over three hundred films, which included a lot of B
films but also some serious dramas. On the B cinema

(27:55):
end of things. He pops up in several Santo pictures.
He's in sixty eight's The Batman, He's in the nineteen
sixty five Werewolf film La Looba, and Wait a Minute
was the sixty eight one The Batman or the Batwoman.
I'm sorry, it's the Batwoman. I said the Batman, but
this is the Batwoman. There's another Cardona picture. Yeah, he's

(28:16):
in this werewolf picture. He also pops up in some
later day horror films, such as the nineteen eighty six
slasher movie Bestia Nocturna and the nineteen eighty nine Mexican
slasher film Grave Robbers, the ladder of which is available
to stream on various sideside. I was tempted to check
it out, but I didn't get a chance. But as
a serious actor in dramas, he appeared in I think

(28:40):
at least two very critically well received pictures, including Puba
Arena from nineteen forty nine and Crime and Punishment from
nineteen fifty one, an adaptation of Crime and Punishment. Great job,
Roberto he Yeah, I love him in this. I want
to see his other movies. Yeah. We'll talk more about
his performance as we get into the picture. But hey,

(29:00):
you've also got to have some comic relief. You got
to get a comedian in there. Uh. You might remember
in Santo in the Treasure of Dracula, we had a
very funny Mexican comedian, and we have another Mexican median
in this film in Santo in the Treasure of Dracula.
Was it Perico, the the annoying, Yes, the the the

(29:21):
cowardly sidekick. It was a lot of fun in this
We have the character listed in the credits as Cama,
but I think he's he actually had. He gets a
different name in the dub, right, I'm not in the
English dub. That could be wrong about this, but I
think maybe they called him Tommy. Okay, but he's the
main detective sidekick. He's are Armando's uh buddy. Yeah, a

(29:45):
short little foula played by Tucco Salinas who died in
two thousand and one. I'm not sure birth date is
public record, but yeah. He seems to have been mainly
a comic actor, providing similar comic relief in such pictures
as The Wrestling Women Versus the Aztec Mummy and some
other lucha pictures. He was also in some just outright comedies,

(30:07):
such as Mexico two thousand from nineteen eighty three. I
believe we talked about that one in Ship of Monsters
because it's the same director. Oh Regalio Gonzalez. Yeah. Well,
in this movie, a lot of his comedy scenes I
think are coming from an apparent mismatch where he's uh
he and Ruby, Golden Ruby seem to be falling in

(30:27):
love with each other, which is funny because he's very
short and she's very tall, and that's all. That's all
there is. Yeah, it's a pretty one note joke, one
note romance. But they keep touching bass on it. Oh
it's sweet though, it is sweet. Yes, we also did
we mention that we have an eight man in this picture.
Oh yeah, there's a there's a so not only brain transplants,

(30:50):
this movie has Island of Doctor Moreau in it, you know,
the mad The mad doctor is like, why don't I
make a half man half gorilla. Wouldn't that be good? Yes,
it would be good. Let's do that. Yeah. Now the
poster makes it looks like it is a gorilla or
a gorilla suit. It is not. It is more of
a gorilla like you said at Doctor Islanded Doctor Moreau
sort of thing. Well, that's how it's described with the

(31:10):
it's just a it's just a guy. And they glued
some extra extra hair on him and some gave him
some like a prosthetic nose. I guess, yeah, yeah, limited
prosthetics were applied to him. Yeah, but the fella that
these prosthetics are applied to and then they glued some
hair on. Um. It is a pretty interesting character. This
is Pirardo Zepita, who lived nineteen thirty five through twenty eleven.

(31:34):
So this is just one of your your cloud. You
find this in any any cinematic culture. You have a
you have a great brute man character actor here. Uh
plays a lot of heavies, plays a lot of monsters.
Um does a lot of work in genre pictures, but
also ends up having some background work in a lot
of bigger pictures as well. Now I might guess was

(31:57):
this guy himself originally a rest slur? He was. He
was originally a luchador wrestling as Gerardo l Romano. I'm
not sure how long he was actually active, but it
does seem from what I was reading about him on
like Luca Wiki and some other sites, it sounds like
he transitioned full time into acting after a while. This

(32:19):
was apparently his first picture, however, he followed it up
with several Santo Aztec, Mummy and Blue Demon pictures, and
he sort of reprised this same role in nineteen sixty
nine Night of the Bloody Apes. He is the eight
Monster and that. But he also pops up as a
bandit in Alejandro Jodorowski's legendary nineteen seventies psychedelic western El Topo. Yeah.

(32:43):
He also plays a bandit in nineteen seventy three's The
Mansion of Madness, which is a surreal inmates take over
the asylum picture starring the legendary Claudio Brook. Claudio Brook
for any of you out there not as familiar with
Mexican cinema, he pops up in Guerremel de Toro's Chronos.
He plays the evil old Man who wants to get

(33:05):
a hold of the Chronos device. Evil old Man and
the main villain I'm remembering in that is um Is
Oh what's his name? Uh that we know? We know
so well? Oh yeah, another great brute man actor Ron Perelman,
Ron Perlman, I remembers, so Ron Perelman worked for him
in this movie. Yeah, yeah, his boss is Claudio Brook. Okay, Sonny,

(33:26):
that that's a picture. We there's some elements to it
that kind of disqualify it from weird house cinema. But
it's a great Claudio Brook performance. Anyway, as far as
um as a peta goes here. His other credits include
roles in nineteen eighty three Is Beyond the Limit, starring
Michael Caine, Richard Gere, and Bob Hoskins, Oliver Stone's nineteen
eighty six films Salvador. Oh in the he's also in

(33:49):
the I did not know this existed, but there's a
nineteen eighty one Ringo star caveman movie titled Caveman. That
that's great. That yeah, it has the look of of
of of quality to it. Wait a minute, now, I
may have seen that there were a lot of caveman movies,
but I may have seen part of this one because

(34:09):
I remember seeing a movie on TV when I was
younger where a Tyrannosaurus rex is hit in the groin
with a club and its eyes go cross side. Well
it might it sounds like nineteen eighty one's cave Man
might be the sort of picture where that happens. Dennis
Quaid is also in it. Oh wow, yeah, we may

(34:29):
we may have to come back and examine this one
in greater detail. This is a iwa was one of
the fun things about diving into pictures like this, as
you discover things you had had no idea that it
existed and or it had any right to exist. Caveman
from nineteen eighty one takes place in the year one
zillion BC. By the way, that's that's part of this.

(34:50):
Could have done just a little bit of research to
get that little more calibrated. Oh wait, I just looked
it up. Caveman had Barbara Bach in it. Oh wow,
great cats, great cat as if nothing else of just
a gut couple of more he has. Zepeta also shows
up in Tony Scott's nineteen ninety Kevin Costner film Revenge,

(35:10):
and he's also in John Frankenheimer's The Burning Season from
nineteen ninety four, which starred Raul Julia So not not bad,
all told okay, And finally, as far as the music goes,
and Tonio Diez Conde did the music. He died in
nineteen seventy six. He was just he was a prolific
Mexican composer who worked on a ton of B pictures
during this time period. I get the impression he is

(35:32):
just churning it out. It's it's pretty standard stuff here.
It's good you know, it delivers the musical vibes you
expect from a lucha picture from this era. I recall
the music off and really turns on a dime. There's
like a sudden cut and it goes from you know,
just the like plowing ominous orchestral music, too straight and

(35:53):
too going whoop do you know, like whimsical fun stuff
but you know, keeping up with the picture. Really, So
we take a break and then come back to talk
about the plot. Let's do it. Hey, So I guess

(36:15):
it's time to talk about the plot. And if we
sound different at all right now, it's because we had
to split this recording up into two different sessions. So
now we are returning from the from the interlude to
talk about the plot of Doctor of Doom. And I
think one thing I will say kicking off this movie
is that it probably assumes now my number one position

(36:38):
for movies that just get on with it. This movie
makes haste. So at the very beginning, no studio logo,
no credits. The first thirteen seconds of this film depict
what appears to be a murder. I think later it
is just a gorilla man kidnapping that will turn into
a murder. But it like it happened so fast, so

