Santo vs La Hija de Frankenstein (1972)

Screening as part of She’s a Maneater! Cannibalism, Consumption and Carnal Appetites, a programme of six repertory horror films, curated by Invisible Women, as part of Dundead Film Festival 2026.

In the cavernous laboratory of the brilliant (yet unhinged) Dr Freda Frankenstein (Gina Romand), death is merely a technical inconvenience. The daughter of the infamous doctor has spent centuries perfecting a rejuvenation serum that keeps both herself and her legion of henchmen alive far beyond their natural limits. But as the formula begins to fail, Freda’s hunger for youth grows ever more desperate. Her solution is as audacious as it is ruthless: capture legendary masked wrestler El Santo and harvest the mysterious regenerative properties hidden in his blood.

A gloriously pulpy entry in Mexico’s beloved luchador franchise, Santo vs Frankenstein’s Daughter pits the silver-masked hero against stitched-together monsters and mad science in a frantic chase through graveyards, caves and secret labs. Yet the true force driving the chaos is its formidable villainess. Armed with ruthless ambition and enormous helmet hair, Freda is less a traditional femme fatale than a power-hungry scientist determined to beat time itself — even if it means draining a national hero to do it.

While Santo provides the franchise’s signature heroic bravado, the film’s women prove far more capable than the genre usually allows. In many luchador adventures, female characters exist mainly to give the masked hero someone to rescue, but here the dynamic is playfully upended. Freda rules her operation with iron authority, while Santo’s kidnapped girlfriend Norma (Anel) and her sister Elsa (Sonia Fuentes) repeatedly escape their captors and rejoin the fight on their own terms. In this gleeful pulp collision of monsters, muscle and mayhem, the quest for eternal youth becomes a gloriously camp contest of wills.