Three hombres (ensconced in the finest rain slickers pesos can buy) open up our hero's tale as they dig up the corpse of a dapper looking gent who looks like the lead of a Mariachi band. We learn that the leader of this trio is called “One-Eye” (if you guessed it's because he wear an eye-patch then give yourself a pat on your happy parts) and the guys are just hired goons for a mad scientist named Dr. Yanco (played by the Mexican non-Union equivalent of Stacy Keach). Yeah, I used to pummel my pickle so much back in High School that everyone nicknamed my right hand “Dr. Yanko”... Uhm, moving on, it turns out that Yankee isn't the head honcho of this corpse salvage operation, but the real big brain belongs to Freda Frankenstein! That's right, it looks like Victor left behind a little memento on his last binge in Tijuana and daddy's little girl is taking up the family business. In true female stereotype fashion though Freda isn't looking to create life from death or sew together the ultimate love machine (as was the case with Frankenstein's Daughter), but is only interested in using science to make herself young. See, Freda's pretty deep into her winter years, but by injecting herself with 200 proof human hemoglobin, she goes from Granny Clampett to Ellie May in as long as it takes to set up for the next scene. Not to be greedy (and knowing she needs other people to do all the heavy lifting and opening of her jars of salsa), Freda shares her ultimate wrinkle fighter with some of her friends from the geezer freezer, i.e. Yanco, One-Eye, uhm... Cowboy Hat, and... errrr... let's just call him Pablo.

Having been the science community's answer to Elizabeth Bathory for so long, Freda's body is gradually becoming immune to the effects of the formula. Instead of aging gracefully and giving up the ghost, she decides that she needs a healthier stock of blood to draw from. If you guessed that her target is going to be the seemingly invincible Type B+ of a certain silver masked luchadore, then feel free to give yourself another pat on your happy parts. Insistent that Santo's refusal to age or weaken over time is a sure sign of his freakishly powerful genetic stock (and ignorant to way that professional wrestlers in masks are rarely the same guy underneath that mask year in and year out), Freda orders his capture so she can play guinea pig on the hero of millions and owner of the most popular Thermos for Spanish speaking children between the ages of 6 and 13! Using what she calls Santo's “TR Factor” (something her father discovered that the human body uses to heal injuries), Lil' Miss Frankenstein will be forever young and beautiful... until that stops working and she has to start stalking Hulk Hogan.

Not completely devoid of her father's hobby of pinching loaves in Mother Nature's birdbath, Freda does indeed like to experiment with the occasional man-monster. Up to this point her biggest success was transfusing the blood of a gorilla into the body of a man. If you thought something like genetic barriers would make such a thing impossible and simply kill the test subject instantly, then you've obviously never seen the miracles that the Mexican health care system do! The resultant creature is a monkey faced beefcake called Truxon, who looks like Mexican Babe Ruth in black face with a badly done Moe Howard haircut. Freda's newest terror is a more traditional patchwork man named Ursus that's made out of various dead guy parts. In other words, Ursus is going to be bipedal humanoid bologna. Appropriately fitting since nothing goes better with bologna than cheese and we are watching a Santo movie. Speaking of the big guy, where the Hell is he, anyway?

As with any Santo introduction, we catch up to the lumpy luchadore as he goes patent leather toe-to-patent leather toe with another masked wrestler called El Toro. Watching the bout from her bedroom is a homely redhead butter face named Norma whom Santo is apparently dating and who is the only person around for which the Saint will remove his mask... so much for my theory that the guy plays Chocolate Spelunker with his “business suit” on.

The Bull pummels our hero with a pair of brass knucks, which the referee can't stop because he's apparently “powerless” to do so... even though he's the fucking referee and his entire job is to stop shit like guys cracking each others' skulls with things like BRASS KNUCKLES! After five minutes of Santo getting tenderized into taco meat, the ref finally steps in to take the weapon away. If it seems like I'm spending way too much time talking about the wrestling match, keep in mind that these scenes are the cornerstone to every horror/sci-fi movie that comes out of Mexico and last longer than actual American televised wrestling matches, so it's hard to just gloss over them. Santo wins his match and retains his unbeaten streak, giving credence to the idea that maybe his blood really is supercharged with magic healing powers... or maybe it just proves that Mexican wrestling follows the exact same “hero in control, villain in control, hero in control, hero wins” that American wrestling does. Who would've thought. Did you know that people in much of the Middle East are still under the impression that wrestling is real? Given that many of them still live archaic lifestyles I probably shouldn't be surprised, but does this mean that the average Middle Eastern person has intelligence comparative to a United States fourth grader? I'm far from being one of those “USA! USA! USA!” types with beer cans covering the floor of my 1986 Chevy pick-up truck (with the gun wrack in the back window and a “These Colors Don't Run!” bumper stick of course) while I think about dragging all the people who are different from me around behind said truck with a length of chain, but come on! I realized wrestling matches were staged a month before I realized Santa Claus wasn't real and the fat guy at the mall was just a drunk child molester making payments on his 1986 Chevy pick-up truck (with the gun wrack in the back window and a “No Fat Chicks... Okay, Fat Chicks, But Only If They Got Beer!” bumper stick of course) so he could finally drag all the people who are different from him around behind said truck with a length of chain. The point of all this? I don't know, it's in there somewhere. Read through it again later if you're so hung up on learning something from this review.