(36:59):
like orchestral ominous orchestral music is just grinding. From frame one,
we see this grimy looking backlot. It looks, I guess
like a like a film studio lot. But then there's
a woman in a fur coat walking around with a handbag.
She's walking briskly as though afraid. And then there are
two menacing goons in suits and ties following her. Here

(37:23):
we're about eight seconds in. She looks over her shoulder,
she's afraid. The music swells. There is a different dude,
not one of the two suits, but a shirtless guy
with hairy arms. He reaches out from behind a brick
wall strangles her from behind. Then we're at like thirteen
or fourteen seconds in, and then we cut to a
ladies wrestling match, and then the credits roll. Remember that

(37:47):
thing about the head explosion scene and scanners, how they
like put it was originally going to be the opening scene,
but then they put it later because they didn't want
people coming in late to the movie. To the theater
is to miss it. Renee Cardona was obviously not consumed
with similar worries about this Gomar attack scene. Yeah, yeah,
Cronenberg was more like, oh, we want to. We want

(38:09):
to make sure they have time to get in and
have a seat, get their popcorn so they can see
that our signature special effect. Cardona is more like, we
don't want them to leave. We need to. They've just
set down. Make sure that they're getting all the action possible.
They need to know that this film is just going
to be NonStop beastman murder. Within thirteen seconds, yes, but

(38:29):
then okay, so we cut to a wrestling match, and
that's what we're going to be watching, or at least
what we're gonna try to watch, because it has credits
playing over it. I was immediately complaining about this because
we can't see the wrestling. The screen is just full
of credits in the you know, the dripping blood font
and they're covering up the action. But upon watching this

(38:52):
scene a second time, I realized there may be a
reason that they are not letting us get a good
look at anything. That they're putting the credits over the wrestling,
and it's because I think this scene is a footage
double dip. This is the wrestling match we see later
in the movie between between Gloria Venus and Golden Ruby

(39:13):
and like a Sella the Gazelle and I can't remember
the other wrestler's name, but it's the tag team match.
And it's clear that it's a double dip because this
scene contains characters who won't be introduced until later in
the film. Ah, good eye, good Eye. I didn't catch
this myself when I first started watching the picture. Yeah,
I didn't either. So we see Golden Ruby in it,

(39:34):
she'll arrive later in the movie. We see the detectives
in it, kind of like hooting at the action. And
I think it's funny because didn't we just talk about
movies that do this, that show you later scenes from
the movie, specifically action scenes during the opening credits like
thrilling bloody Sword and all Monsters attack Yep, yep. We
this does pop up from time to time, and in

(39:57):
cases like like that, they'll often show offs signature special
effects from later on in the picture. In the opening scene,
it's like if you were watching Scanners and the opening
credits to Scanners showed our hero's head exploding at the
end of Scanners, you know, like it's sometimes that bad,
like throwing bloody sword. Yeah, it gives away some of

(40:17):
the coolest stuff. I guess, just saying hey, stick around
because you're going to get to see this without words
in front of it later on. And then of course
there are some really there are some other ridiculous examples
of this, like one of the releases of pod People,
which we also talked about on the show, features a
footage from an entirely different film, Galaxy Invaders, one of

(40:41):
those Don Dollar movies, the Maryland Special. Yeah, so all told,
I would say this is maybe weirdly effective, since the
footage they're using feel it's kind of as a generic
vibe to it. Anyway, you don't know who these characters
are yet, so for the most part, they're just random
wrestlers or random dudes and suits. And it doesn't reveal

(41:02):
a monster or a major special effect or a major
plot point. That's right. So I didn't catch it until
I was looking closely the second time. But there is
one character who stands out in the footage you see
behind the credits, and I think this is intentional because
she is our heroine for the film. One of the
wrestlers in this match is the brave, beautiful, bone crushingly

(41:23):
mighty Gloria Venus, played by lorrain of Alasquez. And I
like how even in the opening credits, while she's so
this is a tag team match, we see her first
where she's like at the ropes, she's watching the match
in front of her. She's not even fighting yet. She's
about to come in and open a can here, but
she's still got that signature facial expression of the kind
of slightly inappropriate aloof amusement. Yeah, and she's not touching

(41:48):
the tag rope. But then again, now that I say that,
I'm not sure Lucha Libre has or had a tag rope.
So what is a tag rope? They're like these little
I didn't know they existed for the longest, But if
you watch the tag matches, especially like American tag matches,
there are these like little ropes on top of the

(42:09):
turnbuckle that the the the wrestler who's not tagged in
the other member the tag team has to be touching
so that they can't just run around on the ring
apron and sometimes the raffle, you know, get onto him
and help to touch the tag rops. But I don't know,
that might not be a thing in Lega, but they
violate this all the time, right, don't they just kind
of like run in when they're not supposed to. I mean,
that's why they have rules, so they could be broken

(42:31):
by the bags. Okay, but of course Gloria Gloria wins
this match, and as with most of the fight scenes
in this movie, there are shots where Lorraine Valesquez is
replaced by an incredibly obvious double doesn't look in anything
like her. Yeah. Yeah, they have some some real grapplers
on hand to do these stunts. Yeah. I think they

(42:51):
try to accomplish it, especially by giving her really big hair,
which Gloria Venus has. Yeah, and we should also describe
glory of Venus's wrestling attire because you might if if
you've not seen this film or seeing stills from it,
you might imagine, uh, you know, this this beautiful, stunning
Mexican actress in some sort of like colorful I don't know.

(43:14):
Maybe maybe it's um, maybe it's flower theme, maybe it's
space themed. No, it's like a gray full body jumpsuit
that she's wearing, I mean, particularly exciting. It's in black
and white, so I don't know what color it would
have been, but it does appear to be one single
solid color. Yeah, maybe it's like in real life, it
would be a real floral color. I guess that would fit.
But yeah, there's no designs on it or anything. It's

(43:36):
just a full body suit. And maybe that makes the
I mean, everybody's costume is like that, like this in
these sequences, very drab, drab outfits going on here. I
don't see any sequence or sparkles. Oh, but I wanted
to point out there is one shot of her that's
definitely larraina Velaska's. It's not the stunt double, and it's
one where she's doing some kind of strange submission hold

(43:57):
where she like stretches her opponents are ms out in
opposite directions. And I was trying to think, what is this?
Is this a real move? What is this move called? Um?
I couldn't find exactly what this this is, but Lucha
Libre especially has a ton of crazy submission holds. They
always have all sorts of things, like some things that
are rooted more or less than actual grappling and actual wrestling.

(44:21):
But then uh, it goes crazy from there. There's all
sorts of stuff where like people are you know, being
suspended upside down or they're made into a human pendulum.
Or something. So this one's not even that wacky, but
it and it has similar vibes with a number of
other sort of twisty like step over, fold the legs
sort of holds. I found one looking around on Lucha

(44:42):
Wiki that looked similar called Lucks Constita, but it's not
a one hundred percent match like it has a little
bit more step over. So maybe they had something picked
out something and they kind of adapted it so that
Gloria here, again played by a non wrestler, could stand
stand in and do it. Also, it's worth noting that
this is a submission hold where you can see both

(45:06):
both individuals faces. Both wrestlers faces are present, which heightens
the drama, which is not always a concern in lucca,
but is often a concern in wrestling in general. And
for a film, obviously, you want you want those facial expressions,
especially the facial expression of your your hero here. That's
a good point. I'm glad we have your your wrestling
expertise to consult when doings like this. I'm no expert.

