made with
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El Santo contra el espectro de el Estrangulador
Those beautiful stories with legends and mysteries. Not that of "El
Santo" (which, yes, is a legend) but that of a film that looks like a
skilful manipulation of cut scenes of its predecessor with some
additions and some accredited interpreter but not present. Legend or
smart move of the producer Alberto Lopez? Who knows, certainly this is
his last collaboration with El Enmascarado de la Plata and we can say
that the working relationship between the two ends with a b movie,
which cannot be more b
A film among other things very short and that has many different music
and a few moments of lucha libre, in addition to a "mysterious" plot,
that is to say is difficult to understand. The villain is always El
Estrangulador, as the title suggests, the Mexican "Phantom of the
Opera" which returns in the form of a ghost or better, tells us to be.
Not happy he takes revenge for no reason and haphazardly, helped by a
man who then struggles with our hero. The corpse of El Estrangulador
(played by Roberto Cañedo) who died at the end of the previous
film, is taken by ambulance to the morgue, in what is the first and
useless scene of the film. Then he is recovered from his assistant Tor,
who perhaps resuscitates him or discovers that his boss is not actually
dead. In any case, El Estrangulador immediately goes back to playing
hysterically his organ while Tor builds for him masks of human skin,
which not only hide, but cancel its deformities. An absurd start that
leads us to an even more paradoxical story, with the police discovering
the disappearance of the body of the villain and with the same that
begins to threaten El Santo and the whole world. Here begins a long
duel between the two contenders, with the police who as always is
watching and develops plans that do not work.
El Santo goes to the El Estrangulador laboratory and is put under a big
drill. He flees. The bad man kills a dancer. El Santo has the intuition
to intercept him in the cemetery and is buried alive. But he flees. Tor
tries to strangle him on the ring, but there guys, it's useless to say
that our hero has no rivals. It is the villain that this time flees.
Then, the strangler kills and steals the role of the theatre director,
starting with the most classic sabotage, things falling from above and
other tricks. The final twist is the kidnapping of Milton, who if you
do not remember him is the adoptive son of El Santo. Brought into the
usual dark laboratory and sentenced to painful death, the young man
manages to warn his father, who is going to save him. The rescue
package includes the fight against death with El Estrangulador which
determines its horrendous end between screams that are felt for a long
time.
"El Espectro del el estrangulador" is undoubtedly a horrendous film,
but it must be said that it has considerable interesting ideas that are
completely wasted. To say, the character of Tor, played by the
excellent Gerardo Zepeda, professional wrestler who has turned into an
interminable film career is undoubtedly the most successful, in
addition to being, in fact, the real villain. El Santo instead remains
trapped in the role of hero to which a melodramatic strand is added
with the events of the useless Milton. The police, well, more than ever
out of context. For the rest are some notable features from the horror
cinema (see masks and environments) and some of the bad traps, but the
whole thing is thrown away badly and leads us to look quickly to the
other two films of El Santo that come out in a tight lap of time in
this 1965.
