CHAMPIONS OF JUSTICE

d. Federico Curiel (1971)

I never thought I'd ever think there were too many wrestlers in a film, but this mayhem filled Mexican melange presents us with seemingly dozens of Luchadors, all masked, and pretty much interchangeable. Blue Demon (the star of 20 such films and, after Santos, the biggest name in Mexican wrestling at the time) is easy to identify, as is the Killer Doctor (he wears whites), but the rest are all much of a muchness: swarthy, beefy, semi-naked masked men sucking in their tummies and hitting people with their thick forearms. I was most drawn to the Man of a 1,000 Masks, who had great but sadly unfulfilled potential, but, as you might expect, he kept changing masks all the time, so that was confusing, too. Luckily, the story is as easy as paella, and just as tasty.

A super villain / evil scientist (I didn’t even catch his name, doesn’t matter) has iimbued a bunch of wrestling midgets with super strength, and is using them to try and take over the world. Nobody stands in his way, except twenty motor bike riding, big fisted full size wrestlers, of course, and they are more than up for a scrap – they’re champions of justice, after all.

In terms of sheer silliness it's hard to top, but they certainly do string things out - as an example, we see the alchemic process that turns 'just pathetic midgets' (their words, not mine) into human dynamos in great detail - not once, not twice, but thrice. It's just padding, which is disappointing given the amount of characters they have to play with. 

The finale, however, makes up for the sometimes languid pace by being a glorious and fast moving free for all which is excruciatingly entertaining, although you can’t help but cringe every time a little person gets booted in the air or thrown through a window.  There's also something wonderful about the expository scenes: a load of men standing around in their underpants talking very seriously about tactics. When you chuck in incidental details like the Luchadors all having sexy young 'god daughters' who are competing against each other in a beauty contest, it all becomes a little delirious.