(45:28):
Well that your relative expertise compared to me, I wouldn't
have even thought about the faces. That totally makes sense,
but Anyway, after the match, Gloria Gloria Venus wins and
she returns to her locker room accompanied by her sister Alice,
and Gloria and Alice both have such big hair. Alice's
hair here is like a gorgeous, glossy motorcycle helmet. It

(45:53):
really is. Yeah, this is I guess this is the
style of the day, right. I mean you look at
like college yearbooks in high school yearbooks soon as era,
and this is the hairstyle for women. I don't know
what you call this hairstyle. So it's like straight hair,
but it's like gigantic, it's like helmet sized. It's a
great look. The sixties were amazing. So we learn from

(46:15):
their conversation that Gloria Venus, she says, I would hate
to be thought of as a braggart, but no woman
has ever pinned me. Is she is the undisputed champ.
And we learned that Alice is not a fighter like Gloria.
She says if she were in Gloria's line of work,
she would be afraid of getting her arm broken. But
they have a good relationship. It looks like they're going

(46:36):
to head out to dinner together after the match, so
they're close. Then let's cut straight from that to some
sci fi horror. We go to a different scene. Here,
there is a person lying on an operating table, strapped
with a ventilator mask and all these black hoses running
to it, while two creepy doctors in surgical masks lean
over the patient with a nervous eagerness. And so these

(46:59):
two guys, one is an imposing, taller boss doctor with
a piercing glare and a sonorous voice, and then there
is a cringing, shorter hinch doctor to assist him and
to sort of flatter his ego. Yeah, it's clear the
taller doctor is the titular doctor of doom. I didn't
know you could get a doctorate in doom, but he didn't. Yeah,

(47:24):
he's specialized in doom studies. Yeah, at Moreau University. So
they say, you know, they're ready for the surgery now,
So they paint a circle on the person's shaved scalp
and then they bring in a second person. So they're
like lining up these two bodies on operating tables next
to each other. Here we get a lot of close

(47:45):
ups on rubber gloves and electrodes and stuff like that
to let us know that mad science is taking place.
But whatever it is they're trying to do here doesn't
work out. We get sad orchestral music, and the lead
doctor says, oh, another failure. He's clearly dejected. And here
we get some exposition. What's going on here is your

(48:05):
standard brain transplant. I think they were trying to take
out a random woman's brain and then transplant it into
a man's body, But that doesn't make sense based on
some other things they say later, so they talk about
like putting it in his body, But then they're also
saying that this operation will only work with women's brains.

(48:28):
I guess because women's brains are better suited for it
for some reason, but because females are strong as hell.
They basically say this later on. It's like the female
brain is just more resilient, it's tougher. Yeah, okay, so
there's only women's brains will work. But they also I'm
not clear why are they doing this. Did the man
that they're trying to transplant into not have a brain

(48:50):
of his own? Why did he need a new brain?
They explained that it is the fourth time they have
attempted this type of procedure, and it has failed every time. Yeah,
I don't get the impression. And they're trying to help anyone.
They're just they's got to be first. They're trying to
to break new ground and become underground surgical legends. I guess.
But what's going to happen to the patient number one's

(49:12):
brain if he gets a new brain transplanted into his head?
Where does is it a brain swap? Does his brain
go to her head? Maybe one brains is going in
the trash? I don't know. Okay, but the Hinch doctor
here has an amazing theory for why the operation has
not been a success. He starts hypothesizing that the women's
brains they've been trying to transplant have not been smart

(49:34):
enough to survive the operation, and they need to stop
kidnapping women with dumb brains and instead try to kidnap
smart women to get their smart brains. All right, all right,
very interesting, and the boss doctor seems convinced they should
try it, but their conversation is interrupted by by kind

(49:55):
of bestial growls. What's this? And the boss doctor says,
Gomar is acting up again? Gomar? What's Gomar? Well, here
we introduced the second sci fi theme adjacent to the first.
So this is a wrestling movie. It has brain transplants,
but as we've alluded to, it is also a Doctor
Moreau style beast man movie. So the monster we saw

(50:17):
attack the lady in the opening thirteen seconds is Gomar.
From what I gather, he is a gorilla human hybrid
created by the boss doctor here by transplanting a guerrilla's
brain into a man's body. Yep, that seems to be
the case. So this is like patient A, you know,
in this effort. This is the first success, and they

(50:39):
keep him around because he's useful. But by the way,
there's just a set note here. To get to Gomar's cage,
they have to go down in a basement full of
cardboard boxes and upside down chairs. While the upside down
chairs got a picture for you to look at. Here,
there's like at least ten upside down chairs. What's going on?

(51:00):
I mean, at times I thought, well, maybe Gomar has
been down there throwing chairs around, but he's not actually
in this room, right, This is just like a storeroom. Yeah,
it's like the room that gives access to his cage.
It kept making me think about the guilda Radner skit
from It Came from Hollywood, in which there's a radio

(51:20):
program talking about an escape gorilla and she starts frantically
piling everything in her living room up against the windows
and doors. But that doesn't actually provide an explanation for
what we see here. No, So I just don't understand it.
Maybe that's just how they store their extra chairs at
the Mad Science Lab. Yeah, or even maybe it's just

(51:40):
a case where like set decoration, like we're so used
to seeing the wall of cardboard boxes in films, like
that's a that's a standard you need to create a
storeroom environment. Just pack and get some empty boxes, pile
them up, start filming. And so they're doing a little
bit of this, but then they're getting there a little choosier.
They're like, let's get some other shapes in there. One
thing that I like about the Mad Science Chamber is

(52:02):
that they do a pretty good job of like, you know,
you have a lot of stuff going on, but also
the shadows of the stuff in the background, and in
black and white, it tends to play really well. I agree. Yes,
this movie actually does a lot of scenes with good shadows.
So anyway, they go down to meet with Gomar. They
give him some raw meat. They say, he's I think.

(52:22):
They explain he's slowly transforming from half man, half gorilla
into full gorilla. And the only reason the doctor retains
control over him for the moment is because he has
Gomar in a hypnotic state and he fears that he
will soon lose all control over Gomar. Yeah, this is
all tremendous because on one hand, first of all, you
have this this movie is telling us that if you

(52:44):
transplant a gorilla's brain into a human body, not only
is this a success, but it will gradually transform the
body into the body of a gorilla. Yes. And then
on top of that, they're just feeding this gorilla just
big bloody chunks of eating bone. Gorillas don't eat big
chunks of meat, So this is they should be throwing

(53:05):
in a whole bunch of like vegetables and stuff. Yeah,
give that gorilla some fruits and stuff. Yeah, I guess
it just wouldn't be as scary if Gomar's setting their
chewing on a big head of cabbage. But so in
this scene we get the doctor muttering. He says, I
must transplant a human brain into another human being. That's
the goal I've set for myself. You know, he's self

(53:26):
directed in his ambitions. He picks a project and sticks
with it. That's one of my favorite lines are in
the film. That's the goal I've set for myself. Oh
there's a lot of good lines like that. We will
get to many more. But here's the part where they
explained that the experiments have to be done on women
because women's brains react better than men's brains to brain transplantation.

(53:47):
But then I wonder, well, wait a minute, how would
he know that because all of his patients have died
during the procedure. Well, I guess maybe they're they're dying
slower when they were working with men. I'm not sure. Okay,
So here they agree on the theory of the Hinch
doctor that they need to find a smart brain to
use in the next experiment. So we get a scene transition,

(54:10):
you know, newspaper seller saying extra extra, another woman murdered
by the mad doctor. So this is the big headline
in town. Then we cut inside a building that is
it looks I mean, it looks just kind of like
a house. It's like a living room that has been
converted into a laboratory with a bunch of microscopes and
chemistry equipment and people in lab coats, and oh, what

(54:34):
do you know? One of the people here in lab
coats is Alice, the sister of Gloria Venus. But oh
wait a second, are you already putting two and two together.
She's a scientist, and I think the filmmakers may be
suggesting that she has a smart brain. I believe so. Also,
I want to note that this living room like laboratory set. This,

(54:57):
this is your saying science lab as opposed to the
mad science lab we saw earlier. So I think they
put a lot of thought into this. It's like we
got a transition to another science lab, but it needs
we need a different layout. It needs to be brighter,
it needs to be a little more inviting, multiple people.
Nobody's being victimized, that's right. Yeah, this one's more cozy
than the other one. But even in the science lab,

(55:19):
it seems that the latest murder by the mad doctor
has everyone kind of in a buzz, and Alice wants
to know more about it. She sends out one of
her colleagues to buy her a newspaper so she can
learn more, and then into this scene comes the professor,
one of my favorite characters. This is the guy who
runs this non specific laboratory. He is a timid, soft spoken,

(55:41):
bookish man in a vest and tie with thick eyeglasses.
And I loved this character, especially in the English stub, because,
as I mentioned earlier, they give him something pretty close
to James Mason voice, and his scenes for this reason
are almost uniformly hilarious. Yeah, and it's a great great
look too. He's he's always looking down, rarely making eye

(56:02):
contact with the people he's talking to, very meek, and
when he does look up, especially if he happens to
glance in the direction of the camera, he's got really
thick glasses, so you get like the distortion of the eyes. Um,
it's great. Like he's not portrayed as a straight up
comic character, but I guess they're sort of. You know,
he's a little bit bumbling and and and likable and

(56:24):
h and just overly sensitive and concerned. He's got a
little touch of who's that guy in Trailer Park Boys
with the thick glass what's his name is it? Bubbles? Yeah? Right, okay, yeah, Yeah,
definitely a similar visual effect going on. But he walks
up to Alice, and he's like, most terrible other stealing
everyone's brains out there? Did you go out last night? Alice?

