Santo contra hombres infernales (Santo vs. the Infernal Men)
Mexico/Cuba, 1958
Director: Joselito Rodríguez
Main actors: El Santo, Joaquín Cordero, Fernando Osés, Gina Romand, Enrique Zambrano
Genre: Crime
Story
Joaquín arrives in Cuba from Mexico. Once in Havana he stays in a hotel and begins to notice that he is being watched. While visiting casinos he meets a young woman named Mirna, the two begin to date. He is very reserved about why he is in Cuba, and simply tells the girl that he must “solve some things”.
Meanwhile, an organization of smugglers operates in the waterfront. They make daily raids with their boats to pick up illegal goods. A mysterious masked man keeps an eye on them.
While Joaquín meets Mirna on the beach, a brawl breaks out near them. Two groups of individuals who appear to be bandits fight in a place. Joaquín intervenes, participating in the brawl on the side of one of the two factions. Then the police arrive and everyone flees, including Joaquín. He shoots one of the agents, which impresses the bandits, who agree to take him under their protection.
Joaquín tells them that he shot the agent because he “hates the police” and that he is a fugitive who fled to Cuba after robbing a bank in Mexico. He claims to have 200,000 pesos in his possession. The criminals who have taken him in happen to be members of the same organization that is involved in smuggling at the waterfront.
But in reality, Joaquín is not the criminal he claims to be in front of his new “friends”… He is a secret agent with the mission of infiltrating the gang to destroy it from within. To do so, he has the support of the enigmatic masked man, who is an expert in wrestling.
Although the smugglers initially seem to accept him as one of their own, not everyone trusts him. Joaquín’s attitude arouses suspicions among the most cunning bandits. Besides, among the criminals there are some who want to get their hands on the money that Joaquín supposedly stole in Mexico and took with him to Havana.
In love with Mirna, Joaquin fears for the girl’s safety in case the bandits discover that he is an infiltrator. The agent, in fact, is aware that he is being watched at all times.
When the smugglers find out that Joaquín is a “mole” and it seems that everything is already lost, an ally will come to his aid: Santo, the silver masked man…
Commentary
This curious film is interesting for several reasons. It can be considered a pioneer in its subject matter, since it was released before James Bond stories came to the big screen and spy films became fashionable; as well as long before successful police infiltration operations in Mafia groups in real life (such as the Donnie Brasco affair, made into a movie in 1997).
Moreover, this is one of the first films to feature Santo – a famous masked fighter and an iconic character of Mexican popular culture at the level of Cantinflas or Chavo del Ocho, who in the following decades would star in around fifty feature films of the most varied genres but always playing the same mysterious vigilante.
This “Santo vs. the infernal men” is specifically the second in which the masked man appears. Both this one and the first one (“Santo vs. the Evil Brain”) were directed by Joselito Rodríguez and shot in Cuba in 1958, when the Batista regime was about to collapse. In fact, several scenes are filmed in casinos, cabarets and hotels that would soon be closed after the triumph of Castro’s revolution.
The Saint is on this occasion a secondary character. The main character is Joaquín, played by the homonymous actor Joaquín Cordero, whom we saw in “El río y la muerte” (Luis Buñuel, 1954) and in “El libro de piedra” (Carlos Enrique Taboada, 1968). As soon as he arrives on the island he begins to communicate with other individuals (waiters, croupiers…) by means of cryptic messages on cigarette packets or matches. The director thus tries to build an atmosphere of intrigue, by not explicitly revealing until almost the end of the movie that these individuals and the mysterious protagonist are part of a network of secret agents – just like the even more mysterious masked fighter (whose name or nickname is never mentioned: In the credits he does appear as “Santo”, but throughout the story he is referred to simply as “the masked one”).
Being honest and objective, the film is tedious at times. There are several scenes making no sense, long minutes during which the plot does not advance. The only interesting thing here, is that it can be taken as a “documentary”; so we can see footage and feel the atmosphere of pre-Castro´s Cuba.
There are three musical scenes, among them a rather long flamenco show. They are not as many as in “El espectro del estrangulador” (René Cardona, 1966), where there are up to 8 (!), but we must bear in mind that the film lasts a little over 70 minutes, and that there is not much action in it.
It is obvious that the Saint’s voice is perceptibly different from that of the other films. No doubt this time it was someone else who dubbed him (in none of the films in which he intervened is his real voice heard).
The film is falsely classified as “horror” in Imdb. It is obvious that whoever calls it that has not seen it, and is only guided by the title – which in fact, with the epithet of “infernal”, leads to a mistake.
Also the name of the female character is incorrect in Imbd. It is not “Irma” but “Mirna”. The girl is played by the Cuban Gina Romand, a star of the famous Tropicana club who would later settle in Mexico, acquiring the nationality there and participating in dozens of films (among them several of the Saint).
According to imdb this “Saint vs. the Infernal Men” is from 1961, but that was the year of its premiere in Mexico. It was shot at the end of 1958 in Havana.
Get Santo, the Wrestler with the Silver Mask: A guide to all his films HERE!