From the period of 2009 until late Summer 2024 bet 95% of the things I viewed were from Japan and Korea with 80% of those being from Japan. That includes dramas, movies, concerts and J-Pop/Rock/Idol videos which were all so superb and watched many things numerous times. But should have had more variety as I will confess I was growing tired of being one dimensional so this ongoing 'My Current Watches' series has expanded my horizons quite a bit but have been amassing many older Japanese films and some recent Korean dramas so soon will be jumping back into those. When I take a long break from something I enjoy a lot it does seem better/more enjoyable on it's return so will have one or two more of these posts for what I've viewed from the Western part of the World before returning to Asia. EDIT: My new plan is to have two more posts in this vein before returning to Japanese and Korean shows/films. Am rewatching the fabulous "Person of Interest" series, want to review the fourth season in the next post. Then for the final post before starting back up on Asian things will finish off the second half of the tenth season of "Gunsmoke" and that could be my favorite series of all time!
Have twice said I would devote a whole post to the "Supernatural" series when I finally finished all fifteen seasons but won't be doing that.... yet! Just wrapped up the entire series on July 5th and had begun watching the long running series back in November 2024, did take a few months off here and there. So have forgotten so much of what took place in the first nine seasons as I've just briefly talked about the final six in these posts. There was a total of 327 episodes and had I viewed those in an extremely long marathon would have grown so tired of the series(or any) so glad I spaced it out. In about three-four months will begin on the series again and then discuss what happened in those first nine seasons as it'll be like viewing the show for the first time again. So will start up again on these brief recaps for the seasons and then will also have a pair(?) of posts devoted to all fifteen seasons. As far as American series go "Gunsmoke" is my #1 show, in almost a tie "Person of Interest" and Supernatural" are right behind but of the three would say this series has been the best one to view. My favorite parts of these posts are the intro section as I get to talk about things I usually wouldn't in regular posts. For today will discuss a bit about season fifteen and while not every season or episode was a classic there wasn't one dud which is very impressive. So will look at the final season in about three paragraphs plus a trio of women who were very important to the storylines. A strong positive about this series was that it featured many unknown actors/actresses as it was filmed in Canada and I think using no starlets was such a huge plus such as this first overly sweltering beauty.
Leading off this trio of Supernatural women is Emily Swallow and did mention her in a previous post. As you can see she is truly mesmerizing though there were others in this show who I thought were more attractive and that's because of my being a bit(a lot) odd! Emily is an American actress who was born in 1979 but think most of the cast were from Canada as it's so much cheaper to film there than in the U.S. She played the role of Amara who was introduced in season eleven then just made some guest spots over the next three years but Amara was key to the story in the final season. In the first picture above Amara is with her brother Chuck, that's his alias as the man is actually.... GOD! Which meant Amara was the sister of God and never knew he had one until this series. In a way Amara is a bit stronger and with her help the Winchester brothers Sam and Dean along with their angel friend Castiel and Lucifer's son Jack were able to defeat God before he destroyed Earth! Chuck aka God was introduced early in the series though we didn't see much of him for such a long time but was so key to the storylines in the final three seasons and it's impossible to give enough details in a few sentences or paragraphs.
One thing you could expect in this series was seeing many killed friends, enemies or even family of the Winchester brothers being resurrected. It happened so many times with mixed results, the most key character to come back to life was their mother Mary. Who in 1982 had been killed by a Demon, at the time Sam was four months old and Dean four years, she was 28 in time. Their father John had died at the beginning of season two and not much was mentioned about Mary for such a long time. At the end of the tenth season the archangel Castiel was able to bring Mary back to life but it was an act he shouldn't of done at the time and did cause the Winchesters a lot of grief. But their mother Mary was back in Sam and Dean's life to their amazement, she had been gone for 32 years so should have been sixty in life but appeared to only be around 45.
