Director – Rafael R. Marchent, Screenplay – Jose Luis Navarro Basso & Rafael Romero Marchent, Producer – Manuel Torres, Photography – Godofredo Pacheco, Music – Gregoria Garcia Segura, Special Effects – Amoqab S.L.. Production Company – Cinematografica Pelimex.
Cast
Santo (Himself), Jorge Rigaud (Dr Mann), Mirta Miller (Susan), Antonio Pica (Peter), Carlos Romero Marchent (Paul), Helga Line (Sara), Maribel Hidalgo (Ester), Eulalia del Pino (Sabina)
Plot
A famous painting by Velasquez is delivered to Mexico from Madrid for an exhibition – only for it to be opened and it discovered that it has been damaged. The government approach Santo and ask him to investigate at the same time as he goes to Madrid for a wrestling match. Joined by the Interpol agent Paul, Santo tracks down the trail of the missing art restorer Professor Schwartzman who died in mysterious circumstances. The trail leads Santo to Dr Mann who is behind a scheme where he steals the originals of famous artworks and substitutes copies that he has made. Santo sends the Interpol agent Susan in to pose as one of Mann’s models and uncover the truth – only to find that Mann is killing his models to make the special ingredient in his paintings.
Mexico has a tradition of lucha libre wrestling where the wrestlers appear in the ring with their faces hidden behind masks. The most famous of these was El Santo (The Saint in English), more commonly just Santo – or to give him his birth name Rodolfo Guzman Huerta (1917-82). After great success in the ring beginning in the 1930s, Santo developed a cinematic career in the late 1950s and quickly became a screen superhero. He appeared in 52 films between 1958 and 1982 (see below for a listing of these), while both his son and grandson went on to make their own films. Throughout his career, Santo’s real face was never seen by the public.
With other Santo films having placed him up against alien invaders, vampire women, Dracula, Frankenstein and assorted Famous Monsters, it seems a comedown when Santo vs Dr Death only pits Santo against an art thief and forger in a largely mundane plot. In fact, with a nemesis that the title calls ‘Dr Death’, you expect something on the order of a major Super-Villain, at the least a mad scientist, but an art theft plot seems overwhelmingly mundane.
Certainly, Dr Death does conduct some unspecified experiments, which looks as though he is doing something that kills the women he keeps prisoner so as to use their body parts or fluids to make the supplies he uses in his art forgeries. However, the script is very unspecific about what exactly it is that Dr Death does here.
El Santo himself
The plot is structured in the dullest way. The action takes Santo to Spain but rather than open this up and make pictorial use of a different international locale, all we get is Santo running around looking for a missing art restoration expert. There is also an extended middle that sidelines Santo and instead focuses on Mirta Miller as an Interpol agent that is sent in posing as a model to infiltrate Dr Death’s lair. What we really want is for the film to pit Santo against Dr Death in a battle of wits or brawn.
Santo vs Dr Death does have some occasional bonuses. It is always good to watch Santo in action. There is a not-too-bad hotel room destroying fight early in the show. And there are decent scenes with Santo up against opponents in the wrestling ring where he shows the prowess that made him a superstar. Where the film does eventually come together is in the climactic scenes with Santo running through a series of rock tunnels in Dr Death’s lair, facing death traps at every turn including arrows, flame jets and machine guns being fired at him.
The other Santo films (all being genre films unless stated) are:- The Evil Brain/Santo vs the Evil Brain (1958), The Infernal Men (1958), Santo vs the Zombies/Invasion of the Zombies (1961), Santo vs the King of Crime (non-genre, 1961), Santo in the Hotel of Death (1961), Santo vs the Diabolical Brain (1962), Santo vs the Vampire Women/Samson vs. the Vampire Women (1962), Santo in the Wax Museum (1963), Santo vs the Strangler (1963), Santo vs the Ghost of the Strangler (1963), a cameo appearance in Blue Demon vs Satanic Power (1964), Santo in the Attack of the Witches/The Witches Attack (1964), The Diabolical Axe (1964), Santo in Grave Robbers (1965), Baron Brakola (1965), Santo and the Villains of the Ring (non-genre, 1966), Operation 67 (1966), Santo in the Treasure of Moctezuma (1967), Santo vs the Martians (1967), Santo and the Treasure of Dracula (1968), Santo vs Capulina (1968), Santo vs the Headhunters (1969), Santo Faces Death/Santo vs the Mafia Killers (non-genre, 1969), The Mummies of Guanjuato (1970), Santo and Blue Demon vs the Monsters (1970), Santo and Blue Demon in the World of the Dead (1970), Santo and the Vengeance of the Vampire Women (1970), Santo vs Blue Demon in Atlantis (1970), Santo vs the Terror Riders (1970), Santo vs the Mafia of Vice (1970), Santo in the Vengeance of the Mummy (1970), The Royal Eagle (1971), Santo in “Killers from Other Worlds” (1971), Santo in the Mystery of the Black Pearl (1971), Suicide Mission (non-genre, 1971), Santo and Blue Demon vs Dracula and the Wolfman (1972), Santo vs Frankenstein’s Daughter (1972), Santo vs the Kidnappers (1972), Santo vs Black Magic (1972), The Beasts of Terror (1972), Santo vs the She-Wolves (1972), Anonymous Death Threat (non-genre, 1972), Santo and Blue Demon vs Dr Frankenstein (1973), Santo in the Mystery of the Black Pearl (1974), Santo in the Revenge of the Crying Woman (1974), Santo in Black Gold (1975), The Bermuda Mystery (1977), Santo at the Border of Terror (1979), Santo vs the TV Killer (1981), a cameo appearance in Chanoc and Son of Santo vs the Vampire Killers (1981), The Fist of Death (1982) and Fury of the Karate Killers (1982). Son of Santo has also appeared in five films. (An excellent article detailing each of the films can be found here at (Re)search My Trash).
