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(Santo Versus the Martian Invasion) Spanish with English subtitles Mexico / 1966 / 85 min |
Pacific Cinémathèque (PC) 1131 Howe Street (at Helmcken) |
Producer: Alfonso Rosas Priego
Cinematographer: Jorge Stahl Jr.
Editor: Abraham Cruz
Screenplay: Rafael García Travesi
Cast: Santo, Wolf Ruvinskis, Benny Galan, Ham Lee, Eduardo Bonada, Antonio Montoro
Extraterrestrials invade Earth seeking human specimens. Announcing themselves in pocalyptic television broadcasts, then teletransporting themselves to private homes nd public sporting events, the platinum-wigged, Mylar-clad, macho Martians, backed y scantly dressed female beauties, kidnap select humans and obliterate others with vapourizing rays. But heroic masked wrestler “Santo” neutralizes the invaders with his ncredible wrestling prowess, after respectfully consulting a famous scientist and the ocal priest; thus mediating between Mexico’s high-tech future and its traditional past o restore peace and order to the nation. ¡Vamos Santo!
Los extraterrestres invaden la tierra buscando especias humanas. Anunciándose en un pocalíptico programa de televisión, después se tele-transportan a casas privadas y a ventos deportivos. Estos marcianos vestidos de trajes de color platino, son machos están acompañados de mujeres con pequeños vestidos, secuestran a algunos humanos y destruyen a otros con sus rayos vaporizantes. Pero el héroe enmascarado: el anto, neutraliza a los invasores con sus increíbles poderes como luchador, después e consultar respetuosamente a un científico y al cura del lugar. Mediante mediación entre el México del futuro y el pasado tradicional, así logra reponer la paz y el orden en a nación. ¡Bien hecho luchador!
In the mid-’50s, at the end of the “Golden Age” of Mexican cinema, stark realities began to transform Mexico’s motion picture industry. Monsters, mad scientists, spaceships, robots and shapely space creatures shared the screen with the charros and campesinos of Mexico’s romantic past. The mummies and Spanish nobles of its colonial and pre-colonial legacies mingled onscreen with the modern, masked, lucha libre wrestlers, who had become the heroes of the working class. These sci-fi and fantasy culture jams proved enormously popular and remained a staple of Mexico’s commercial cinema until the mid-1970s. Hilarious and endearing for their rock-bottom production values and stilted acting, the films offer insight into Mexico’s ambivalence toward tradition, modernity, religion, ethnicity, sexual mores and economic development.
