For those unfamiliar with Mil Mascaras, he's one of the legendary heroes of south-of-the-border grappling... no, he's not a notorious fondler, I mean to say that he's a Mexican wrestler or "luchadore". Mil's name in English means "1000 Masks" and comes from this weird habit he had of wearing a mask to the ring, then removing the mask to reveal a second mask underneath. In light of this, you'd think a more suitable name would've been "Dos Mascaras", but two just can't compete with a thousand in terms of sounding impressive. On a case-by-case basis that's not always true, for example I'd rather have two nostrils than a thousand, but in the case of Mil it's business as usual. Besides, in the context of the movie there's actually a reason for the "1000 Masks" moniker. Much like fellow luchadores Santo and the Blue Demon, Mil's impressive physique and flamboyant ring attire made him a shoe-in for the role of cinematic superhero, and Mil took the path of bad guy battling movie star in his own slew of Mexican superhero flicks. After a 15 year hiatus when the genre petered out in the late '80s-early '90s, the man of a thousand masks returned to herald what luchadore fans have been keeping their fingers crossed for for far too long: a new generation of "professional wrestler vs. supernatural forces" movies!... cuz by fuck do we know how badly it turned out the last time somebody tried it...

When we catch up to our English dubbed buddy Mil Mascaras (as himself, of course), the poor guy's being dumped at dinner by his cougar lookin' fiancee, who's leaving him because she feels like she doesn't know the real man behind the mask(s). Such is the curse of wearing a full head mask at all hours of your life. I hear Nicole Kidman left Tom Cruise for the same reason. I throw up a little in my mouth when I think about what his real face looks like under that thing. Uggh. Mil lives up to his name, brandishing a different mask for each scene in what turns out to be an integral part of the story. He's lookin' stylish whether he's in the ring, out on the town with his best girl, in conference with US military leaders, skipping rocks down by the river, or just dropping in for a pow-wow with a fellow scientist. Oh, that's right, Mil uses the money he earns from wrestling to privately finance his own observer centric physics research projects. You know, when he's not fighting crime or writing music, cuz he's a renaissance man in colorful tights, capes and sequined jackets.

While Mil's heart is getting jack-knife power bombed through the flaming table of failed love and proving to us all that even tough-as-the-cancer-that-took-down-John-Wayne kinda guys are still vulnerable to loneliness, a human sacrifice is performed outside the Mexico City limits so that an ancient Aztec mummy (Jeff Uhlmann) can be brought to life through the power of cherry cough syrup... oh, wait, that's blood. Meanwhile, a rash of recent blood bank robberies forces the local police department to call in Mr. Mascaras to help them on the case. Using his home super computer and the keen processing abilities of his luchadore brain, Mil devises the criminals' next target... the only blood bank in the city that hasn't been hit yet. I don't know which makes me laugh more, the fact that the hero needed his super computer to help him figure that out, or that the city's law enforcers have absolutely no concept of THE PROCESS OF ELIMINATION. Aye aye aye. Oh well, dullards they may be, at least they're not out there brutalizing minorities or cornholing transients with foreign objects like the big city American cops.

It wouldn't be a luchadore movie without some in-ring action though, so before Mil can stakeout the last remaining unmolested gore depository in town, he has a tag team tussle with none other than Santo (actually it's the Son of Santo) as they take on two fat greasy guys with bald spots, bandanas, and a crotch huggingly frightening red vinyl singlet. If you've ever wanted to see a 65 year old man in leopard print tights without a shirt on who isn't David Lee Roth, well here's your chance to make you dreams come true! Unlike the old Santo flicks, this isn't a match in it's entirety so much as it is a series of action shots of the wrestlers edited together kinda haphazardly with dramatic instrumental music layered on top. Not that I blame 'em though, cuz even in the great shape he's in for a senior citizen, I don't think Mil can quite find his way around the ring with the intensity he did 20 years ago, so just showing some straight forward match footage probably wouldn't have gone so well. The whole affair is commentated by the movie's quasi-celebrity guests, American pro-wrestling Hall of Famer Harley Race and Halloween's own titty flasher P.J. Soles. Yes Miss Soles, I did like what I saw and, for the record, I would still most assuredly throw a sheet over myself, bend you over a chair, and introduce you to my Staff of Ra. Shazam!

