Santo contra los jinetes del terror

A bunch of angry lepers escape an institution, turn into outlaws, raid a town, and attract the attention of some local badmen who want to team up with them to wreck havoc. Enter a good hombre with a silver mask: El Santo, who shall restore peace.

El Santo (born Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta) was a professional wrestler, who by the end of the 1950s had become one of Mexico’s biggest comic book icons and movie stars. Live at venues like the Arena México, on the pages of Santo, el enmascarado de plata, and on screens all over the nation, Santo battled miscreants of all ilks, making sure that good always prevailed!

Santo contra los jinetes del terror is in several ways an oddity. Firstly, because it’s Santo’s only outing in the Wild West. Secondly, because it should have introduced eroticism into the otherwise family-friendly Santoverse, but didn’t as the producers lost their nerve. Thankfully, Viviana García-Besné, scion of the Calderón production empire and founder of the Permanencia Voluntaria archive, was able to digitally restore the film to its true original form.

– Olaf Möller