Santo Contra los Zombis (1961)

Predating Night of the Living Dead by seven years, Santo was already battling zombies before it was cool, then played out.

That’s because the police can’t deal with the shambling walking dead, so they turn to the man in the silver mask to drop elbows on them.

There’s one harrowing scene where the zombies set an orphanage on fire, then decide to beat up every child inside. Luckily, Santo jumps through a window — wearing a cape no less — and starts hitting chops on them. He battles nearly all of them, who can’t be stopped by bullets, even when two cops get felled by just a punch. One of the zombies seems to favor stomps and he does so to, as they say, stomp a mudhole in our hero. Don’t worry — he gets a big babyface comeback.

Look for luchas Black Shadow, Gory Guerrero (father of Eddy and inventor of so many wrestling moves) and El Gladiator.

This was Santo’s first starring role — at the age of 41 no less — and he makes the most of it. He’s pretty much Batman in the best of ways, except he refuses to wear a shirt and has, as mentioned before, a glamorous cape. I can’t even quantify how much I love this movie. The funny thing is, somehow Santo’s films would grow even stranger, encompassing spy films, whatever was hot in horror at the time and femme fatales who just had to possess our masked hero. He made over fifty of these films and I wish he’d made five hundred more.

You can watch this on YouTube: