Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.

Today’s theme: Mexico

Francisco Xavier Chapa del Bosque suffered from polio and, according to this Vulture article, was experimented upon by his uncle. However, he claimed that his own will returned his ability to walk. After years of training, he began performing as Agent X-1 and then as Professor Zovek, pulling cars with his teeth and breaking the world record for sit-ups. He had an army of hooded women and would say, “I need vibrations,” which allowed him to kiss several of them before stunts like exploding from straitjackets, lifting cars with people inside and escaping confinement or being chained.

Being a TV star led to movies, starting with this film, directed by René Cardona. It’s a unique blend of Zovek’s stunts and the lucha films, which makes it a fascinating watch. Zovek’s next—and final—movie was Blue Demon y Zovek en La invasión de los muertos, where he fought alongside the lucha legend, adding a unique cultural twist to the film. 

Yet during filming, Zovek performed for his public, being lowered from a helicopter down to the ground, but an accident caused the pilot to pull his stick upward, and Zovek was thrown two hundred feet into the ground, suffering mortal injuries, dying surrounded by his wife and four children. Vuture — and the movie Roma, in which Zovek is played by luchador Latin Lover — writes that there were rumors that the escape artist “…was in cahoots with the government, training right-wing paramilitary groups. As such, people whispered that the pilot had killed the performer as a political act of assassination. The pilot, for his part, always maintained that he thought Zovek was already off the rope when he levitated and turned.”

The film’s plot revolves around a plane carrying 26 renowned scientists that explodes, leaving only 25 bodies. Professor Zovek, a renowned figure in the film, is called in to investigate. His unique abilities and fearless nature lead him to believe that the missing person is the killer. This belief takes him to the island of Dr. Leonardo Druso, where mind-control and human-animal experiments are taking place, setting the stage for a thrilling and action-packed adventure.

Written by Chano Urueta, this film asks you to stay patient for the first thirty minutes. It crawls. But soon, there’s an island filled with cannibal little people, martial arts battles, Zorek wearing wild outfits and evil masked men with whips. 

Zovek was a man who could swim for eight hours non-stop, skip rope for nine hours, drive motorcycles blindfolded, let cars drive on him and in one insane stunt, he was put in a straitjacket, chained up and put in a burning Egyptian coffin. Here, he shows off his mental powers and pulls off several of his stunts, like a lucha movie without the wrestling. Zorek, however, is ahead of the curve and practices martial arts in this.

This movie really was pulling out all the stops to make Zovek a movie star. His sidekick is Germán “Tin-Tan” Valdés, who played the same role in the Chanoc movies, and we have Tere Velázquez and Nubia Marti, who were both in Santo movies, to be algo para papi, as they say in Mexico.

I love what Zovek could have been and wish he had been able to make more movies. His potential as a movie star, the awesome costumes, weird monsters — a woman with an exposed brain! — and the look and feel I love from Mexican cinema of this time and form. It’s magical!

You can watch this on YouTube.