Uncle Jasper reviews: Santo in the Wax Museum (1963)

Santo in the Wax Museum [Santo en el Museo de Cera] (1963)

Starring Santo, Claudio Brook, Norma Mora, Rubén Rojo, Roxana Bellini, José Luis Jiménez, Víctor Velázquez

Directed by Alfonso Corona Blake

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There are certain expectations I have when viewing a Santo film. I expect to see Santo locking horns with famous Hollywood monsters, I expect to see voluptuous heinas desperately trying to seduce our hero, and I expect kitschy special effects that look like they were thrown together by some goofy employees in the stock room of Spencer’s Gifts. To my surprise, not only do we get very little of that in this film, but the film reaches stellar heights never before achieved in the Santoverse despite lacking these expected quirks. I never thought it was possible, but Santo in the Wax Museum is the cerebral, thinking man’s Santo film. Don’t worry… You’ll still get your action, bizarre monsters, and silly props. But there is a layer of unexpected subtext here that delves a little deeper than the usual cold-war era “Man’s evil in developing nuclear weapons will cause his eventual downfall” stuff typically rattled off in-between wrestling matches with vampires in these films.

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Shock Corridor (1963)

Shock Corridor (1963)

Starring Peter Breck, Constance Towers, Gene Evans, James Best, Hari Rhodes, Larry Tucker, Paul Dubov, Chuck Roberson, Neyle Morrow, John Matthews, Bill Zuckert, John Craig, Philip Ahn

Directed by Samuel Fuller

Expectations: High. I’ve seen it before, about nine-ten years back, but now I like Sam Fuller a lot more.

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I’ve previously stated my love for Samuel Fuller, so I won’t repeat myself here. I had seen this film about nine years back and I liked it at the time but it was the first Sam Fuller film I had seen and it was before I knew anything about him. After watching Shutter Island, I had a burning desire to re-watch Shock Corridor, another film dealing with mental hospitals. Scorsese is on record as being a huge fan of this film, so I figured at some level he was influenced to make Shutter Island out of his love for Shock Corridor. After re-watching this, I can’t say that there’s any specific connection between the two, but it did make for an interesting pair of very different films.

Special Feature: Zatoichi – The Fugitive (1963)

J.P. and I are back with a double shot review of the fourth Zatoichi film, “The Fugitive.” Make sure you head over to his site at: http://jpfmovies.wordpress.com/ when you’re done here to read his thoughts on the film.

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The Fugitive [座頭市兇状旅] (1963)

Starring Shintaro Katsu, Miwa Takada, Masayo Banri, Toru Abe, Junichiro Narita, Katsuhiko Kobayashi

Directed by Tokuzo Tanaka

Expectations: Moderate.

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I love samurai films. I’ve heard great things about the Zatoichi series over the years, but I have yet to really dive head first into the world of the blind masseur. About five years ago, I saw the first film in the series and I was underwhelmed. Zatoichi had been built up to me as this amazing series of films, but I found the first film to be slow and just okay. I liked it enough to remain interested in the series, but I had shelved it in my mind for future times. Sometime between then and now, I saw the 2003 Takeshi Kitano remake. I used to really like his films, but again I was underwhelmed with his remake. I don’t remember a lot about it, but I do remember hating the very obvious computer generated blood effects in the film. Get a bag of blood and splatter it around. C’mon.