Blue Demon contra cerebros infernales (1968) User Reviews

Blue Demon!

[BandSAboutMovies · 6/10 · 31 July 2021]

If you have an issue with seeing brains outside of skulls, perhaps this is a movie to avoid, as it seems like the main story thrust of this is to show brains as often as possible, but there's also plenty of neon-hued labs, swinging go-go dance numbers, Blue Demon wrestling matches, future science that never really came true and Noé Murayama, the son of a Japanese dentist, as a mad scientist with female zombies in his employ.

Director Chano Urueta also made one of the most deranged movies I've ever delighted to see more than twenty times, El Baron del Terror. He worked on several of Blue Demon's movies and the Los Leones del Ring series, which had Jorge Rivero as twin luchadors. He started making movies as far back as 1928 and his career lasted the whole way up until 1974. Ureta also acted in several movies and shows up in Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.

The best thing about a 1968 lucha movie is that it combines so many things that you love into one big combo. To wit: Eurospy movies, evil - and good - women in miniskirts and high boots (and occasionally berets), Adam West Batman-inspired sets, a caveman wrestling and so much more.

For some reason, it was decided that Blue Demon should have some superpowers in this film, so he learns how to teleport. He also can run through walls which is a great power to have.

I love the solo Blue Demon movies because I'd rather see him as a hero with agency instead of the foil or second banana to Santo. He just seems to try harder than the competition.

Blue Demon Comes Of Age

[kikaidar · 2 December 1999]

This was one of the first Blue Demon films that I actually saw, though I'd been aware of the character for some years prior. As I now operate a lucha cinema web page and collect lucha film art, I'm still in fairly regular contact with the film on one plane or another.

In a genre noted for markedly varying textures and styles, B D CONTRA CEREBROS INFERNALES -- and its companion feature BLUE DEMON CONTRA LAS DIABOLICAS -- shared a sort of mod/pop glitz.

Both shared a blaring, vaguely James Bondian theme and several oddball, pastel-spotted op art set panels. Also, unlike the earlier Santo entries, the Demon of this period lives in a more cosmopolitan venue, where wicked scientists and jewel thieves can easily hop a jet to take the plotline to distant locales.

Not that things are all skittles and beer for our hero. The Demon drives pot luck -- and shared pot luck at that. The Barracuda he drives in CEREBROS is donated to the villain of DIABOLICAS. For the latter, the Demon has to make due with a Harley.

Significantly, the Demon found himself paired with David Reynoso and Ana Martin, who spent much of both films exchanging fawning cow eyes. This is a throwback to the earlier genre films, where the masked hero du jour waves goodbye and speeds away as the love interest manifests itself in a final clinch between the second string leads. At about this time, Santo as engaging in the occasional lip lock in his own films (a bit jarring, as he maintained his mask in these sequences).

In their defense, Reynoso and Martin are far less irritating than, say, Fernando Cassanova and Ana Bertha Lepe, who served as the love interest in three of Santo's earliest flicks...

Intriguingly, the Demon acquires powers in this film -- gaining the ability to literally run through a solid wall without visible damage. He also picks up the ability to teleport rather uncertainly about, though whether this indicates a true supernatural nature (as he had in EL MUNDO DE LOS MUERTOS) or is some fluke of science is a bit unclear.

Overall, it's an enjoyable little watch, though nowhere as gleefully over-the-top as the films which pitted the Demon against supernatural creatures...