(56:47):
And she says she went out to watch her sister's
wrestling match, And then she goes, have you ever been
to a wrestling match, professor? And oh, no, I simply
couldn't bear it. I who have violence? It disgusts me.
And she tries to real young yucker here. Yeah, she
tries to defend wrestling. She's like, it's a fantastic sport, sir,

(57:10):
I think you'd enjoy it once you saw it. And well,
he's not interested in wrestling, but what he is way
too interested in is Alice's personal life. He starts in
on like, oh how could you how could you be
walking out alone together without an escort? And he starts,
you know, telling her she shouldn't have stayed out late
last night, not without a man to help her get

(57:30):
home safely. You know all this, And have you not
read about the mad doctor? It's really reckless and um uh,
and she she just jokes about it. She's like, well,
I wear my little rabbit's foot, you know. And he
just won't shut up. He's like he starts explaining how
it makes him so angry to hear a girl joke
about a matter as dreadful as this and not take
safety seriously. And then he gets distracted by another lab

(57:54):
tech who's like, you know, a professor, the you know,
the blood you ordered last week has arrived, and so
he's going to go take care of that. But then
he has an aside to say, like, wow, there's some
same want you about this later? Oh no, yeah, real
Michael Scott levels of wandering around the office here, not

(58:15):
really doing anything but but just pestering the employees. But
Alice doesn't seem all that annoyed. She just ignores him completely.
And then we get another scene with a news report
to transition between things, and this is a scene where
the English dub once again was great. The newscaster says,

(58:35):
reports showed that these nocturnal acts are continuing and police
are still accusing that criminal who has caused so much
public discussion due to his actions. He's been named the
mad doctor. Oh but then this is the part where
I think we mentioned this earlier. So he says, the
woman he killed last night is in the morgue. She
was found early this morning. And as always happened, police

(58:57):
found Marx showing that the brain had been removed from
the unfortunate girl's body. Well, I mean, I guess we
saw the mark being made on one of the bodies
in the surgical proceedings earlier. Yeah, yeah, so I guess
we know what it would look like. That's how they
knew the brain had been removed. Okay, Yeah. Anyway, the
mad doctor's identity remains a mystery. The case is still unsolved.

(59:19):
But here we meet a couple more main characters, the
police detectives. And so this is Armando Um Armando, Wait
is the actor or the character or Armando Silvestri? Um?
I think, oh goodness, Silvestri is the the actor? Correct? Well,
so I think in the Spanish version he's called Armando Campos,

(59:41):
but in the English dub he's called Mike and his
associate is named Tommy. So it's Mike and Tommy the
English dub. Tommy says, you know, they're really looking into it.
He says, they investigated all the doctors in the medical
profession and that got nowhere. I'm like, wow, I love
that because it's like, presumably we're in Mexico City and
they have spoken to all the doctors in Mexico City.

(01:00:03):
That's amazing. We interrogated all the doctors. Um. And then
there's a there's a comic bit where they're like, okay,
well we still haven't caught him. And then Tommy is like, oh,
I've got to go. I've got to go call my
grandma make sure she doesn't go out tonight. But then
he gets on the phone, he's like, she's she's quite deaf,
and he's like, Grandma, stay inside tonight. I can't help

(01:00:24):
but feel this is somebody's stand up debt right here.
Maybe maybe Tommy's stand up day in real life. Um,
kind of a new heart vibe to it. Then from here, whoa,
we get to a scene with the bad guys, sort

(01:00:46):
of a convention of all the bad guys, the mad
doctor and his assistant. They appear in masked costumes. Now
remember when we saw them before, they were in surgical garbs,
so they had caps and surgical masks on. And now
they are masks almost like inquisitors or like lucha masks,
I guess, but much creepier, kind of like ghost versions.

(01:01:07):
They look hideously unsettling. Yeah, and in this we're getting
a better look at the full operation. Here, we've got
hooded doctors with secret identities. We've got Gomar, the mutant
ape man, and then we have like a whole table
like or like a whole barrage of of heavies here,

(01:01:28):
presumably like criminal underworld characters that are working for the doctors.
So this operation seems well funded because these guys are
not doing this for free. I guess I guess the
Mad Doctors paying them. I can't imagine what else is
in it for them. Oh yeah, I'm sure he's paying them.
In fact, he says later, he's like, you know, I
reward my employees, well, the ones who are loyal to me.

(01:01:52):
After he's complaining that he had to execute a traitor
who was going to reveal his identity. Yeah, or maybe
this is like an underground pharmaceutical company and the other
chair people on the board. So anyway, the mad doctor
says his experiments cannot be delayed. They must bring him
another woman with a brain immediately, And the Hinchman complained,

(01:02:16):
they're like, boss, the police are watching all the highways
and searching all cars. We can't get you a person
with a brain. And he said, he just says, silence,
You're going to do exactly as I order you. And
he says they don't have to worry about the police
because Gomar is going to go with them, and the
Mad Doctor has upgraded Gomar with special equipment so that
even bullets will be unable to stop him. Oh, and

(01:02:39):
I got excited when I heard this because I had
no idea where this was going. How are they going
to upgrade Gomar? Oh they gotta. Gomar's upgrade is fantastic. Okay,
we'll get to that in a second. But who are
they supposed to kidnap? The handoff a picture to the
hnchman and oh no, it's a picture of Alice. My
heart sank upon seeing this. But then there was something

(01:03:01):
of some very funny timing with a music sting here,
because you might expect a sting immediately upon revelation of
the photo, but instead they like show the photo and
then there's a two to three second delay and then
the dun, dun, dun. So I wonder if they were
thinking maybe we might need a minute to recognize who

(01:03:21):
was in the picture. I'm not sure. All right, so
things are not looking good for Alice at this point.
We know where this is headed, right, So Alice gets kidnapped.
We see her working late at the lab doing chemistry.
The professor shows up to pester her some more about
how she shouldn't go home alone, and she ignores him
and leaves. But oh, what's this? We see that she

(01:03:41):
forgot her lucky rabbit's foot. It's like the professor examines it.
It's hanging there on a coat hook. And then some
creeps in suits run up behind Alice on the sidewalk.
They grab her. They throw her into a taxi. I
guess the taxis at this place in time. I'll have
this pattern of triangles on them, which head on kind
of looks like the car has teeth. I like that. Yeah, yeah,

(01:04:02):
Like maybe this might be an accident of black and
white here, like maybe it's red and white. I think
that would probably make more sense. But maybe it's black
and white in real life. I don't know. But then
we come upon an action scene, which is excellent. So
what's going on with Gomar? What's the Gomar upgrade? Do
you want to describe it? Rob? Oh? Suret. Gomar has
been updated with body armor. And when I say body armor,

(01:04:26):
I don't mean like some sort of like military modern tech.
I'm talking like he has like plate like it's kind
of like scale mail on his body, and then this
big creepy metal mask over his head. The main thing
that I instantly compared it to is the robot in
the Phantom Creep starring Belle Lagosi that has a tremendous