Mary did play an important role in the three seasons she was a semi-FT character, from the eleventh to the thirteenth seasons is when the main battles were with the ultra evil Lucifer. Mary was so key in the struggles to prevent Lucifer from gaining control of the world and she even led the troops in many battles in parallel dimensions! However near the end of season thirteen Mary had been slain by Lucifer's son Jack though it was an accident and at the end of the series it was Jack who now sat in God's throne! Mary was played by Samantha Smith who was born in 1969 and was 44-47 in age during her stint in the show. I think Samantha looked so darn terrific in a classy, under the radar way on "Supernatural" and she's a tall woman as her height is 68 inches. Mary too was a Hunter like her sons and could she give a Demon one brutal licking.... especially with her machete! EDIT: Along with her husband John she hailed from Lawrence, Kansas and the two sons did live there until adults. Mary's family had been a long line of Hunters and her father Samuel appeared in about ten episodes where he and some other relatives helped out the lads on their cases, Sam was named after his granddad. Samuel was played by Mitch Pileggi and X-File fans should recall him as he played asst. director Skinner on that classic series. Which had been my favorite American show for such a long time and I need to start back up on that series.
Jo was played by Alona Tal and she's another woman I talked about in an earlier "Supernatural" post. I have seen Alona in a few other things and she would be in my top five for hottest current American actresses, I really like her down to Earth yet ultra alluring look. Don't know if you've been able to tell by these posts and by my way of writing but if there's one group of women I can't stand at all are the Diva types! Or the ones that have to make a spectacle of themselves, I think those kind of females look vomit inducing(!) and that could be a major reason why I enjoy such shows as "Gunsmoke" so much. Alona was in the "Seal Team" drama and I do have the boxset though haven't viewed it yet. The first thirteen photos below are of Jo in the series, the final four are screenshots from Alona's current series "Cross", I haven't viewed it save for a few scenes and those bottom four are from when her character Kayla doffed her duds! That was very unexpected but Alona did look fabulous though a bit thin and she also repeated that doffing in another episode. After these terrific pics is a video of the scene where Jo and her mother Ellen died in that bomb explosion, right before Jo had received her first ever kiss from Dean.
A bit anti-climatic now as I've discussed quite a bit of "Supernatural" but will have one last segment for the fifteenth and final season. Which could have gone on longer but the producers felt it was better to go out on their own terms and not to be cancelled another year or two later. To me and many fans the series may not have been as good as the first five seasons but all in all I thought this was an excellent final twenty episodes and was better than the previous season. It's been almost six years since this show ended and sure there's been some discussions about bringing it back though it's never happened. When the series ended in 2020 Sam was 37 in age, Dean was 41 and the pair did go from being such young men in the beginning to being almost middle aged. Wonder how a part two to this show would go, bet one idea that's been tossed around is of the brothers finally settling down and having children but when this show ended Sam and Dean were in Heaven though as mentioned so many characters were resurrected so why not the Winchesters? Above is the box set I have and bought it cold as I knew zero about this classic series and I try to purchase shows I know so little about. $125 is a lot of money but this set was worth that price as there's 327 episodes on 83 discs plus a 68 page booklet. The episodes added up to be 13,700 minutes or close to 230 hours plus there were at least thirty hours of special features, for this final season there was a disc just of features that was over two hours long!
This series changed so much since from the first to the 327th episode. In that first show Sam was about to graduate from Stanford but showing up at his dorm was his older brother Dean, the pair hadn't been too close for a while. Dean was frantic with worry as their father John hadn't returned from a hunt and could Sam put everything behind him to help family? Yes he did and at first this series had a theme of a 'Monster a Week' which was similar to the "X-Files", that show was also filmed in Canada so many producers and writers worked on this show. In a way I did prefer that 'Monster of the Week' format but perhaps that would have grown stale for ten or more seasons. So gradually many different kinds of storylines were added in that lasted for five episodes or at times many seasons. It would take a hundred large posts to explain what took place in this series and of course there's no time for me to do so..... which means if you haven't viewed this show yet start today!!!! Along the way Sam and Dean hooked up with many good guys such as the archangel Castiel who was on the show for eleven seasons. But it was the evilness which made this show so compelling, for a long time my favorite character was Crowley who ended up being the King of Hell but met his demise at the end of season twelve.
