Samson vs. the Vampire Women
| Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro | |
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| Directed by | Alfonso Corona Blake |
| Produced by | Alberto López |
| Written by | Alfonso Corona Blake Rafael García Travesi Antonio Orellana Fernando Osés |
| Starring |
Santo Lorena Velázquez Jaime Fernández Augusto Benedico María Duval Javier Loya Ofelia Montesco |
| Cinematography | José Ortiz Ramos |
| Edited by | José W. Bustos |
| Distributed by | Azteca Films Inc. |
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Release date
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Running time
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89 minutes |
| Country | Mexico |
| Language | Spanish |
Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro (also known as Samson vs. the Vampire Women) is a 1962 horror film starring the wrestling superhero Santo. The film was featured on a 1995 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The film was also featured on the television show Cinema Insomnia. It is Santo's best-known movie outside of Mexico, and is also considered one of his best. Its production values are better than many of his earlier films, and there was an attempt at creating more of a mythos and background for Santo, as the last of a long line of superheroes. It was an enormous success at the box office. Only four of the 52 Santo films were ever dubbed into English, the other 48 being only available in Spanish. The English-dubbed Mexican films of that time period were imported to the United States through the efforts of K. Gordon Murray who changed the name of Santo to "Samson" for some of his releases. Most of Murray's imported Mexi-films went directly to late-night American TV. The "What Culture" website summarized it thus: "Vampire Women emerged during a peak in popularity for horror films in Mexico, so the film takes visual cues from the Universal and Hammer Dracula pictures and even throws in a Professor in the Peter Cushing mold. He’s not the hero, of course, just a supporting character who recruits Santo to save his daughter from an army of vampires. In common with the Hammer films of the time, the female vampires are all astonishingly beautiful, yet the men are about as far removed from Christopher Lee as it’s possible to get. Impossibly muscular and about 100 years too contemporary to be believable, the actors look ill at ease in their cheap rubber capes and don’t really come into their own until they attempt to take Santo in a headlock."
Vampire women are awakened by their leader, The Evil One, in order to find him a bride. A local professor's daughter is kidnapped and he calls Santo to get her back.
The film was featured in the season 6 finale of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was Frank Conniff's final episode before departing the series, and is said to have been chosen because of Conniff's fondness for Mexican wrestler movies.
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