(01:04:47):
robot costume that doesn't quite look like a robot. It
looks like it's hideous and demonic. And this has similar
vibes like the robot from from Phantom Creeps and armored.
Gomar could be a tag team. So the least try
to stop the Henchman from kidnapping Alice. They like stop
the car, but Gomar gets out in his suit of
armor and his mask which is so his like golden mask,

(01:05:12):
super creepy looking. He gets out, he fights all the police.
He beats him up, I think he kills several of them.
He body slams them and so forth, and then gets
back in the taxi and they head off to the
Mad Doctor's lab, as happens multiple times in the movie.
When they get back, Gomar's just standing there in his
armor and the Mad Doctor says, you did a good job.
Gomar yes, say what you will about the mad doctor

(01:05:35):
here and the way he conducts his business, but he
has a lot of positive reinforcement here for Gomark, He's
constantly reminding him, you are doing a good job, and
I appreciate it. I just want you to know, Gomar,
sometimes I don't take enough time to tell you this,
but I appreciate what you're doing and I love you.
It's true. Onto the procedure, they're going to try to

(01:05:56):
do another brain transplant. Unfortunately, despite her very smart brain,
Alice does not survive the brain transplant surgery, and so
they try again. They fail and Alice dies in the
process tragically. And then the sidekick doctor comes up with
a new idea. He says, actually, maybe what we needed
was not a smart brain, but a brain with some

(01:06:19):
kind of toughness, athleticism, endurance, a brain from the kind
of woman who could both dole out in withstand the
most punishing of suplexes and pile drivers. But where could
we expect to find a brain of this kind. We
know where this is going as well. Yeah, that's right.
So the mad doctor hears this, he gets a look

(01:06:39):
of sadistic inspiration. He clearly has an idea for how
to proceed now here were there's further investigation. We go
back to the cops that you know, they're following up
on the death of Alice, and the police figure out
that she has a sister. Everything's coming together here. So
the two detectives, Mike and Tommy, they go to form

(01:07:00):
Glory Venus at the wrestling gym, and this will introduce
the wrestling gym as a setting where many other scenes occur.
There's always like a lot of activity going on in
the gym. Yeah, there's a lot of independent workouts going on.
Some some women are doing like set up, some are
doing other types of like calisthenics, and then there's always
at least a couple of women that are doing some

(01:07:22):
some grapple sessions as well, some takedowns and some lock ups.
So of course Glory of Venus is horrified to find
out that her sister has been killed. She has to
go into identify the body, and the police are trying
to find out anything they can. They end up interrogating
the professor from the chemistry lab about what happened, and
he oh god, there was a line that made me laugh.

(01:07:44):
So he goes up to Glory of Venus, and the
Professor is like, I can't tell you how sorry I
feel Gloria about how this is death. I mean like
maybe she thought he'd been talking about, you know, how
far our way she had to part from the building
or something. Yeah, but he's yeah, he's like he's really

(01:08:05):
taking this hard. Yeah. The Professor's really shook up after this,
so he tries to be helpful. He's like, please, do
not hesitate to call upon me if you need anything
at all, Gloria, do not call the professor just I
don't think she's gonna Yeah, but she, Gloria Venus once
again kind of ignores him, and she vows to find

(01:08:26):
the killer and get revenge. So here we i'd say,
our Act one is complete. This is our setup. Yeah, yeah,
we know what everyone wants here. Mad doctor wants wants
a brain and it's probably gonna be vitness. It's gonna
be Gloria of Venus's brain that he goes after. And
Gloria of Venus wants vengeance. Right, So the mad Doctor
sets his hinchmen about to find women with incredible physical

(01:08:49):
strength and stamina. And here we cut back to the
Luchadora gym where all the grapples are going on, and
we let's see several things happen we in act too.
We met a new character. They introduce a character named
Golden Ruby. She is I think she's coming from the
States maybe, but she's like entering this circuit for some reason. Yeah,

(01:09:11):
you know, I guess it's kind of like a territory
sort of thing. So she's come down here to you,
away from the American wrestling territories to work in Mexico
for a little bit. And the whole vibe that we've
seen thus far of the Luchadora the scene here in
this film is that it's just everyone's really pleasant. They're
very supportive of each other. They're protective of each other.

(01:09:33):
There's not really a technico rudeo, baby faced heel scenario
going on here. Everybody's on the same team and they
just want to get in there and compete. It has
a real sports feel. I guess I agree like that. Yeah,
the vibe between all of the Lucadoras is wonderful. They're
all kind of supportive of each other and they work together.

(01:09:54):
There's one scene where this horrible like male wrestler comes
into their gym and he's like those weights and like
punches one of them. I guess yeah, he's like, I
want that equipment and then just attacks them and then
they all gang up and they just beat him down.
It is a righteous rudo beat down and I love it. Yeah,
it's a great scene because our two main luchadora characters

(01:10:17):
are standing in the background and we see all the
the actual luchadoras are that are in the film. They're
the ones that jump in and start grabbing and flipping
this guy. I think somebody puts him in a full
nelson and somebody drop kicks him, and then there's just
a huge pile up on and like one does a
jumping pin and then everyone else piles on top of that,

(01:10:39):
and Gloria, Venus and Ruby they just have a nice
laugh at this so like but then they also get
to bond, like they become fast friends, because there's a
scene right after this, Ruby clearly admires Glory of Venus.
She's like, you know, you're the greatest to You're just
I wish I could be a wrestler like you, And
Gloria of Venus is like, oh no, you're great too,
and then Golden Ruby. He asks her, what you why

(01:11:01):
do you have such a sad look in your eye
despite being you know, despite being a wrestling machine. And
then Gloria Venus says, it's just something I can't forget
my sister. She was murdered three nights ago. It's like,
would you expect her to forget it by now? But anyway,
they decide to be friends, and they decide Golden Ruby
is going to move into Gloria's apartment. Maket sense, maket sense. Now,

(01:11:24):
after this, we get to watch a full on Luchadora match,
and if this is the tag team match that played
under the opening credits, now we get to finally look
at it. So it's Gloria Venus and Golden Ruby as
a team versus the Gazelle and Bertha Galindo. Yeah, and
this was this was interesting to watch. Now for my taste,
I would say that the actual Luca wrestling we see

(01:11:46):
in Santo and the Treasure of Dracula is better and
more entertaining. This wrestling, I don't know. It's it's hard
for me to make out exactly how to feel about.
I think like, on one hand, what they show us
here again has no rudo technico distinction. There's no good
guys or bad guys. So it has a you know,
very has that real sports feel to it that certainly

(01:12:07):
fits the vibe of the film, because again, this is
not a film about superhero lucadoras or luchadors saving the day.
This is about like normal people, Like they're just professionals
working in a real world scenario and they just happen
to fall into this this sci fi speculative plot line.
And in terms of like trying to compare the wrestling

(01:12:29):
that we're seeing here to existing footage, that's where you
really run into some problems that I haven't really looked
into this all that much before. But and I could
be very wrong on this, because again I'm not an expert.
But when I go looking around for non movie Luca
footage from before, said the nineteen eighties or even Indian
any indications that some of the biggest annual LUCA shows

(01:12:53):
of the year, like going back to like sixty two
and I'm back into the fifties as well, the Indiana
that those were recorded, I don't get get anything. And
then I looked a little deeper and I found there's
an individual that on social media Luca blog and Luca
Blog is also the blog It's a great English language

(01:13:14):
Lucas source. This individual points out that while there was
Luca on TV in the nineteen fifties, I don't it
doesn't seem like that footage has ever turned up, So
I don't know if it's lost, if it needs to
be restored or what. I know that with some of
those older TV stations, like tapes were reused and stuff
was just destroyed and without any really forethought in terms of,

(01:13:37):
you know, setting it aside for the future. And I
don't know, maybe some of these big shows weren't even recorded.
Maybe they're just you know, big gate live events. So
when I'm trying to get to is like it's hard
to compare this to what actual pure Lucha libre was
like and this time period, because I don't think that
we have much footage outside of Luca films, like of

(01:13:58):
male or female formers. Uh and uh. Yeah. So some
of the earliest Luca footage we have maybe from these
films from going back into the nineteen fifties. I think
the the oldest Luca film in existence was the nineteen
fifty two's Hurricane Ramirez that's the name of of the
the wrestler that is the star of it. So this

(01:14:21):
was pre Santo, but I think Santo Pictures picked up
not long after this, So I don't know, I find
that kind of interested into to think of, like these
are these are films about about lucadoras and lucadoras going
up against monsters and scientists and uh and also like
you know, criminal masterbinds and that sort of thing very
much in the in the vein of the old serial adventures.

