REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:


DOCTOR OF DOOM. Cinematográfica Calderón S.A., Mexico, 1963. Originally released as Las luchadoras contra el médico asesino. Young America Productions Inc., US, English dubbed version. Lorena Velazquez, Armando Silvestre, Elizabeth Campbell, Roberto Canedo, Chucho Salinas, Chabela Romero — and Gerardo Zepeda as “Gomar.” Written by Alfredo Salazar. Directed by Rene Cardona. American version produced by K. Gordon Murray.

   A film of surreal badness and genuine delight, this one has it all: wrestling women, mad scientist, ape-man, gangsters….. everything but cowboys, and I suspect they may have been in the original Mexican version.

   In fact, it may be impossible to fully appreciate the vision of Luchadoras/Asesino from what “Mexploitation” producer K. Gordon Murray turned into Doctor of Doom, but enough survives to boggle the mind.

   The plot is admirably straightforward: A mad doctor (imaginatively dubbed “The Mad Doctor”) has been kidnapping women off the street and removing their brains. We know, but the police don’t, that the flakey physician has been trying to transplant the brain of a gorilla into their skulls — always a project of dubious medical value, but there you are — but they tend to die once their brains are removed; thoughtless of them.

   (See what I did there? “Thoughtless?”) Anyway, I should add here for the sake of clarity that we don’t see The batty bone-setter’s face, but he’s aided by a cringing medical assistant, a bunch of small-time hoods, and a half-man/half-ape named Gomar, who has super strength and can be fitted with a bullet-proof suit when the heat is on.

   So right away we have the quintessential elements of old horror films and serials. The Police (Canedo & Salinas) are puzzled, in the time-honored tradition of monster-movie cops, but things take a turn when the demented doctor snatches the sister of pro-wrestler Gloria Venus (Lorena Velazquez, who looks unsettlingly like young Mary Tyler Moore) who also happens to be Canedo’s girlfriend. Joined by Golden Rubi (Campbell) the cops and the grapplers set out to get the bad guys.

   Which doesn’t involve a lot of detective work, because the screwy scientist has decided that what he needs for his project is a female wrestler (only logical when you stop to think about it) and while Venus and Rubi are after him, his hoods and Gomar are after them.

   Hang on a minute. I need to say here that because of legal restrictions south of the border in those days, this was made (ostensibly) as three short episodes which were then combined into a single feature film. Go figure. Anyway, the goons out after the girls kidnap the cops instead (!?) who are then rescued by the wrestling women, and everything ends happily except that the cracked quack has escaped with Gomar.

   Part two is more of the same, this time with an emphasis on discovering the real identity of the potty professor. Since there’s a character who’s been hanging around since chapter one trying to be helpful and pleasant, well… draw your own conclusions. Suffice it to say that we get more kidnappings, a fracas in the same Mad Lab that got busted up previously, and a fire that leaves the daffy doctor disfigured and thirsty for revenge.

   All this, though, was just a set-up for the Big Finish, as the paranoid practitioner captures another wrestling woman, plants Gomar’s brain in her skull, thus giving her super-strength (!?!) and sets her up as a masked rival wrestler to kill Gloria Venus in the ring, in a baroque vengeance worthy of Fu Manchu or a Sergio Leone Western, the whole thing wrapping up like a bizarre mix of Rocky and White Heat.

   What Doctor of Doom lacks in finesse — and it lacks a lot — it makes up in exuberance and a not-quite innocent charm, like an old Mascot serial or a horror flick from PRC. Director Rene Cardona, who launched wrestling super-star Santo into a cinematic career, handles it with just the right slap-dash energy and enough inattention to detail to keep things in constant motion.

   I’ll only add for you trivia completists out there that Doctor of Doom launched Lorena Velazquez into a short-lived series (see Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy) and even Gerardo Zepeda returned as Gomar in a semi-remake that surfaced here as Night of the Bloody Apes.