Bleeding Skull’s Top 50 (July 7 – 13) The middle-brow champions of low-brow horror, Bleeding Skull has picked out some of their favorites from the SWV catalog. They neglected to put I Drink Your Blood or EEGAH! on the list, but I think I can forgive them since they included Ship of Monsters. 

El Charro de las Calaveras (The Rider of the Skulls, played by Dagoberto Rodríguez) is a Western superhero, like Santo on a horse. Also like the man in the silver mask, he battles monsters.

The first movie directed by Alfredo Salazar, who wrote Herencia Diabólica, Una Rata en la Oscuridad, Frankestein el Vampiro y Compañía, Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dr. Frankenstein, Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and the Wolf Man, Santo en el Tesoro de Drácula, The Panther Women, The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy and so many more films, this combines two of my favorite genres, the Mexican lucha-style horror film and Western horror.

It’s made in three episodes, starting with El Charro fighting a werewolf, as well as a zombie doing the narration and a witch showing up. The second has a rubber bat, a vampire and El Charro allowing the woman he’s to protect to get bit. Then again, he also screwed up and the werewolf killed a woman in the first movie, so maybe he’s not as good at his job as Santo. The last story — now in the present — has El Charro battling a headless horseman whose head keeps showing up in a box owned by a rich woman. Once he gets the head back, he and our hero have a sword fight.

At least El Charro adopts the son of the first woman — Perico (Alfonso Ortiz) — and somehow also adopts a full grown man named Cléofas (Pascual García Peña). Now he has sidekicks. His costume is really cool, so he has that going for himself. It’s like a dress outfit with skulls on the pockets and a nice black mask. He’s a great fighter, too, but that’s because he’s Fernando Osés in the stunt scenes. Osés was one of many luchadors that played Huracan Ramirez.

The three parts of this — they were shot as shorts originally — are El Lobo Humano, El Vampiro Siniestro and El Jinete Sin Cabeza. The masked vampire in this might be my favorite monster in all of Mexican cinema. I wish there were fifty of these movies, just like my favorite luchadors.