El Santo vs. My Nostalgia 

Nostalgia made me do it. I was decades late, but I was finally ready to watch my first El Santo film. It's been months since I've started going down the rabbithole of Mexican nostalgia. Novels, poetry, essays, history, film, music (I am quite boring, as you can see). Following no structure or plan, I've focused on authors from the second half of the XX century; some of them famous, some of them not.

Eventually, this led to Carlos Monsiváis and his book Los rituales del caos (The chaos rituals), a collection of chronicles and essays about many different components of Mexican life. You'd need a full-on literature class to explore and explain Monsiváis' writings, but one of the main things is how he blended high and low culture. One of the chapters of his book talks about El Santo and this film in particular, Santo vs. the Vampire Women.

A fucking epiphany: El Santo would be the biggest nostalgia fix of all. A luchador, a popular hero from the 50s all the way to the 80s, he appeared in comic books, movies and arenas. He fought marcians, vampires, zombies, mummies, Dracula. He even got his powers from La Virgen de Guadalupe. This dude was Mexican popular culture.

So there I was, sitting down to watch Santo vs. the Vampire Women. But the story kept going, and he was barely in it. In fact, 47 minutes pass before we actually see El Santo have any kind of impact (he has a 9 minute match before that, but it has absolutely no bearing on the story).

Slowly, the realization was setting in. I was hoping for something funny, campy, or meaningful. Instead, I felt nothing. I was trying, actually, I was failing to force nostalgia. I realized I was trying to build memories retroactively; I was building these memories from cultural scraps that had absolutely nothing to do with me. In a way, it felt like I couldn't think in Mexican anymore.

The Search for Cultural Connection

I wasn't so naive that I thought I'd react in the same way Monsiváis did. I knew I was a lifetime removed from when El Santo first started to become what he would eventually be. I knew I wasn't part of that world because of many different reasons. However, I still wanted a hint of that working-class heroism, Mexican identity, which was there, just a bit muddy and old (much like the vampires, as you'll see).

I think that's where I made the mistake. No one in my life had actually sold me that image of El Santo, the one about the Mexican hero. I mean, I knew about him, but I just didn't care, and nobody around me did. But reading about him from a writer I admire made me think I had to watch the films. But I tried, and he was just a guy in a silver mask. This wasn't even my nostalgia, it was an attempt to claim something already distant.

Actually Watching the Movie

It’s a failed time machine. I mean the experience itself, there's no actual time travel in the movie. I expected the story to take me to a shared past where I could find something meaningful and bring it back with me to the present.

There's not a lot I can say about the plot. After 200 years of slumber, ancient vampire priestess Tundra wakes up in an abandoned castle along with her vampire women friends. It's been a while, so their skin looks like crusty shit, but they're gonna turn this thing around.

You see, Tundra's plan is to kidnap Diana, the descendant of Zorina, the vampire queen, who might be Satan's wife, I think. The audio is pretty terrible in the YouTube version I watched, so who the fuck actually knows. So, Tundra wakes up 3 vampire goons; these are some muscular dudes who always run around with their arms stretched to the sides while holding their capes. They jump, fight, run like this, and I think it's cute.

At one point, Satan or someone turns the raggedy old mummies into hot goth mommas. Now they're ready to go out for blood, which they give to Zorina to turn her into a younger version of herself. Why didn't she turn young without blood like the rest, you ask? No idea.

So, the 3 muscle dudes and Tundra try to kidnap Diana at a costume party for her 21st birthday, but they're stopped by El Santo. He's not really around for most of the exposition or plot parts of the movie; he only shows up to deliver vampire violence.

There's a prophecy the Professor, Diana's dad, tells Santo: he's the descendant of the last warrior who defeated evil 200 years ago, and he's the only one who can defeat it now. Santo doesn't even take a step back. He accepts this the way you would a complimentary piece of cheese at Costco. He's not a great actor, is what I'm getting at.

Anyway, there's a cool scene where El Santo wrestles another masked luchador in a mask vs. mask match. It's a close fight, but eventually El Santo wins. He unmasks the other guy, and it turns out he's... A WEREWOLF?! Are you blind, ref?

Throughout the film, Santo fights the 3 muscle dudes. You'd think the fight scenes are the highpoint of the film, as most of them are luchadores, but oh god, no. I honestly counted like 30 karate chops in the film, and that's 30 more than a grown man should use in a fight. If a sexy vampire attacks you and you use a karate chop to defend yourself, you deserve to be sucked dry (in a bad way).

Anyway, at one point, the henchmen trap El Santo in a cage. Throughout the film, these bumbling fucks have been completely dominated by the luchador, so you want to know how they're gonna actually get him out of the trap. The movie knew you were going to ask that, so it decided to cut to El Santo tied up to the altar. The movie knew there was no way these idiots could actually get him out of the trap, so it just decided to skip that part.

Their mortal enemy is tied up to an altar. They have the upper hand. Then, all these dumb vampires forget that they are deadly allergic to the sun. They have an open window in their lair, and they forget about their biggest enemy. So, sunlight comes in, they burn. El Santo takes a torch and lights the remaining vampire women on fire. He doesn't even save the day, it's just the vampires forgetting how the sun and the Earth work together.

He never actually confronts Zorina, who's supposed to be the main villain. A bit like The Fifth Element, if you think about it. In the end, El Santo saves Diana, delivers her to her dad, and drives away.

The Nostalgia Remains

The cinematic experience itself was a failure. However, I did learn something: cultural artifacts are not inherently emotional. The only way to give them meaning is through memory and repetition. I had none of that, so the movie didn't speak to me.

I don't want to give the impression that these films were ever received as more than what they are. The thing is, they bypassed the regular film critique and became something more than B movies in the social arena. Everyone back then knew they were kitsch, incoherent melodramas. But they also felt something else in them, which I couldn't.

I think the mere act of watching the movie, in my context, was the important thing. I had been in search of some kind of inherited memory. I didn't get it, but I had managed to create a feeling that was something close to nostalgia. Appreciation of a past that means nothing to me, perhaps. The nostalgia fix, I didn't get, not with El Santo, anyways.