Santo vs. Infernal Men (1961)
Agent Joaquin recalls his latest mission while lying wounded in an ambulance: Joaquin has infiltrated into a band of smugglers. When the villains learn the truth about him, they kidnap Jouqin's fiancee. Santo comes to her rescue and fights the band.
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Good start, but then it gets ruined
As Good As It Gets
Blistering performances.
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
Santo is a police agent helping to track down a drug ring. Well made, but some what padded, action mystery with the masked wrestler in the lead. The trouble here is that there are several instances where we see nothing but traveling, say driving. This may work during the opening credits where we pace the ambulance racing to the place where a man was shot, but there are a couple other incidence of where we just watch some one driving sown the road. Its good but it made me reach for the remote since nothing really happens. Still its worth a look since this is one of the better masked wrestler films I've run across. Between 6 and 7 out of 10
Having turned down down an offer in 1952 to appear in the aptly named ENMASCARADO DE PLATA (he doubted the film would click with audiences, and thus Huracan Ramirez appeared in the first true lucha libre film), El Santo finally tested the cinematic waters in the late 1950s in two Cuban lensed features.Shot at the same time and on a shoestring, CEREBRO DE MAL and HOMBRES INFERNALES featured Santo as an agent assisting the police in tough investigations (in these films, he plays an actual police agent -- he was later generally cast as either a wrestler who also fought crime or as an Interpol agent who also wrestled as well).While this was a theme which would appear in many of his later films, these two films were unique in one distinction -- in neither is he referred to as El Santo.The plot involves an attempt to put a police agent into a drug smuggling ring. hen the man is placed in danger, it's up to the masked Santo to go in to extricate him alive.The film is a curiosity, lacking the polish of the later films (even the early, cut-rate Vergara features, which says something). Santo is also played as a curiosity -- more of a fixture with a mask than a developed personality. Then again, this is nearly true of the later three films he made with Fernando Casanova and Ana Bertha Lepe. In those he was someone brought in fairly late in the films, to wrap up the loose ends. He'd then wheel away in his flashy sportscar.Interesting as a bit of film history, but it should have been much more. I like lucha films, but I'd give this one a 2 for curiosity and entertainment value.