Basically, these first two El Santo films are silver & shiny time capsules. 

“Silver” & “Shiny” as El Santo’s mask. Get it?

Santo Vs The Evil Brain

El Santo is hypnotized by the evil Dr. Campos (played by legendary Mexican actor “Joaquin Cordero”, wearing fake facial hair & glasses) and for almost 30 minutes the silver masked luchador is guarding the mad doctor’s laboratory while he’s doing some mind-controlling experiments on others. It isn’t until another masked luchador who’s called “El Incognito” (played by real-life luchador, actor & screenwriter of the film “Fernando Oses”) finds El Santo and gets him back to normal.

The rest of the film consists of Cuban mobsters out & about and finding out that Dr. Campos is working alongside them. El Santo being back to normal now—becomes the hero of this story & it all goes the way you think it goes. And how is that? Wonderful. We also have to credit El Incognito as well though because he too is the hero of this story. 

The first film El Santo starred in “Santo Vs. The Evil Brain” goes in many directions, but it all intertwines at least. The film’s title makes it sound like it’s going to be a full-on science-fiction feature, but really this film leans in more towards being a film-noir with a slight sci-fi aspect. Luckily for most of us nerdy genre fans, we love film-noirs just as much as something with a monster or supernatural entity. 

As mentioned before, Santo Vs. The Evil Brain is 1 of 2 films that El Santo starred in & were shot in Havana, Cuba. Like a lot of Mexican filmmakers from the past, director Joselito Rodriguez & the producers, the writers & most of the cast of Santo Vs. The Evil Brain made another film at the very same time and that is Santo Vs. infernal Men. 

Santo Vs. Infernal Men

In Havana, Cuba (again), El Santo is helping undercover agent “Joaquin” (Mexican actor “Joaquin Cordero”, without the false facial hair & glasses) investigate a gang of drug smugglers. Joaquin has managed to infiltrate the gang and is constantly put in very dire situations with them. El Santo is always close by to Joaquin, keeping an eye out & helping when danger arises. He swims a lot, too.

Santo Vs. Infernal Men is a film-noir all the way through since there’s no science-fiction aspect like Evil Brain has. In this film we mostly just see villainous men brandishing guns & fighting with their mighty fists. The undercover agent Joaquin is the actual main character of the film, despite El Santo getting top-billing & his name being in the film’s title. 

El Santo here is more of a shadow to the main character, rather than being the lone hero as he later on became. It is however still intriguing to see El Santo helping out the undercover agent Joaquin because he really needs it. Joaquin is constantly worried of being found out & it also doesn’t help that he’s putting his lover Irma (Cuban-Mexican blonde bombshell Gina Romand) in danger. An extra set of muscles is clearly needed here.

You’d think saving innocent lives from the dangers of Cuban mobsters & evil doctors were enough for El Santo, but clearly not. This was only the beginning for this iconic & heroic luchador who later went on to battle far more crazy antagonists and in the most peculiar places. 1950’s Havana, Cuba was the most normal place El Santo had ever been in. Seriously.

Armando Hernández of Trash-Mex is a Chicano writer & film programmer of many Mexican genre films of the past.

13 years of his work can be found at trash-mex.com & instagram @trash_mex_