(01:14:43):
But it also seems like that this, uh, that these
films are also some of the only examples we have
of what of what Luca Libre looked like at the time. Yeah,
but at any rate, we see some grapples, there's some takedowns,
there's you know, it's some fun action going on in
the ring, and it gets it across for the audience
what's going on here, And we get to see characters
in the audience in the scene. So both the police

(01:15:04):
detectives Mike and Tommy and the professor come to watch.
Even though despite what the professor said, he's there at
the match, and on the close ups of the professor
he looks hilarious. Yeah, yeah, These are definitely some of
those scenes where you get that the effect of the big,
thick glasses making his eyes look enormous, and he does,
he does look kind of queasy observing the brutal violence. Yeah,

(01:15:28):
everyone around him is yelling and hooting and holler and
getting into it, and he is not so much. He's
just quietly observing it, and you know, maybe it's making
him feel bad. Here's another thing that you might understand.
I didn't why are the detectives When they show up.
Tommy encourages Mike to start booing, and they just boo
as if that's like understood as something you're just supposed

(01:15:51):
to do during the match. But like, why are they
booing and who are they booing at? Were you just
supposed to boo in these matches? I mean, I'm guessing
that you the booing would be for the bad guys,
for the rudo's, and you're cheering for the technicos. I mean,
that's to the clear division, the moral division that would
take place and the passion play that you're observing in
the ring. But again, we don't really have anything to

(01:16:13):
indicate that either teen is good or bad. They're just
all working ladies. Doing their jobs up there. Yeah, well,
the professor visits the locker room after so Gloria and
Ruby I think they win. They make a great tag team.
And then the professor comes to visit them in the
locker room. I guess to tell them something I don't
remember what. The first thing they're like, oh, hey, did

(01:16:34):
you like the fight? Professor, He's like, nah, I detest
such spectacles, absolutely horrible. And then the detectives come in
and there's a funny moment when Ruby Golden Ruby shakes
hands with Tommy, the short detective. She like crushes his
hand and he buckles at the knees and he is
immediately in love. Yeah. Yeah, And then we see the

(01:16:58):
two wrestlers and the two detectives. They go out for
supper and dancing after this. So love is in the air,
and you really do think you're gonna go and see
this date like it sounds like it could be fun.
We've learn more about these characters, We'll get more of
this Tommy and Ruby romance that is butting. No, we
don't see that at all. We cut straight to Gloria
and Ruby asleep in bed, So I guess just skip

(01:17:21):
over that. The mad Doctor's goons show up. This is
I think we mentioned the scene earlier. They show up
to like creep in through the window and kidnap them,
I think. But the lucadoras they hear them coming, and
then they pretend to be asleep, but then jump out
and issue a brutal walloping on the bad guys. Oh yeah,
they just beat the tar out of them. They just

(01:17:43):
like take them down. It's like two hands that punch
in at a time, right in the face. They just
drive them out there out the windows. They're like kicking
them in the butt as they're going out in the windows.
So it's very satisfying. But then we see the henchman
go back to the Mad Doctor and they're like, well,
you tell us those two girls were wrestlers. But after this,

(01:18:05):
the police come up with a plan. The detectives are like,
I know those men are going to come and try
to kidnap you again because they want your brains obviously,
So let's use the you two luchadoras as bait to
draw out the mad Doctor, you know. So we'll let
you get kidnapped and then we'll follow close behind you
and that way we'll catch him, all right, Pretty pretty standard.

(01:18:27):
But it seems all right. I mean, this is the
first point in the picture though, where I was like, really,
our luchadoras are going to be bait, like they're the
tough ones. But all right, we'll go with it. Well,
I don't know, it makes sense because they're the tough ones.
I thought. I thought that was the whole point. That's true. Yeah,
well that's true as well. I guess. The thing is like,
this is the sort of scheme that would be employed

(01:18:48):
in in various other sort of serial action pictures of
the day, you can imagine, So it feels like they're
reusing a formula here. But yeah, like you say, it
makes sense. They're tough, they can stand up for themselves
when things inevitably go wrong, right, So they go out
walking after midnight and then here comes here comes Gomar

(01:19:10):
in his armor, and he like grabs them. They get
in the car, you know, the Nija brains ladies. So
they speed away to the Mad Doctor's secret hideout, pursued
by the detectives. Once again, when everybody's gathered here in
the mad Doctor's lab, the mad Doctor in his in
his super creepy inquisitor hood, he's like, you did an

(01:19:31):
excellent job, Gomar, excellent work, and Mike and Tommy track
them down. They show up, They follow the car and
they show up. They fight the Mad Doctor's Hinchman, but
they are outnumbered. Mike and Tommy not doing so hot.
I mean, they put up a fight, but there's too
many Hinchmen. Things look bad until Gloria and Ruby wake up.

(01:19:52):
They were like laying on these operating tables and then
they come to. They run in, beat up the Hinchman
and rescue the actives. Yeah. So you know, I end
up taking back some of what I said here because
they do a whit more butt here and we get
a nice Scooby Doo moment here. That's right. So they
catch not the Mad Doctor, but the hinch Doctor, the

(01:20:14):
second Doctor, and they unmask him to reveal Wait a minute,
we know this man. It's Boris, one of the guys
who worked at the chemistry lab with Alice. All right,
so now we're beginning to see how things come together here. Yeah.
So then there is a police interrogation scene where they
I don't think this is how they do interrogations in

(01:20:34):
real life, but like every character in the movie is
in this room, they're all in the same room. All
of the captured Mad Doctor Hinchman are in the room,
both detectives, the detective's boss, the professor, Gloria, and Ruby.
Everybody's here. Well, they just didn't have one weight glass
technology yet, I guess. Yeah. So they initially think that

(01:20:55):
this guy is the mad Doctor, but the professor suggests otherwise.
They say, you know what, professors like, he's not the
real mad Doctor. He must be covering up for him.
Who's the real mad Doctor. I don't know why he
suspects this, but the cops just kind of go with it,
and they interrogate him on that, and Boris is about
to reveal the real Mad Doctor's identity when he suddenly

(01:21:19):
is like oh, he gasps and collapses. So we get
some autopsy results, and we learned that Boris was killed
by some kind of tiny weapon, almost like a like
a James Bond movie kind of weapon, a cylinder that

(01:21:41):
fires a poisoned needle into the heart when someone bites
down on it. So the true mad Doctor, we find out,
was in the room with them and had a cylinder
in his mouth and must have bit down on the
cylinder to shoot the poison needle into Boris's heart and
then spit the cylinder out somewhere. All right, I like it.
It's complicated, but but yeah, we have some spy gadgetry

(01:22:04):
going on here. And we also learned that the real
Mad Doctor escaped through a secret passageway with Gomar when
the when the police came in, Yeah, footage not found, right,
so uh, they say, oh, we come back. We see
the Mad Doctor in his disguise and he's talking to
his main hingemen, I guess, the one that the police
didn't catch, and he says, you know, Boris tried to

(01:22:26):
turn me in, but he paid dearly for his treachery.
Once again, I have made the police look like fools. Rob.
I just know they're standing really close in the scene. Why,
I don't know. They're in a big room and they're
standing almost like right at each other. Well yeah, and
it's a wide shot too, I guess is the thing
because you get used to seeing people having conversations way

