Theater Bizarre Saturday Afternoon Horror Shows

Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro (also known as Samson vs. the Vampire Women) is a 1962 superhero horror film starring the wrestling superhero Santo. A coven of hideously decayed vampire women awaken in their crypt after 200 years of sleep. Their leader, Queen Zorina, plans to return to Hell to be with her husband Lucifer, and must appoint a successor. Two hundred years earlier, the vampire priestess Tundra had attempted to capture a woman, but she escaped; Tundra now vows to capture the woman’s granddaughter, Diana. Tundra transforms into a beautiful young woman, so that she can infiltrate human society. Although the previous Santo films hadn’t been successful at the box office, producer Alberto Lopez had engaged Santo in an exclusive contract for a series of four films. Lopez had previously produced Santo vs the Zombies, and would later produce Santo in the Wax Museum and Santo vs the Strangler, under this same contract. He attempted to raise the production value for this film, hiring respected cinematographer Jose Ortiz Ramos and composer Raul Lavista. Director Alfonso Corona Blake began shooting the film on January 3, 1962 at Estudios Churbusco in Mexico City, based on a script by Rafael Garcia Travesi, Antonio Orellana, and Fernando Oses. The film premiered on October 11, 1962 at the Mariscala Cinema, where it played for two weeks and earned significant profit. Samson vs. the Vampire Women was one of four Santo films dubbed into English and released in the United States, and one of two Santo films released by K. Gordon Murray, a prolific distributor of Mexican films in the US. Murray’s films mainly played in theaters on weekend matinees intended for children, or on late-night television through his work for American International TV. For this film, Murray hired Manuel San Fernando to direct additional scenes and to supervise the English actors’ voice performances, but the structure and plot of both versions of the film are largely similar. Murray changed many of the character names to better appeal to an American audience, including changing “Santo” to “Samson,” a reference to the biblical strongman and then-popular character of Italian sword-and-sandal epics. Santo contra las mujeres vampiro was the first Santo film to receive significant international attention. In addition to its release in the United States, it also played at the 1965 Festival of San Sebastian in Spain.

The Fury of the Wolfman (Spanish: La Furia del Hombre Lobo), aka Wolfman Never Sleeps, is a 1970 Spanish horror film that is the fourth in a long series about the werewolf Count Waldemar Daninsky, played by Paul Naschy. Naschy wrote the screenplay as well. The film was shot in early 1970. It was not theatrically released in Spain until 1975 due to problems involved in finding a distributor, although it was distributed in edited form on U.S. TV in 1974. A Swedish edit called Wolfman Never Sleeps has a longer running time and contains several extra nude sex scenes that were edited out of the regular version. Romana Gonzalez handled the werewolf makeup effects. Naschy had a very hard time working with the director Jose Maria Zabalza, who he said was usually drunk on the set and tampered enormously with Naschy's screenplay. There are claims that Zabalza even had his 14-year-old son help him to direct the film. When the film wound up being too short, Zabalza filmed a few additional werewolf sequences with another (uncredited) actor in the Wolfman costume to pad out the running time, and even spliced in footage from Naschy's 1968 La Marca del Hombre Lobo. This was the first film to involve a Yeti as the means of transforming Waldemar into a werewolf (a similar "Yeti origin" appearing again years later in La Maldicion de la Bestia in 1975). Naschy's original werewolf film had him being transformed into a lycanthrope via the bite of another werewolf (Imre Wolfstein). Naschy followed this film up with his 1970 landmark cult classic La Noche de Walpurgis, which many film historians consider the film that started the Spanish horror boom of the seventies.

The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy (Spanish: La Momia Azteca contra el Robot Humano) is a 1958 Mexican science fiction horror film directed by Rafael Portillo, and starring Ramón Gay and Rosa Arenas. It is the third installment in a trilogy preceded by The Aztec Mummy and The Curse of the Aztec Mummy, and a large portion of the film is an extended recap of the events from the first two entries. The three films were all shot consecutively. The evil Dr. Krupp (Luis Aceves Castañeda), a mad scientist also known as "the Bat", managed to escape the snake pit into which he was thrown by Popoca the Aztec Mummy (Ángel di Stefani) in the previous film and continues his efforts to steal a valuable Aztec treasure from Popoca's tomb. Krupp builds a robot with a human head and brain in it (which is thus, technically, a cyborg), planning to use it to destroy the mummy should he return to thwart his plans. Krupp's former colleague and original finder of the mummy, Dr. Eduardo Almada (Ramón Gay), his wife Flora, and his associate Pinacate, all work to stop the mad scientist from completing his plans. Dr. Krupp gets inside the mummy's tomb and once again steals the gold breastplate from its resting place on the mummy's chest. When Popoca awakens in a rage, Krupp orders his human robot to fight him. The two monsters engage in a fierce struggle to the death, but the robot's ability to deliver burns due to electrical shocks from its hands quickly begins to wear the mummy out. Just as it seems the robot is winning, Dr. Almada bursts into the tomb and knocks the remote control from Dr. Krupp's hands, effectively shutting off the robot's brain. In an insane rage, Popoca attacks the robot, literally tearing it into scrap metal. Popoca strangles Dr. Krupp and his henchman Tierno, then stumbles off into another tomb where, hopefully, he can return to his rest and no one will ever disturb it again. Directed by Rafael Portillo Screenplay by Alfredo Salazar Story by: Guillermo Calderón, Alfredo Salazar Produced by Guillermo Calderón Starring: Ramon Gay, Rosita Arenas, Luis Aceves Castañeda Cinematography Enrique Wallace Edited by Jorge Bustos Music by Antonio Díaz Conde Distributed by: Cinematografica Calderon S.A Release date: 1958

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