In this final season of twenty episodes the Winchesters along with Castiel, Lucifer's son Jack and Crowley's mother Rowena were in an epic battle to stop God from destroying all that he had created! God aka Chuck had demolished every universe and galaxy he had made, only Earth remained for God enjoyed our planet the most! But the five mentioned along with God's sister Amara, the Queen of Death Billie and a few others were able to take down the almighty God in episode nineteen and God aka Chuck became a normal human being! The final show was a wrap-up to what happened with everyone, Castiel had been killed in the battle with God whose place was taken by Jack.... the son of the evil Lucifer! Early in this final show Dean was killed during a Vampire fight and went to Heaven, there he met his the family's old friend and ally Bobby Singer who was also a favorite of mine. Sam lived a normal life to the age of eighty, when he passed away of course he reunited with Dean in Heaven which made for a satisfying ending. So if there is a sequel to this series it would have to start there but that reboot would have to happen soon for in real life Jared Padalecki as Sam and Jensen Ackles as Dean are getting up there in age. Will take a break for a few months from this series and then begin on it again so you will see more posts for this must watch series in the future, of course this gets one of my highest recommendations ever! Will end off this first half of the post with many pictures of the two heroes Sam and Dean, following them is a video of the show's last three minutes. The final two pics are a comparison on how they aged from season one to fifteen, Dean didn't change much but Sam certainly did. After the video will have some obscure movie recaps and I love viewing those older, unknown ones. Not sure how many there will be but know the movies will all be from different countries.
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It's movie time and have already viewed two older 1960's films I had never seen before. Have no clue what the other 2-3 movies will be but sure they'll be decent and what's been so positive about this 'My Current Watches' series is that 90% of movies and dramas are ones I had never seen before. Been lucking out with most of my choices as most I know so little about when I obtain them, that's often not a good strategy for buying DVD's but in my case I prefer doing it that way but on occasion have had a clunker. Most of these older movies that I love are shorter ones, say 65-80 minutes which means there's no time for filler and it also means I can view two in a night. But these first two are 191 minutes in length so that's a little longer than most of my watches, both were enjoyable but the second was truly off the wall! First up is this 1963 British movie "The Man Who Finally Died", it had a mix of spying, mystery, conspiracy and noir which are my favorite type of themes so this could be the best of today's films. It did feature two actors that were very popular in England but they weren't stars in America though both are known. The man in the bottom pic above is Stanley Baker who played the lead role of Joe Newman in the film, he had also been known as Joachim Deutsch up to the age of nine. On the right in that lobby card is Peter Cushing and it's unbelievable how many movies he appeared in. Soon will be reviewing his 1965 movie "Dr Who and the Daleks", it was his only time playing that classic character. Let's get to this review and try to keep these are three paragraphs but have already used one for the intro. So may need to use four paragraphs for this mini review as I don't want to leave too much out, it was a 100 minute film and so much took place. The film was released in December 1963 but the time setting for this was in early October 1962 and most of the film took place in Bavaria.
Bavaria is of course an area of Germany but the town it was set in, Konigsbaden, was a fictional name. Most versions of this movie are 96 minutes but mine was a little over a hundred so it may have been the director's cut. In late September 1962 32 year old Joe Newman received a call at his London flat, it was from his father Kurtz in Bavaria pleading for his son to rush home for he needed help, the call lasted only ten seconds! That baffled Joe for he had always presumed his father had died in 1942 during a battle, now he's alive in 1962? The father had called Joe Joachim for that was his real name, Joachim Deutsch was born in Bavaria in 1930. That Joe knew and along with his mother had been sent to England to live with a relative when the war broke out in 1939. His mother died early on and his name was changed to Joe, he continued living in England and for all purposes was considered to be an Englishman. After that confusing call Joe arrived in Konigsbaden four days later, the confusion would soon hit a zenith. For after arriving in his hometown Joe noticed how he was being secretly tailed almost every second of the day but could never corner these 'spies'. As far as the increased confusion goes Joe went to the police to find out some info on his father, he did which is that the man died... seven days ago! How could that be for Joe received a call from Kutrz Deutsch four days ago, was he still alive or did he die a week ago? But to top it off why was the elder Deutsch reported killed in a 1942 war battle and needless to say Joe Newman was baffled to the Nth degree!