Being the girlfriend of the biggest name in Mexico doesn't warrant personal security though, so Freda's minions have no trouble snatching Norma from her bedroom. Remind if I ever get famous to never have a terrace off of my bedroom, cuz the better halves always wind up kidnapped through the friggin terrace doors. You can pretty much figure out the rest of the movie, but here are Cliff Notes: Santo and Norma's sister Elsa decide not to call the cops and instead go after Norma themselves. They get captured, Santo is put into chains and Freda unmasks him before making out with him. All we get to see are a right ear and some black hair, so that narrows down Santo's identity to, oh, 99.999% of the entire male populace of Mexico. Naturally Santo has to fight for his life against Truxon (killing the cretin when he beats him to death with a chain like the noble fighter he is...), a hypnotized Norma whom he brings to her senses with the power of cliché movie love (because using a loyal henchperson to cut out Santo's eyes while he's chained to a table would make too much non-mind sodomizing sense), and of course the mighty juggernaut Ursus whom Santo defeats by first hitting him in the face with a chair (remember, he's a wrestler first and a masked champion of justice second!) then finishes off by impaling the monster on a crucifix! But, with 20 minutes left to kill, Santo and his lady friends are all recaptured yet again and this time the wounded Ursus joins them in finally putting an end to his sinister creator, blowing up the lair and saving the day!... just in time for the true climax of the film: four more minutes of Santo wrestling some Japanese guy for the Undisputed Super Grand Ultra-Class Champion Master of the Universe Title Belt. Yes, that's right, all that shit about fighting monsters and beating up guys in red shirts was all a build up to a SECOND wrestling match...

That sound you just heard was my head cracking open and a tidal wave of tequila worms pouring out of it. Wow.

Although Santo Vs. Frankenstein’s Daughter will give you enough camp to attract the attention of deformed retards in hockey masks, it’s a vicious cycle of repetitive sequences that will either amuse you because the same shit just keeps happening over and over again, or it will bore the gooey green snot out of you. I guess the determining factor is what kind of mind-altering chemicals you decide to put into your body pushing “Play”. All of the story was used up in the first 20 minutes with the remaining hour consisting of people running around in the dark, beating each other up, capturing and recapturing the good guys until eventually evil gets flushed down the commode of justice. Wow, that sounds like something Darkwing Duck would've said... I shouldn’t be surprised though, because the writer behind the lack of imagination is frequent Santo collaborator Fernando Osés, himself a former professional wrestler from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Well, at least that explains why the bulk of the movie is bookended with wrestling matches!

One thing you can't take away from this movie (at least not without a mute button) is the crazy soundtrack. Some of it is uncoordinated surfer tunes, while the rest is, well, imagine some jazzy lounge lizard type music mixed into an auditory cocktail with the theme music for “The Munsters”, then spiced ever so slightly with an array of cheesy '50s sci-fi movie sound effects. Drink it down and tell me that ain't smooth. Just be careful that you don't drink too much, or it might give you the runs... I also have to give it to the actors. Note, I’m not giving credit to the fight choreographers, but the actors. Despite their bad guyness, you actually feel bad for the dying Dr. Frankenstein, but more so for her sinister suitor Dr. Yanco. Yanks plays the woman of the couple, fawning over his enfeebled love as she pushes herself to accomplish her dream of eternal youth, and eventually sacrificing himself when she’s passes on without him, opting for the clammy handjob of the Grim Reaper rather than life as an old man without the woman he loves. It’s the basic “tragic love” movie cliché, but pulls off something semi-refreshing by reversing the roles.

Final verdict? Good for fans of Santo movies who value goofy shit over good movie making, but by the last reel I kept wondering if it was finally over… which it wasn’t, until we sat through another wrestling match that had nothing to do with what was happening in the fucking movie. Good night!