Probably shot around the same time as The Devil’s Man, Superargo and the Faceless Giants is considered an inferior sequel to  Superargo Versus Diabolicus, which while ridiculous is also a lot of fun. It’s hard to classify these movies — are they wrestling movies? Superhero films? Eurospy? Complete messes?

This is the kind of movie I watch in the middle of the night and Becca is awake for some of it. She’ll tell me in the morning, “Whatever you were watching while I was asleep? It was horrible. Just horrible.”

Ken Wood — one time double of Steve Reeves and known in Italy by his real name Giovanni Cianfriglia — plays Superargo, a superheroic masked wrestler. He goes up against Professor Wendland Wond, who is played by Guy Madison in a rare villain role.

Diana Lorys (Agent 36-22-36 from Operation Thunderbolt) and Sergio Leone henchman Aldo Sambrell are also on hand. He’s playing an Eastern mystic named Kamir who is Superargo’s sidekick.

The plot here is that the world’s greatest athletes are being brainwashed to rob banks. What a strange scheme, when obviously there have to be better bank robbers already trained and ready to do these things.

You have some choices when you choose to watch this. Amazon Prime has the original film and the Rifftrax version. I’d go for the latter just so you can make it through this movie.

You have to hand it to the people who made Santo movies, this time Alfonso Corona Blake (who made Santo vs. Las Mujeres Vampiro) and Manuel San Fernando (who made three Santa Claus movies and the American version of Johnny Socko).

Santo is an obsession for me, as he perfectly finds himself in nearly every genre through his long career. He’s a detective. He fights monsters. He becomes a spy. He appears in a gothic horror occult exploitation film. He battles aliens. He goes to the Bermuda Triangle. And then he’s in a karate movie. Santo can be all of these things and so much more.

This time, I can only assume someone watched House of Wax and thought, “This movie would be better with lengthy wrestling scenes and a masked hero.”

The evil Dr. Karol looks the same as he did when he came to Mexico twenty years ago as the survivor of the Dachau concentration camp. He runs a haunted house packed with some of your favorite monsters that come to life, because have you ever seen a horror movie set in a wax museum where things go well?

By the end of the movie, this gets all Dr. Moreau with animal men get whipped. But you have to love a movie where Santo tells the police he’ll get back to crimefighting just as soon as he finishes his next match.

You can watch the American version of this on YouTube:

This movie is everything I want it to be and more. A pro wrestling hero? A Eurospy James Bond rip-off? Future technology that is now charmingly quaint? A red masked lucha libre-esque hero massacring dudes with a flamethrower while the main villain and his mistress tie said hero’s girl to a torture table on fire? You should watch this movie three times and then stare into the sun and burn your eyes out. That’s how great it is.

Nicola Nostro made a few of the Ten Gladiators movies, but nothing prepared me for the madcap mayhem that he’d unleash on me with this movie. I mean, this is a film where the good guys stab and shoot Superargo just to show us all that he can’t be hurt and that his blood instantly coagulates.

Spanish actor Gérard Tichy (he was in plenty of Spaghetti Westerns and The Corruption of Chris Miller) plays Diabolicus. Loredana Nusciak — Maria, the lover of Django — plays his mistress who, of course, screws him over and gets machinegunned for her troubles by Superargo’s lady.

Superargo is — of course — Ken Wood (Italian real name: Giovanni Cianfriglia). He was Steve Reeves’ body double and shows up in another Italian superhero movie, Sandokan the Great. I love that Superargo becomes a super spy because of depression — he’s too strong and he threw another wrestler named El Tigra from the ring, killing him. Now, he just stays inside until his woman goes to his old army buddy and gets Superargo some government work.

There’s a scene where Argoman does a bicycle thing-a-majig with his feet while they test his blood pressure and scientist dudes lose their minds. Scenes like this are exactly why I adore this movie.

This is a movie that invents gadgets that are totally preposterous: a two-way radio inside a gigantic player piano. A geiger counter that looks like a cocktail olive. And a feminine brooch that has a television inside it that totally clashes with Superargo’s entire wardrobe!

The greatest thing about this movie is that at the end, Superargo awkwardly stares at the screen, kind of smirking, while the credits play. It’s not paused — he’s just standing there — and you’re like, “Yeah. That Superargo is a pretty good dude.”

There aren’t enough stars in the galaxy to rate this one.

Before we get into this movie — Santo’s last film — let’s discuss some lucha libre history.

His career was winding down, particularly after facing off with death itself.