(01:22:47):
too close to each other in films, but oftentimes it's
sort of that tighter shot here. You know, we could
have had folks stand a little further back from each
other here and it would have been fine. Yeah, there's
so much negative space, I wonder. Oh, but anyway, He's like, okay,
so I punish people who betray me, and the Hinchman's like,
I'm no stool pigeon chief, I'm loyal. So what's next

(01:23:07):
for the Mad Doctor, Well, reorganize the gang. And then
he thinks, I'm gonna eliminate those pesky detectives. Mike and
his stupid sidekick will die, and then these were some
good things from the English stub. He says, I'm going
to make a good trap, and then he says, I'm
sure his death is not going to be pretty. But
the way he says good trap makes me think, wait,

(01:23:27):
did he make a trap before? Was that was like
not a good trap? You know, he's maybe he's just
kind of building himself up. I'm gonna make a good trap.
I can do it. This is the goal I set
for myself. So after this, Mike and Tommy visit the
Luchadora Gym and they give special watches to Gloria and Ruby,
which are we find out our transponder watches, so that

(01:23:47):
they can always be found. And we learned that Mike
and Tommy are wearing them too, So you can activate
them and they'll produce like a homing signal. So everybody's
kind of engaged to each other now via SI technology. Yeah,
when they give them out, Gloria is like, hey, these
are cute. Now there's more a tall short romance humor

(01:24:08):
with Ruby and Tommy. She's like, Oh, I couldn't stand
to be lost from you, my five foot lightning bolt.
But what is the Mad Doctor's trap going to be? Well,
the Professor calls the police, he calls up Mike and
says he's got to arrange a meeting with the detectives.
But then the camera pulls back to reveal that he's
calling a gun point. There are some bad guys pointing

(01:24:30):
guns at him, and it turns out the Mad Doctor's
goons are using this as a setup to catch Mike
and Tommy. So the Mad Doctor catches them. He's like,
you have interfered with my work. Take them to the
death chamber. So what's the death chamber? Well, first they
have to walk through the basement that's got all the
upside down chairs in it, but then they throw them
in a chamber, which, oh, Rob, how would you describe

(01:24:54):
this contraption? I loved it all right, So basically we
have the walls closing any here. This is one of
the this is something we've seen in so many films, right, Uh,
this is it's the it's the trash compactor seen from
Star Wars, you know, in Star Wars, and of course
George Lucas was drawing on on older cinematic traditions here. Uh,

(01:25:16):
we have two walls moving into to squash squash our
heroes between them. Sometimes you get spikes thrown into the
mix as well. And on the spike front, we do
have a great example of that from Krawl. It was
maybe not just two walls, but there was some spike
action going on in that movie as well. Yes, yes,
the bandits who end up allying with Krol's not the

(01:25:40):
hero Crowls, the bad guy whatever his name is, the
hero Crowls the planet, Crowls the planet, that's right. Yeah. No,
the bandits who Alan Armstrong's buddies. Wait it is Alan Armstrong,
isn't it. I remember? Yeah, Yeah, he's in there, he's
in the Yeah, those guys they end up in the
spike room that's got spikes coming out of the walls.
Now I had to look into this little bit because

(01:26:00):
I'm like I wonder how far back this goes, And
I'm not entirely sure what's the first film to have
walls moving in on our heroes, but it does show
up in nineteen thirty five The Raven. These are just
blank walls that are going to squish our hero and
the damsel in distress. But you also have red hot
walls closing in in Edgar Allan Poe's story The Pit

(01:26:23):
and the Pendulum from eighteen forty two. So at the
very least, I think we can safely say this is
an idea that predates cinema, but this film has its
own unique take on it because we have a wall
with spikes on one side and that's moving. On the
other side, we have a stationary cage wall. But on
the other side of that cage wall is Gomar, and

(01:26:43):
Gomar is all riled up. He's reaching through the cage
with his monster arms, trying to grab our heroes. So
you know, what are they gonna do. Are they gonna
they're gonna give in to Gomar and let him, you know,
tear them to pieces, or are they gonna let the
spikes skewer them? And if they they don't make up
their mind they're going to get the worst of both worlds, right,
So they are trapped between a spike wall and a

(01:27:06):
gomar place. Yeah, it's just like the saying goes. But
then we remember that while the detectives originally presented these
watches to Gloria and Ruby as like something that could
save them, tables are turned because they need help. So
the detectives radio Gloria and Ruby with their watches. They
activate a sound beacon so that the Lucadoras can track

(01:27:28):
them down. And track them down they do. When the
Lucadoras arrive at the lab, the lab is covered in cobwebs, Like,
wait a minute, they were just they were just there.
It seems like a day before and it didn't have
any cobwebs. Yeah. Yeah, these are some fast acting spiders,
I guess. Yeah. But Gloria and Ruby to the rescue.

(01:27:48):
They beat up the mad Doctor's thugs and they free
the helpless cop boyfriends and they get into a big
fight there. They're they're they're sort of fighting their way
out of the hideout and in the end, Gloria Venus
throws acid into the mad Doctor's face. He still masked,
but he gets the acid on him, and the Mad
Doctor screams and then there's like a there's suddenly a

(01:28:11):
raging fire and they say, oh no, the mad Doctor,
he's done for. He's trapped in this burning building. We
have to escape, no time to find out the Mad
Doctor's real identity before we leave. But this is a
big moment for Gloria. This is their first opportunity to
actually physically strike out against the man who murdered her sister. Right,
she's she's got her revenge, or so she thinks. Um,

(01:28:34):
and here your spoiler warning. The Mad Doctor's identity reveal
is coming in just a moment, so if you don't
want to know it, you can you can pause here. Um,
But so we have Gomar comes to the rescue. Surprisingly
he shows up. He drags the Mad Doctor out of
the building, so the Mad Doctor is not killed in
the fire. And then we cut to another scene where

(01:28:56):
the Professor and the Professor he's doing a phone call.
He calls in to check on Gloria. He's like, hey,
how are you feeling, And then he says strangely, he says, well,
I called because I'd like to watch you wrestle again,
and she's offers to send him tickets. He doesn't need tickets.
I don't know why he called them. He's just like,
I just want to see you wrestle. So he we

(01:29:16):
learned he's going to do that. And then suddenly there's
a reveal. He turns his head and one half of
the Professor's face is scarred like two face in Batman,
and he says, I want vengeance. Yeah, this whole scene
here is in side profile, and until he turns and
takes his glasses off and we see that he is

(01:29:38):
in fact scarred and put by the acid. That the
Professor all along has been the mad doctor. And like
we said earlier, you can kind of see this twist
coming miles away. There's no other character really could have
been that I can think. Yeah, yeah, there wasn't a
really they did. They did some interesting things to try

(01:29:58):
and throw you off the scent, but they never really
developed or portrayed a proper additional suspect, Like who were
we supposed to think? It was Tommy? Now? I mean,
the only other character I think you could have because
you see him with a mask on, the only character
who like fits the physical profile might have been Armando. Maybe, um,

(01:30:20):
you know my, But I don't know that makes sense.
There's no real evidence for that, you know to be
the case. So but still like seeing it coming not
and knowing how it's going to roll out, it's still
pretty great because Canado is terrific. He's been terrific the
whole film as the Professor, but now he gets to
go into just pure maniacal mode, unmasked, half scarred, he's

(01:30:44):
just a full blown supervillain at this point, and he's delightful. Yeah,
I love it. And now he's only using his non
James Mason voice, he's only using the mad doctor voice,
the deep sonorous version. So he announces his plan. He's
gonna take Gomar's physical strength. He's going to transplant it
into the body of a Luchadora so he can create

(01:31:05):
a murderous, superhuman Luchadora to destroy Gloria Venus. So we're
putting the medical goals on the back burner for the
time being, and we're switching to vengeance mode here. Yeah,
and he's like doing monologues into the camera. He says,
she'll blow her body to pieces, Yes, a little killing
in the ring for all the audience to see. And

(01:31:27):
then he did you know cackling laughter. But it makes
me think he's still maybe like he might have been
kind of sincere about his hatred of wrestling from that line,
like maybe he's part of his goal is to get
revenge on Gloria Venus, but the other part is to
make the audience feel bad for watching wrestling? Did you can?
Kind of because to carry out this up, this plan

