Post by RedKing on Jun 21, 2007 6:32:23 GMT -8
This was Blue Demon's 3rd starring film and his first movie in almost 2 years due to a terrible neck injury he sustained in the ring. The movie is quite good-filmed in that noirish black and white style the luchahero movies are famous for by Filmica Vergara. The story is sort of a Phantom of the Opera meets Luchadore, and is really good. Fernando oses plays The Bat, a crazed ex-luchadore who wears a cool looking realistic batmonster mask, lives in a ruined old castle(it actually looks more like underground caverns, plays the organ and has several creepy henchmen! He wears the mask to hide his hideously scarred face and has his musclebound henchman Gerardo kidnap wrestlers as opponents for him as well as pretty girls whom he obsesses over. jaime Fernandez(who had been the villian in both of Blue's previous films) is the hero whose girlfriend the Bat is currently obsessing over(she's a nightclub singer and the Bat watches her performances on TV in his castle. I don't know if this is supposed to be a nightly TV show or if the Bat seceretly installed a Tv camera there. There are also some hilarious shots of the people in the club watching the girl sing-every night there is this oddly leering bald guy in the audience who looks much more disturbing than the Bat!). Eventually Blue shows up just in time to help Jaime and the girl out by having a drag-out brawl with Gerardo. Yes, Blue Demon does not show up until 21 minutes into the movie! Now on the case Blue and jaime eventually deduce the Bat's whereabouts and Blue has a battle royal with the Bat who rips his own mask off so we can see his scarred face, all the bat's female prisoners are saved(he had a cell full of girls that presumably rejected his advances) and the castle burns down. The music score is peppered with cuts from the record Themes from Horror and Sci-Fi Movies that was released in the 60s and offered in the back of Famous Monsters. It was issued on CD in the early 90s and contains cues from several Universal 1950s movies plus HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, SON OF DRACULA and HORROR OF DRACULA and they use the Hammer Dracula music everythime there is a fight! All in all this is a great luchahero film, even with Blue's late arrival in the procedings!