In 1981, El Signo, Negro Navarro and El Texano began teaming as a young rudos trio named Los Misioneros de la Muerte (The Missionaries of Death) in the UWA promotion. During a main event at El Toreo de Quatro Caminos, they battled El Santo, Huracan Ramirez and Rayo de Jalisco.

At some point in the match, the man in the silver mask collapsed from a heart attack. His life was saved by Ramirez and the legend of Los Misioneroes del Muerte — that they tried to actually kill El Santo — was born. They became the biggest heels in Mexico, eventually losing in Santo’s last match on September 12, 1982, as he teamed with Ramirez, Gory Guerrero and El Solitario against Los Misioneros and Perro Aguayo.

That same year, Santo would appear in his final film, a sequel to El Puno de la Muerte (The Fist of Death), which was shot concurrently. Both movies concern the sisterly war between twins Kungyan, who dressed in black and is evil, and Queria, who — you guessed it, muchacho — dresses in white and is good. They’re both played by Grace Renat and fur and fabric can barely contain the pneumatic tendencies of her busoms. Russ Meyer must have been going insane halfway across the world and had no idea why.

Renat left home at 14 to become a showgirl in the company of her older lover. By 24, she was a single mother and dancing in Tijuana’s most infamous nightclubs as an exotic dancer. She was then awarded the title of Diosa de la Noche (Goddess of the Night) by Mexico’s Asociación Nacional de Actores. Now, she was a star, appearing in movies like Las Munecas del King Kong, Pink Zone and El Hombre sin Miedo.

The two women are battling over a star crystal that looks like it came from Wicks ‘n Sticks. There’s also a Jungle Goddess who has come from the sky to marry a prince, assassins, zombies, Satanic rituals and no small amount of dance numbers.

Imagine, if you will, Mortal Kombat made with no budget and an aging lucha libre star, as well as the younger star Tieneblas as the evil assistant. This would be that movie and it’s perfect and wonderful and all things special.

There are some out there that will make light of this movie and scoff at it. It’s made on a shoestring, the fights are incredibly fake and the special effects could be done by a small child. I could care less what they think. This is a movie that begins with El Santo parachuting into the jungle while still wearing a cape. If that doesn’t make you start looking for this movie right now, there’s no hope for you.

Let me tell you one more thing: Kungyan dances so hard at one point that she conjures a monster, then still decides to send killer apes after Santo and a karate expert on the day of his wedding.

Ah hell, let me tell you another: Rene Cardona, who directed Santa Claus vs. the Devil, Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy, Night of the Bloody Apes and several Santo films, shows up as our hero’s pal Professor Williams.

Alright, alright. Last thing. This was shot at Vizcaya Museum, an Italian Renaissance home in Miami’s Coconut Grove that also appears in Airport ’77, and Coral Castle, an oolite limestone wonder created by Edward Leedskalnin via either magneticism, perptual motion or outright sorcery. It also shows up in the movies The Wild Women of Wongo and Nude on the Moon, as well as inspiring Billy Idol to write the song “Sweet Sixteen.”

Federico Curiel had no idea how to make a Santo film. Instead of putting the Man in the Silver Mask front and center, he was a side character as normal people became the heroes. Nobody wanted that. However, this one does have a great poster and some atmosphere.

The real stars of the movie are Fernando Casanova, Ana Bertha Lepe and Beto el Boticario, while Santo just shows up as needed to stop evil from attacking the people Curiel really saw as the stars.

There’s a decent match with Santo and Black Shadow, some fun jazz and a great hotel. It’s not anywhere near where our hero would soon go, but it’s not a bad time.

You can watch this on YouTube:

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:

This movie is astounding. It starts with a hairy old woman named Luba, queen of the werewolves, asking a young blonde woman to stab her and take her place as the new leader of the lycanthropes. As the wolves howl around her, we’re taken to an arena where Santo battles his foes.

After the match, the new queen comes to see our hero in his locker room and offers her body to him. Just as he’s politely asking her to leave, a detective arrives and tells our hero that the Harker family needs to meet him. As they speak, we follow the new Luba down a hallway, trailed by wolves.

Yes, imagine if you infused a Santo wrestling movie with the Gothic horror look of a Paul Naschy film and made things as dark as possible. That’s exactly what this movie is and I loved every second moment of its footage.

Why would werewolves come after Santo? It’s simple: only silver can destroy them. And our hero is quite literally the silver symbol that can destroy them all. But what if they can turn him to their side? And what if the werewolf queen has a king?

There’s nothing better than a movie where the most famous wrestler to ever emerge from Mexico bodyslams a werewolf woman to death as children are menaced. I love that this movie exists. I want you to be part of my excitement.

You can find this movie for sale on Etsy or watch it on YouTube: