Making his way to the ring... Dracula! (Part Two)

Last time around we explored the presence of Dracula – and some other famed horror characters – in the world of professional wrestling, and that link might be stronger than you thought thanks to the movies of El Santo. But let’s pause before we press on to look at the life and legend of the man himself.

In Mexico wrestling is not only hugely popular but also deeply embedded in popular culture. El Santo is probably the best-known luchador wrestler in his home nation, enjoying a wrestling career that spanned almost 50 years. His first matches took place in the mid-1930s – with some debate about his exact debut date – but his retirement match took place in 1982 when El Santo was sixty-five.

It’s also worth driving home the fact that El Santo was all but never seen anywhere without his mask – again, the luchador mask has a great cultural importance, and removing it is no small matter. The ‘mask vs mask’ match is a common way for significant wrestling storylines and feuds to end, with the loser revealing their face, perhaps for the first time, to the public. El Santo himself only revealed his face on television once, just a week before his death in 1984.

El Santo was what is known in the industry as a ‘face’ – the good guy of storylines and beloved by audiences – and was a folk hero to his generation, seen as a supporter of the common man and someone who always stood up for what was right and moral. And it made sense for this quality to be transmuted into film – El Santo was the star of more than fifty movies, the majority of which saw him fighting some sort of monster or villain.

El Santo took on Dracula three times – first in 1968’s Santo in the Treasure of Dracula, next in 1969’s Santo and Blue Demon (another beloved wrestler) vs The Monsters and then in 1972’s Santo and Blue Demon vs Dracula and The Wolf Man. Even before these, we had 1965’s Santo in Baron Brakola. Though you can’t quite consider this one an official Dracula appearance, the inspiration is clear from the name alone. The movies may have been formulaic, but the draw of El Santo as a comic-book-style hero meant that it simply didn’t matter.

The best-known is Santo in the Treasure of Dracula, where the luchador invents a time machine to seek out the aforementioned treasure and defeat the count, depicted here by Aldo Monti. You can check out that trailer on YouTube.

What was remarkable here is that there were two versions of this movie – one more family-friendly for audiences in Mexico and South America, and a second adult version produced for European distribution called The Vampire and Sex (right to the point). El Santo wasn’t featured in any of the scenes with nudity, rumour has it he was so uncomfortable with the idea that he requested the European version never be released, with this more adult version only being discovered in the 2010s. Even then it has rarely been screened, due in part to objections from Santo’s son, El Hijo del Santo. 

But if you ever wanted to see masked wrestlers duking it out with Dracula – not to mention Frankenstein (and Frankenstein’s Daughter), The Mummy, Martians, Headhunters and more besides – then the man is the silver mask is here for you…

Next time, we’ll be wrapping up our series with a look at vampires in wrestling!