Right after that fruitless police station visit Joe visited his old home and don't think he expected to see anyone he knew. But still working there was the old housemaid Helga who was overjoyed to see Joachim(Joe) for the first time in 23 years but whenever he asked a question about his father or family Helga became exceedingly frightened and wouldn't answer any of his queries. Except for one which is that Kurtz hadn't been killed in a 1942 battle but had escaped from a prison camp with five others, he kept the secret of him dying as not to put him or his family in danger. Joe's father did get remarried to a much younger woman named Lisa, she's the blond woman below. Lisa didn't go into much detail but claimed Kurtz had died a week ago and was buried in Stuttgart which increased Joe's confusion, why be buried in a city a hundred miles away? Plus Joe's father was buried with a Catholic ceremony when he was of the Protestant faith! This and a few other disturbing facts Joe brought back to the police inspector Hofmeister and his assistant Hirsch, Joe was demanding they open the grave for he felt a different man was buried there! At first Hofmeister refused that out of control demand but a day later granted Joe's wish and was it because the inspector wanted to give a cohort more time to cover his tracks? Yes for we did learn later on that Hofmeister did have a role in this scheme but was never charged with a crime, there's not enough time to explain everything. Another puzzler for Joe was that another man was buried on the same day as his father which was September 26, 1962 and could the coffins have been switched which means Joe's father is still alive?
No and this is the last paragraph so will just give some highlights of the final forty very intense minutes. This series has been to give a brief recap of what took place and not describe everything that happened but what to expect if you view a film or drama. That second man was not buried in the grave of Kurtz Deutsch but something very fishy was still going on, seems with every new lead there's ten more questions to be answered. A key character was a man named Brenner who told Joe he worked for a huge German insurance firm and was following him for he too thought Joe's father was alive and his family was pulling a scam to get over a million pounds! But as it turned out Joe's father was dead and a man named Professor Shiller was pretending to be Joe's father, he was being held hostage in the Deutsch family mansion's attic and it was him who had called Joe in London. Shiller had known Joe's father in the war and when the father died Shiller took his identity as he knew quite a few scientific secrets the Russians wanted. Which is why he was hiding in the attic and in such a oddball chain of events it was because of Joe that the man's identity was revealed! For Brenner was not a German insurance agent but a high ranking KGB agent who had been sent to retrieve Shiller, the ending had two huge plot twists! Brenner kidnapped Shiller from Joe's family and was bringing him back to the USSR via a train, Joe happened to hop on before it departed. It was all for naught as Shiller would go back to Russia with this agent and told Joe he's tired of running, whatever side he worked for the other would always be devising a way to kidnap the elder scientist. Joe did end up killing Brenner in a thrilling fight but during it Shiller had escaped so there was no true ending to this intriguing film which to me was a fitting finale. This is the best of the today's four films and if you love the themes of spying, conspiracy, mystery, plot twists and intensity this is one movie I highly recommend. So much info was thrown at us I need to view this again to properly understand it all and that's okay as I enjoy watching my favorite films many times over.
This 91 minute movie's review should be shorter than the above one but so much craziness took place it could be harder to explain! This is the first true Italian film I've reviewed and think I've only seen a handful of others with "Black Sabbath" from 1963 being the best. EDIT: Oooops, forgot that a month ago did review a1961 horror flick which was decent but a few films is just the tip of the iceberg! In the 1960's and 70's Italy released so many films, perhaps only America and Japan released more. So in the future you will be seeing many more from Italy and their most common films are spy/espionage movies plus Westerns which may seem a bit odd but that's a popular type of film in Italy and Clint Eastwood's classic 1960's Westerns were filmed there. Sci-fi wasn't a common theme for Italian films but it was the story for "Star Pilot" that came out in 1966, in Italy it had the title of "2+5: Missione Hydra". **** Have to add in if you love campy and off the wall movies this is one I would recommend, it also featured two sizzling females as you can see above and in many below screenshots. The woman with the black hair was Leontine Snell, she had more screentime than anyone playing the role of Luisa Solmi and was the daughter of the scientist Solmi. Leontine was 33 when this movie was filmed but looked to be a decade younger, she didn't have an ultra busy career as she only appeared in twenty movies. While she was a hottie eclipsing her was the woman with red hair who was Leonora Ruffo who played the role of Kaena from the dying planet of Hydra. Leonora was one extremely alluring woman as you can see by these pictures, she passed away in 2007 at the age of 71. Wouldn't call it a problem but so many women I talk about in these reviews for 1960's films are either in their late eighties or have passed away. Quite a bit did happen in this film but will just have two more paragraphs, it did start out being a bit silly and campy but the last half hour was much more serious.