(01:31:49):
of vengeance, and again it's kind of an unwarranted vengeance,
because like, are you really allowed to have vengeance against
the person who scarred you while you were trying to
take their brain? I don't know, But at any rate,
he's going to have to become a wrestling manager, Luca
libre manager and wear a Lucha libre mask in order
to carry this out. I don't know. I think vengeance

(01:32:10):
often works that way. I mean, okay, so Captain, they
have wants vengeance against Moby Dick, but he was trying
to kill Mobe. He was the aggressor. He was he
was the initial attacker. I think that's just often how
it is people. It's it was your fault the whole time,
but still you came out badly and now you want revenge.
There's a good point it's a good point. And like

(01:32:31):
what they have this is the mad quest for revenge.
Now it's all encompassing. You know, Gloria Venus wanted vengeance,
she swore vengeance, but she still was keeping up her
daye yeah, in her social life. But so they do
the procedure and they create the super Luca Dora named Vendetta,
and so he tests her out. He says, like, a

(01:32:53):
destroy that table there, and she flips over the table
and she's she's wearing Oh, this is now a mask Luchadora.
I don't think any of the Lucadoras we've met so
far have been masked. No, they hadn't. And it's it's
a pretty It's also the first costume we see that
has any pizzazz to it because there then the mask
has like a lightning bolt on it. Um lower face

(01:33:16):
is revealed in the mask, and then we get kind
of a sparkly looking cape which is very jaunty, even
if the basic jumpsuit underneath is the same gray jumpsuit
that everyone else has. All Right, so Vendetta is now
on the scene and we learned there's like a TV
announcer saying, okay, she's called Vendetta. She's from Paris. Was

(01:33:36):
it was there a big wrestling scene in Paris? Maybe
there was? I think there there was, there was wrestling.
There was wrestling in France at some point. I'm not
sure what was going on there in sixty two, but
uh okamber Andre the Giant came from France, that's true. Yeah,
I've just never heard of French wrestling before, but I
guess it must have been a thing. But we learned
that she challenges Gloria Venus for the championship, and there's

(01:33:58):
going to be The numbers here are fuzzy. They say
first that they're fighting for a purse of two thousand
and four hundred currency unspecified. They just say the number,
and then later they say that the fight is for
twenty five thousand dollars. Do you do you understand what's
going on there? I'm not sure. I mean, you don't.
I probably shouldn't pick this apart too much because also,
like this is the main event. Vendetta is complete unknown.

(01:34:22):
They're just gonna reveal her, and now she has a
main event slot over everybody else. She instantly gets to
challenge for the championship. I guess I assume does they
risually work like that, like you you're not a rookie
and you get to go fight stone cold or whatever. Well,
I mean, I guess it does kind of work like
that sometimes. But even for the like the real sports

(01:34:43):
feel we're going for here, there has to be some
sort of build up, right, some sort of a win
loss record established, But now we're going straight for it.
So there's a funny scene where they like signed the
contract and oh the mad Doctor is. They're also wearing
a lucha mask for the contracts signing scene, and he
looks creepy and his his mask as teeth. Yeah, yeah,

(01:35:04):
has kind of a skull vibe going on. But we
go to the match and when Vendetta enters the ring,
she's just like kicking spectators in the face. Yeah. So
finally in this match we get that that proper rudo
technico vibe going on. One wrestler is clearly the villain
and the other is clearly the hero. One is honorable

(01:35:26):
and the other one is just all fighting and nastiness.
Wants to you know, not only wants to hurt her opponent,
but we'll hurt anyone else that gets in her way.
That's right, because we see Vendetta like suplexing the referee, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
just I think throws the referee. Yeah, she eventually throws
the referee out of the ring, and so oh he's
Gloria done for. Well, ultimately it's a movie where we're

(01:35:50):
friendship comes to the rescue because Golden Ruby comes in
to help her. She I don't know if she used
the tag rope correctly, but Golden Ruby comes into the
ring and together they beat up Vendetta. Oh you know
where this is completely no rules at this point. This
is a straight up run. I mean that basically any

(01:36:10):
order in the match has fallen apart. I mean, and
that was the that was the Professor's plan all along. Right,
It's like he doesn't want her beat in the ring,
he wants her killed in the ring. Right, But ultimately,
this is not the final showdown. I kind of wish
they they had somehow found a way to do the
final like ultimate showdown in the ring. Instead, the action
moves elsewhere because the mad Doctor has to run away,

(01:36:35):
I think because the police arrives. So he's like oh no,
and he runs away and then he summons Vendetta to
help him, and they both end up climbing a water
tower and the police put like, you know, high beams
on them. They put like lights up on them, and
Mike climbs up the water tower to I guess tell
them to come down or something. But they start attacking

(01:36:56):
Mike and they're like stomping on his fingers as he's
hanging on for dear life. So what do they have
to do. Well, they've got to They've got to shoot them.
So Tommy shoots the mad Doctor and Vendetta with a
rifle and that's the end. I feel like that's kind
of an unsatisfying ending to this. I wish they'd had
a different kind of final confrontation. Yeah, I absolutely agree.

(01:37:17):
I feel like the ending here is the ultimate Week
Week link because it ends up taking place outside the
ring after we've built up to that in ring encounter,
and then doesn't involve the main characters. Yeah, it doesn't
involve our luchadoras at all. It's just as police shooting
the villains off the water tower. Yeah, so like our

(01:37:38):
villains end up looking a bit dumber for having gone
up there, and then it's just kind of they're just
kind of dispatched with ease. And then it's the end
of the picture, So I wish they had done something
something a little different here at the end. I agree.
I think this movie overall is deserving of a much
better ending confrontation. I feel like they could have found
a way to make it all happen in the ring,
But I don't know, Yeah, or if they had to

(01:38:00):
go to one last location, I don't know, maybe a
secondary layer. Maybe it's a they try to there's a
getaway car, a submarine. I don't know. There's so many
places you could go. Why the water tower? Yeah, you're
totally right. And then it wraps up so quick after that,
the mad doctor like falls to his death off the
water tower, and I think the detective comes in and

(01:38:21):
he says to Gloria Venus, it's all over. Now, your
sister has been avenged the end. That's it. I do
like that about a lot of these old pictures. So
when it's time to close up to the shop, they
just turned the sign around and you're out the door. Well,
I'm gonna say I really had a great time with
this movie. A Doctor of Doom tremendously fun. Yeah, yeah,

(01:38:44):
ending the side is a lot of fun. Fun performers
well shot, like we've been saying, you know, nice, nice,
attractive black and white, because a lot of the film
is about like creeping around in alleys and creeping around
in mad science layers. So the the black and white
fits it really well and they do a good job
with it. I think we have gone on really long

(01:39:06):
about this one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we may have to
cut some of my diatribes there about about Lucia libre
history there, but at any right, it was fun to
return to the world of Lucca in this picture. So
if you enjoyed this one and you didn't listen to
our episode about Santo and the Treasure of Dracula, go
back and listen to that one because you'll probably enjoy

(01:39:26):
it as well. Just a reminder that we're primarily a
science podcast here. It's saying science for the most part,
not mad science. And we have our core episodes of
Stuff to Blow Your Mind publishing and the Stuff to
Blow Your Mind podcast feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but
on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just
talk about a weird film. If you want to see
a complete list of all the movies we've discussed on

(01:39:48):
weird House Cinema. Well, you can go to a couple
of places. I blog about these films at smutamusic dot com.
But also if you use letterbox, that's l tt rboxd
dot com. We have a profile there. The profile is
we your House. You can look us up. We have
a list there and you can see like all the
all the movies we've covered, the poster arts cascading across
the screen and you can sort through them. You can

(01:40:10):
look at them by by decade, by genre, that sort
of thing. It's pretty fun to toy around the huge
thanks to our audio producer JJ Paseway. If you would
like to get in touch with us with feedback on
this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
the future, or just to say hello, you can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

(01:40:35):
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