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Released by: Rise Above Entertainment
Released on: 10/28/2003.
Directors: Jose Diaz Morales
Cast: El Santo, Lorena Velazquez, Ramon Bugarini, Rene Cardona, Alfonso Castano, Sonia Cavazos
Year: 1964
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The Movie:
Rise Above Entertainment continues to release the adventures of Mexico's favorite masked wrestling superhero, Santo - El Enmasqarado De Plata, the silver masked champion of justice with the mad skills inside and outside the ring to get the job done in style!
Santo En Atacan Las Brujas (Santo In The Witches Attack)
In this entry into the Santologue from 1964, we find our hero out to solve the mystery of a strange cult of witches! An earlier entry, and one of the more unusual to be released from Rise Above so far, the film begins with a young woman having a surreal dream involving witches, masked men, and lizards.
Of course, the masked man of her dreams turns out to be none other than Santo, and it turns out that she is in dire need of his help when her boyfriend is kidnapped by a group of evil witches (lead by the curvaceous Lorena Velaquez).
So it's off to stop the witches he goes, fighting giant spiders and scantily clad women in demon form along the way, eventually going face to face with the evil that is the witches cult, in hopes of saving the innocent once again.
This is a strange entry when compared to the more straight forward 'monster mash' Santo titles that seem to be more popular amongst fans. Not only does it have a moodier and darker atmosphere about it, and a few surreal moments, but it also 'borrows' footage from the Christopher Lee classic, City Of The Dead (though Lee himself is not in the footage swiped)!
Video/Audio/Extras:
As seems to be the norm with this series, the film is presented in a fullframe transfer. It exhibits a fair amount of grain and print damage, but is quite watchable none-the-less. There aren't really any compression artifacts or edge enhancement issues to write home about. The black and white image looks fine.
The Dolby Digital Mono track is serviceable enough. It's presented in its original Spanish language with nice, clear, removable English subtitles. There is some hiss and background noise in a few scenes but it's easily ignored.
The DVD features a two-minute clip of Santo in action entitled 'The Best of El Santo' as well as some trailers for other Santo films and a few unrelated Rise Above releases as well. There is also a decent photo gallery on the disc, but the real bonus of the extra features, once again, lies in the form of David Wilt's well-written and informative liner notes that serve as a nice background piece on each of the two films. Wilt is the author of the upcoming The Mexican Filmography: Feature Films 1916 - 2001 book.
The Final Word:
As long as Rise Above continues to release these, I'll keep watching them. There's room for improvement on each of the discs, but they're way better than the old Beverly Whilshire Samson releases.