The lead character Luisa was a budding actress and at the top below was filming a commercial, she's not a star yet but to her it's only a matter of time! Luisa does come off as such an airhead but she's the smartest of all the characters, even more than her scientist father Solmi and she's the one who seemingly made the correct technical decisions! With only using two paragraphs to relate what took place means many things need to omitted but will tell you all of the key details. The island of Sardinia has seen a huge rise in radioactivity, the professor Solmi and his assistants were sent there to figure out the cause. Also tagging along was his daughter Luisa along with the man Paolo, not her steady beau but was a friend of the family and was quite smart. On the island the group was met by a trio of spies from China who wanted to steal the professor's secrets and also the object that was causing the radioactivity! Did say this movie had some bizarre moments and the cause of the island's problems was a spaceship that was lodged underground and could only be accessed via a cave. The ship was from the dying planet of Hydra and had been in the ground for two years, it's small crew needs to depart soon or they'll die on Earth. The group had come to this planet to discover how humans were dealing with nuclear energy and bombs, not so well they discovered! The ships' leader was the sultry Kaena and she knew Solmi would be sent to the location which was a blessing for her as only he would know how to repair their ship. Which the professor did but the aliens from Hydra ended up kidnapping him, Luisa, Paolo and four others to bring back to their planet, two of the Chinese agents had died fighting the aliens who looked like humans.
Final segment and Luisa was one conniving woman who tried to seduce one of the aliens who was named Belsy, unsure if the relationship ended up a success. The Hydra leader Kaena wanted to bring the Earthlings back to her planet though she did have a soft spot for Paolo and agreed to make one final stop on Earth. Time in space is very different, it seemed to the humans they were gone for only a week or so but upon landing in Rome they discovered years had passed and all of humanity was extinct! A nuclear war had occurred while they were in space so in a way Kaena had saved humanity from completely disappearing, with no reason to stay the group traveled to the planet of Hydra. Which was also completely devastated and Kaena thought her race was also extinct due to a nuclear war. However there were a few remaining beings who are in the bottom screenshot, Kaena explained to her people that the Humans were a good race and with them perhaps the two can start another race of beings?! That's how the film ended and there easily could have been a sequel to this but it never happened as it was such a minor and obscure movie. Which isn't a must watch but turned out to be better than I expected, the final half hour was quite interesting with some suspenseful moments so it's worth checking out, especially for the Hydra leader Kaena/Leonora Ruffo! There's a trailer after the screenshots, it's only so-so quality wise and was the only one on YT for this semi-obscure movie. There are two versions of the film on YT but both are shorter than this 91 minute version which is the one that was released in Italy.
Not going in exact order as this was the final movie I watched for this post and wanted to end off with a film from a series that's becoming a favorite of mine. Germany is another country that released so many movies in the 1960's and 70's yet think this film from 1966 is the first German movie I've ever viewed, will have another in my next post. The woman above played the medium sized role of Janice Dickens in this film which though a German movie was set in London and will explain why. But first the woman who played Janice was Christa Linder and in the movie she wasn't overly alluring but you knew she was as the photos prove above! She was born in 1943 in Austria and is still alive, in 1962 Crista represented Austria in the Miss Universe pageant and how didn't she not win???? A very popular genre in Germany from 1959 to ~'66 was a term that the Germans coined Krimi, it started to wane around the time when this movie was released. Krimi means Crime Fiction, mysteries and thrillers which often featured a crime case such as this film. The most popular ones were written by Edgar Wallace who was from Britain and died in 1932. He was very popular in Germany so many of his stories were made into films which is why they were set in England but the cast were all German and so wasn't the film's language. I can get many more of these Wallace inspired films and just may do so but the next German film I view wasn't based on a story of his. This second to last film is titled "Strangler of the Tower", the names of the cast are English ones yet as mentioned these movies were filmed in the German language. Won't go in exact order of events as we learned a key detail at the very end, will begin with that and then give a brief recap of what else took place.
