The most fun I've had with a Santo picture since "Santo Contra Las Mujeres Vampiros" (a.k.a. "Samson Vs. The Vampire Women"). This one's delightfully loopy... Gina Romand's over-the-top histrionics, combined with Santo's energetic daring-do and accompanied by a bizarre, Wall of Voodoo-goes-lounge-lizard score, makes for solid 'So Bad It's Good' entertainment. One scene in particular, in which Romand gives injections of youth serum to an assembly of elderly, decrepit geezers who then start writhing and howling in agony, had me convulsing with laughter. Interestingly enough our stoic hero loosens up in this one - he cheekily flirts with his girlfriend's sister and even blurts out a curse word! It's also bloodier than one expects for a Santo movie; the fights with the monsters are more brutal than is customary for such kiddie-friendly fare. The fact that Santo battles the exact same simian-human hybrid that appears in 1968's "Night Of The Bloody Apes" - created by the same method and played by the same actor/stunt man in identical makeup - begins to establish some kind of weird pelicula universe where these goofy plots are somehow all intertwined.
