El barón Brakola (1967)

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Director:

José Díaz Morales

Writers:

José Díaz Morales (writer)
Rafael García Travesi (writer)

Release Date:

27 January 1967 (Mexico)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Fantasy | Horror | Mystery | Thriller

Plot Keywords:

Hidden Chamber | Superhero | Coffin | Female Vampire | Dungeon

Cast

Santo	...	Santo
Fernando Osés	...	Baron Brákola
Mercedes Carreño	...	Silvia
Antonio de Hud	...	Eduardo
Andrea Palma	...	Rebeca's mother
Ada Carrasco	...	Aurora
Susana Robles	...	Rebeca
Miguel Macía	...	Don Fernando
Manuel Arvide	...	Don Luis
Rosa Vinay
Jorge Fegán	...	Servant
Cesar Gay
Enrique Ramírez
Jorge Mateos
Roberto Porter

Also Known As:

Santo vs. Baron Brakola (USA) (video box title)

Runtime:

Mexico:77 min

Country:

Mexico

Language:

Spanish | English

Color:

Black and White

Filming Locations:

Mexico

Company:

Filmica Vergara S.A.

Yet another diabolical count vs. the Man In The Silver Mask

Fernando Oses played a pivotal role in the development and lines taken by lucha cinema during the 1960s and 1970s. When an injury prevented his continuing to work as a wrestler, Oses found other, steady work in the movies.

After a stint playing a masked hero (not a wrestler), La Sombra Vengadora, Oses found steady work playing henchmen in many of El Santo's films. More importantly, he wrote the screenplays or stories used in many genre films.

As Baron Brakola, Oses finally played a lead role. The film is a little loopy but the usual fun stuff you can generally expect from one of Santo's adventures.

The film is the work of produced Luis Enrique Vergara, a cut-rate producer who made some of the first lucha films produced in Mexico. Santo, after appearing in two films lensed in Cuba, briefly worked for Vergara before better offers lured him elsewhere.

Unwilling to lose his foothold in the lucha film market, which already showed promise, Vergara hired both Blue Demon and (then the Demon was unable to work following a ring injury) Mil Mascaras. All three wrestlers continued to make genre films after these poverty row beginnings.

The action opens in the past with an ancestor of El Santo (a character also shown in the later film, WORLD OF THE DEAD), who also fights against evil. In so doing, he goes up against rich but unsavory Baron Brakola, who's interested in a local girl, Rebecca. When she refuses him, the Baron is incensed. The girl's family calls in Santo's ancestor to prevent tragedy, but Brakola turns the girl into a vampire. The best the silver-garbed hero can o is drive a steak through her heart, releasing her spirit.

Brakola returns to his coffin and we shift to the present.

Brakola assaults a descendant of the dead girl's family, and Santo enters into the fray. The Baron is after the man's daughter, meaning to make her a vampire as well.

Sensing history about to repeat itself, Brakola replaces one of Santo's ring foes and attacks him in an athletic match. He fails to kill Santo, though, and the wrestler finds a map to the Baron's home. He arrives there to again confront the Baron in another fight, before staking him into permanent submission.