In 1920 a team of archeologists discovered a huge and priceless emerald in Sima(Thailand) which was called the Parvati, it was soon shipped to India. In 1936 an English archeologist yet criminal Livingstone stole the emerald from a museum and fled to England. When the bombing of London took place Livingstone's house was destroyed and it was presumed he died plus the Parvati disappeared, not much thought was given to it for many years. However the Parvati was intact and so wasn't the devious owner of it Livingstone who for 24 years had been living in an underground bunker which seems hard to believe and can only be reached via a boat!. The Parvati had been stolen a second time by a pair of brothers who were also jewelers, they were John and Edward Clifton who were played by the same actor, they had cut the priceless emerald into five pieces and sold four. Over the years Edward had run afoul of the law and was presumed living abroad but was actually staying on a vast estate owned by the popular mystery writer Grace Harrison. She was the owner of one of the five Parvati pieces which are worth over 150,000 pounds though it could have been higher. That's Grace in the second screenshot, she had called the woman in the third picture who was Lady Trenton, she too owned a Parvati piece. Another owner was a wealthy woman named Mary Wilkins, that's her in the first screenshot. The movie opened with her getting strangled and the Parvati being ripped from her neck by a goon working for Livingstone. She had a 21 year old daughter named Jane who was played by Crista Linder, not a huge role but an important one. Another important character was the Scotland Yard inspector who is in the fourth and fifth screenshots, also many more. Jane informed the inspector Harvey her mother rarely wore the real Parvati out of the house and the one ripped from her throat was a fake, she would bring the real emerald to Scotland Yard that evening. That never happened as while on the phone to the inspector that pair of hooded men below broke into Jane's house, when she wouldn't give them the real Parvati they kidnapped her and Jane wasn't freed until the very end of the film. The group that abducted her was named the Brothers of Retributive Justice and it seemed their only mission was getting back four of the Parvati pieces which came so close to happening.
With her mother dead Jane was in line to inherit quite a vast sum of Pounds along with the estate. The Brothers organization refused to release Jane until she had signed over the rights to that inheritance, she had refused to due so and if that continued the penalty would be death! Very soon two more owners of a Parvati emerald would be killed by strangulation, hence the movie's title. First off was the mystery writer Grace Harrison and then a man we had only briefly met who was a trainer of horses, Sir Humphry. This left just two of the five left, Lady Trenton and the jewelry store owner John Clifton. This was a real Whodunit for we viewers were kept in the dark about so many things until the end. That didn't happen with inspector Harvey who felt Lady Trenton was behind the killings, he was just partially right but his assumption did solve the case. For he had found out about the Brothers of Retributive Justice organization and with his assistant had snuck into one of their rituals, good timing as Jane would have been slain in a ceremony. Lady Trenton was a member of this hooded group but in a shocker the leader ended up being the Clifton brother Edward who all thought had fled England. This group was acting on behalf of the devious owner of the original Parvati emerald owner Livingstone and that threw the inspector for such a loop! There was no happy ending for Harvey as Livingstone had four of the five pieces of the emerald he had stolen thirty years prior. He had hopped onto a boat in his underground cave and zoomed off to wherever, Inspector Harvey did solve the crime and save Jane's life but the main culprit was able to escape with the loot!!!! Those unexpected endings are always nice to see instead of a very happy one though wish we viewers weren't kept in the dark about key details for so long. But overall this was a movie I did enjoy and will be watching more of these Edgar Wallace movies along with others from Germany. Couldn't find a trailer for the movie but there was a clip of the opening two minutes so you can see what a dark and noir movie it was, that's after these screenshots. Did have to leave some info out to make this a brief review but keeping these short is the main reason for this 'My Current Watches' series and will always talk about the main points of whatever I viewed.
We've hit the end, usually have been reviewing five films but just four for today as the intro section was quite long, it takes a while to create these kinds of posts but I take a bit of pride in how terrific they turn out to be!!!! This is the fourth El Santo movie I've reviewed, that means The Saint in Spanish but often the El isn't used. I gave quite a bit of bio info in those three recaps so won't spend much time talking about our hero Santo today and what a massive hero he was in Mexico for about four decades! His real name is Rodolfo Guzman who was born in 1917, a week before he died in 1984 Rodolfo finally revealed his true identity as he always wore his mask in public. Rodolfo starred in all 51 Santo movies, I have six but will work to obtain more. The first three movies I recapped were in B &W, this 1968 film "The Treasure of Montezuma" is the first color one of Santo I've seen. In Mexico Montezuma is spelled Moctezuma and the treasure was a real one that was lost in an early 1500's battle between the forces of Montezuma and the victor Cortes. In the movie the treasure was presumed buried forever or even could have just been an urban legend but it's now come to the attention of Interpol the treasure is real and a secret yet powerful Hong Kong criminal organization is after the treasure which could be worth billions! Santo can do it all to protect Mexico and the Earth, in other films he's fought Martians, Vampires, Werewolves and many demonic types with of course Santo coming out on top. In this film he has a partner who was named Jorge Rubio, he was played by Jorge Rivera and in real life he had been the tag team partner of Santo. Later on Rivera would become a huge star in his own right, he was a handsome man but in these films Santo has to keep reminding Jorge to cool it with the women as it's gotten then in danger many times, it happened in this film too!