Naturally the blood bank heist goes down and Mil takes out the entire gang (including a savage nutshot on one guy), only to be taken out himself by the traditional "oops, missed one" thug that perpetually exists just outside of every hero's line of vision. Though the hoods make good their escape, Mil slips a transmitter on one of the goons Spider-Man style and enlists the help of Mexico City's Chief of Police and his old science buddy The Professor to track the ne'er-do-wells to their hideout: the temple of the Aztec mummy... who also has a lot to do with the Mil Mascaras legacy, of which I won't divulge here. What do the walking dead first aid kit and his gaggle of ghouls have in store for the world? Can our hero put an end to said evil schemes in time for the Early Bird Special, or at least before the US decides to say fuck it and nuke Mexico as a preventative measure? How will our hero's connections with the President of the United States of American (Richard Lynch!) help him out in this time of global peril? Will Mil put the world's safety on hold if it means interfering with his shot at the World Championship Title Belt against current champion Magister? How many henchmen can a sexagenarian hip-toss before he breaks a hip? Will Mil hook up with the Professor's twenty-something daughter Maria who apparently has grandfather issues, or just can't withstand the draw of a man in bedazzled tights? Is a thousand year-old Aztec mummy subject to Mexico's legal system? What's it like when a luchadore trips balls on magic mushrooms? Where does the Professor's new humanoid robot Idaktor (also played by Uhlmann) come into all this? And why is Mexico City populated almost entirely with non-Latino citizens who all speak perfect English?! I will tell you one thing though: the ending is one huge orgy of zombie druids and brightly colored luchadores in a battle royal that will bring a tear to your eye. It's just capes and corpses and man nipples as far as the eye dares to see.

Mil Mascaras: Resurrection isn't so much a movie as it is a loving homage. It's never approached from a mocking position and it's not even a parody as some would expect. If you're a fan of the old skool luchadore flicks, it's the type of feature that you'll enjoy like an inside joke between friends. Resurrection avoids the parody pitfalls of trying to make intentional jokes out of unintentionally funny source material. Instead, it reproduces that unintentional humor with the utmost affection. All of the great luchadore movie hallmarks are here. The hero's a brilliant scientist who points out the obvious to the brain dead police chief when he's not composing symphonies or being the object of lust for many beautiful women. Of course the one woman that the hero really wants has to be the hot young daughter of the hero's brilliant scientist associate who helps him on his top secret missions. The bad guys make their bases in ancient ruins or subterranean lairs beneath graveyards and/or abandoned monasteries. Characters being put in cells with bars they could easily slip through or into shackles far too large to properly restrain their wrists. The hero puts saving the girl and stopping the bad guy on hold so he can participate in wrestling matches no less that twice throughout the movie, with at least one of those matches being for the World Championship and against a champion who's been replaced by a murderous doppleganger that the hero will eventually triumph over after letting the stand-in beat him mercilessly in an effort to "gain the measure of his opponent" before making the heroic comeback. Mummies whose mouths don't move when they talk, yet you can clearly see the actor's actual lips moving from between the mask's open mouth and whose eyes you can clearly see though the mask's "slightly too large" eye holes. The aforementioned fight scenes where the hero fights off a gang of attackers only to get blindsided by a guy who's been hanging out just off screen waiting to capture him afterwards, then later the hero powers his way out of his bondage only at the last second when he probably could've done it at any time after regaining consciousness. "Space age" technology that looks like it was put together with random shit from Fred Sanford's junkyard then decked out with silver spray paint. The obligatory "Thank God for *insert hero's name here*!" line. As Rocky Horror put it, it's truly beautiful to behold.

Unfortunately, from a mass market point of view, this kind of flick will leave your average movie watcher angry at the supposed incompetency with which it was made and no doubt send them spewing their ignorant dislike on the internet, where every shithead gets a say (don't I know it!). For those people, I say that my fist is the only bride that fate has for you! That's another thing though, even if you don't understand the humor in the movie, you can at least walk away from it with a smörgåsbord of quotable material for your casual conversations or just for your sig lines on whatever forum you're a member of!

For fans of this sort of thing, you'll be hard pressed to find a movie from the last 20 years that fits the classic luchadore cinema mold so comfortably. And just when you think you've seen it all, this movie proves you wrong. Its so-called "shortcomings" are all part of an intricate formula that makes for cinematic ambrosia. Yeah, I know, I'm starting to sound like a paid advertiser, but it's all unbiased truth! The only exception is a wretched piece of computer generated crap at the finale that makes a Sci-Fi Original look like Independence Day. I've been told that this is just a placeholder special effect until the real effects can be finished and applied to the wide release version of the movie, so we'll see if things don't look better here in the long run. Beyond that little inconvenience though, I enjoyed the mummy-lovin' Hell out of Mil Mascaras: Resurrection and look forward to Gubera and Uhlmann's follow-up project Academy of Doom with the same anticipation people have for the invention of the time machine so we can go back to 1945 and relieve Barbara Bush of her undeserved uterus... then maybe use it to suffocate 4 year-old Dick Cheney. Yeah, that'd be sweet, a little kid smothered to death with a woman's dismembered reproductive organs.

Final Note: Sadly, yet again the Internet Movie Database is guilty of erroneous info... not to be confused with the erogenous info I get from my back issues of "Penthouse Forum". As of this review, the website's listing for Resurrection has it dated for 2005 though the movie wasn't finished until 2007 and even then wasn't released for public viewing until 2008. Also, Jeff Burr didn't co-direct this movie, it was someone named Andrew Quint who did so alongside Gubera. As a fan of Night of the Scarecrow that's a little disappointing, but as a hardcore detractor of the Pumpkinhead sequel, not so much... the real one, not the made-for-TV "corn in my feces" ones the Sci-Fi Channel tried to pass off onto us like a pair of stomach viruses in recent years.