Brain Dead and Loving it!

Who would have thought that making a movie out of the World’s Greatest Comics Magazine would be such a challenge? Ever since their creation in 1961, the Fantastic Four had great movie potential, getting inspiration from the Lee-Kirby team’s vast array of monster comics, themselves galvanized by the trend of monster movies of the late fifties. The family dynamic of the super-powered quartet made room for rich interactions between the characters that went beyond any other team comics up to that point. And while it would take a certain time for the comic book series to achieve true greatness, but by the time it reached its 60 th issue, it had introduced to the World such memorable characters as Galactus, The Silver Surfer, the shape changing Skrulls, Doctor Doom, the Inhumans and the Black Panther, amongst others.  However, they seemed to translate poorly to other medias. The first animated cartoon by Hanna-Barbera in 1967 was cute enough, but like all other ca

    As I had mentioned in the first part of this article , I grew up watching wrestling on TV and reading comic books. But this took a whole new meaning when one late night, a French speaking channel aired a film called SANTO CONTRE LE TRÉSOR DE DRACULA ( SANTO EN EL TESORO DE DRÁCULA , René Cardona, 1969) in which a masked wrestler, who also just happened to be a world-renowned scientist, was using a time machine to peer into past lives and solve a mystery involving the infamous vampire. (A plot stolen almost word for word from the 1957 movie LA MOMIA AZTECA , but without the masked wrestler) It was far from being the best film of Santo’s productive career. But for the unsophisticated 8-year-old that I was, it was amazing. This masked Mystery Man was heroic, brilliant and kicked ass. Everything a hero-worshipping boy needed. But Santo wasn’t the first Masked wrestling hero in movies. That honour belongs to the Phantom Athlete ( L 'ATLETA FANTASMA by