In the beginning we learned that Santo is also an agent for Interpol, he seemingly can do it all and also an agent was Jorge. Below is the Interpol director calling from Paris and letting Santo know of the danger about to befall Mexico because of the Hong Kong criminal group hunting for Montezuma's treasure. Such a find could benefit the people of Mexico immensely, if the goons were to get it that could spell serious trouble for the rest of the world. Some weeks before Jorge had been entrusted to safeguard a green emerald ring, he had no clue why but that was soon to be very important to the story. The Hong Kong group is in the third screenshot, after that are some of Santo and Jorge in the wrestling ring. This was a 77 minute film, about a dozen minutes were of wrestling and all films will have much of that for that's why viewers would view the movies! At the time Santo(Rodolfo) was 51 in age but he was still quite fit and seemed to do all of his stunts. That womanizing of Jorge almost got the pair in trouble as he was seduced by a woman named Maria, Santo arrived just in time to save his close mate from being killed and to prevent that green emerald ring from being stolen. Santo then realized the emerald had to be very key to Montezuma's treasure or why else would Interpol have Jorge safeguard it? They went to the Interpol HQ where a scientist took the emerald to study, this was also a bit of a James Bond inspired movie as the wrestlers were given such gadgets as mini bombs and cameras that could transmit their movements no matter where they were, they did help save Jorge's life though he too was such a strong and agile wrestler.
That Interpol scientist did discover a microfilm in the green emerald ring, the film was a map and it showed the exact location of Montezuma's treasure! Which was located in the city of Texcoco which is 25 km NE of Mexico City but before the scientist could notify Santo of this key information he was slain by the Hong Kong thugs who would become the first to find the treasure. Interpol was strapped for agents but could sent one extra to help out Santo and Jorge, her code name would be Lotus Flower. The pair seemingly didn't meet the woman agent but Jorge did hook up with a blonde who is in the middle below, while a small role she was key to the case. Santo and Jorge discovered the dead scientist at his Interpol lab but he had left a recording of where the treasure was, off to Texcoco went our heroes! Who arrived just a tad too late as the gang had taken much of Montezuma's treasure but there was so much they had to leave half behind. Being an Interpol agent means having some detective skills so Santo had deduced the gang would be heading to San Francisco and then on to the Orient, they have to be stopped at all costs!
Santo and Jorge did catch up with the Hong Kong gang at sea who were using a battleship to move the treasure, there was so much even a battleship wasn't large enough! Santo could even fly a plane but it was shot down by the ship with him and Jorge falling into the sea. But arriving via a yacht was the blonde woman Jorge had met days before, it was the Interpol agent Lotus Flower! She had kept her identity a secret from all in case such a situation such a this arose. The trio headed to Tijuana to thwart the gang who had stopped there for refueling with Santo's goal of course getting the treasure back, that was a partial success and it was the first time I've seen Santo use a gun, Jorge was an ace marksman. Used partial success for Lotus Flower was killed in the raid when she jumped in front of Santo to prevent him from getting hit by a bullet! So she died a hero and the treasure of Montezuma was returned to Mexico but it wasn't an entirely happy ending for our wrestling/spy heroes. That makes it four Santo movies for me and everyone has been a winner, at times there is some cheesiness but that makes these more enjoyable and hope I can find many more of these Santo movies. Searched high and low but couldn't find a trailer for this movie which did surprise me. So after the screenshots is a trailer for the 1973 movie "Santo vs. Doctor Death", looks like that one too could be a must watch!
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