1973 Santo and the Blue Demon vs. Dracula and the Wolf Man

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Posted By: Brian Schell October 24, 2025

Synopsis

We begin with a wrestling match between Santo and the White Angel. Santo wins the first fall. The Angel wins the second.

Meanwhile, we cut to a crypt. A man prays to Satan, talking about how there have been seven eclipses since the magician Cristaldi killed Count Dracula and the werewolf. Tonight, the blood of another Cristaldi will spill.

We see Professor Luis Cristaldi with his family; daughter Laura and a granddaughter. They talk about the wrestling match and wonder how it ended. Of course, Santo has won the third fall and the match. As Santo goes back to the dressing room, he’s told that his girlfriend Lina’s uncle has something important to tell him. They go to see Professor Cristaldi.

He has gotten a note saying it’s time for him and his entire family to pay their debt. “The power of the avengers reaches everywhere.” Both Santo and Laura think it’s just a tasteless joke, but the old man thinks otherwise. He reads from a book about Count Dracula making an alliance with the king of the werewolves to dominate humanity. Their ancestor, Eric Cristaldi, found out about the plan and stopped it, killing Dracula and the werewolf with a magic dagger. Dracula swore to return, and all signs point to it happening now. Crisaldi is a scientist, but since there are things that science cannot explain, he believes all this. He even has the dagger. He’s old, so he doesn’t fear for himself, but he is worried about his daughter, granddaughter, and niece. Santo promises to protect them.

Eric, the Satan-worshiper, goes to talk to his gang and while there, grabs a bottle of chloroform. Old Man Cristaldi gets ready for bed and the Satanist jumps out of the closet and abducts him. The man plans to sacrifice the professor to revive the monsters. He hoists Cristaldo above Dracula’s coffin and bleeds him dry in a scene much much like “Dracula Prince of Darkness(https://www.horrorguys.com/dracula-prince-of-darkness-1966-review/) (1968).” The blood reanimates Dracula’s skeleton and soon, Drac’s back, fully dressed in formal attire. The werewolf king, Rufus, also awakens. Their first order of business is to change humans into vampires and werewolves to create an army. They soon have a whole bunch of people chained in the dungeon for conversion.

Cristaldi’s family goes to the police to report him as missing, but they don’t seem too concerned so soon. Elsewhere, the sun has come up, so Dracula has gone to sleep and the werewolf has become human. Eric wakes up Rufus and takes him to an apartment in the city.

Santo can’t defeat the curse alone, so he plans to bring in “A faithful and courageous friend, a formidable ally who can be of great help to us.” We cut to Blue Demon in a wrestling match, and he wins too! Later, Laura is attacked on the road, and a man comes to her rescue– we see that it’s Rufus Rex, and now he plans to seduce her as her hero. “She will fall in love with me, and I will sacrifice her on the next lunar cycle,” he tells Dracula the next night. As planned, she does fall for him.

Dracula goes to the Cristaldi house and goes into the little girl’s bedroom as she sleeps. He spots the dagger that the old man left on the nightstand and backs off in terror. The Blue Demon follows Rufus to a meeting with Eric and listens in on their conversation– except they see him and say things to make Rufus look like a good guy and imply that Eric has Professor Cristaldi as a prisoner. Blue Demon is completely fooled.

Eric then leads the fighters into a trap, but none of them realize that Lina has hidden in the back seat and gone along behind them. Inside, the armed gang pull their guns. The leader of the gang has had run-ins with Santo before, so it’ll look natural if he’s the one to kill the wrestlers. The bad guys are just about to de-mask the heroes when Lina runs a forklift through the wall, giving the men the distraction they need to defeat the mobsters. Rufus and Eric debate over how to proceed with killing the wrestlers.

Laura’s new boyfriend (Rufus) tells Santo that he paid Eric to reveal the location of the missing Professor. He shows them on a map where to go. Blue Demon says it looks like another ambush, but they do see the professor in the window as promised. Zombified Cristaldi and Eric knock out Santo, who is soon rescued by Blue Demon. Elsewhere, it’s a full moon, and the werewolf abducts Laura.

Dracula, on the other hand, only has eyes for Lina. He uses his hypnosis to lure her outside, but Santo finds her before he can bite her. One of the minion-vampires bites their maid. Dracula calls to Lina through their psychic link, and Blue Demon follows her out as Santo reads in the library. Dracula then orders Josefina, the maid, to kidnap little Rosita, the granddaughter. Demon is captured. Santo goes outside and finds the gardener, who explains what has transpired while Santos was reading the lore.

Dracula now has Lina and little Rosita right where he wants them. Laura and the old Professor are undead under Dracula’s control. Dracula orders the still-human Eric to deal with Santo and the magic dagger. Eric does manage to knock Santo out and get the dagger, but before he can kill Santos, he decides to demand a fortune from Lina. Turns out that Eric was so evil that the dagger turns on Eric and stabs him all by itself.

Rufus punishes one of his own misbehaving werewolf minions by making him walk across a plank suspended above a bunch of wooden stakes. It ends badly for the minion. Dracula then forces Blue Demon to do the same thing, but Santo arrives in time to help him. Santo and the Blue Demon fight a whole pack of werewolves, as Rosita crosses the plank on her own. Lina takes the girl away, and now it’s time for a “boss fight.”

Rufus Rex fights Blue Demon. Rufus starts to lose, so he wolfs-up and continues the battle as the werewolf. Dracula and the Werewolf close in on Santo, who swings on a rope and kicks them both into the pit of stakes, killing them both. All the minions turn to dust.

Later, back at the house, Santo and the Blue Demon check in on Lina and Rosita, who are fine. The two men have to rest because they both have fights tomorrow.

We then get another wrestling match where the two men tag-team against their rivals in the ring. Guess who wins?

Commentary

The wrestling matches are very obviously done on a set with no real audience or spectators, but we can hear cheering and the announcers talking about the fans, so it’s supposed to be a crowded auditorium. All three matches shown are clearly staged for the film, but they go on for a really long time, as if we are supposed to believe they’re real matches. They go on a bit too long for my taste, especially since you know how they’re going to turn out. This is especially true for the final match at the end, which had no connection to the story and only served to drag the run time out for another ten minutes.

I couldn’t help but notice that Agustin Martinez Solares, who plays Rufus Rex, bears a striking resemblance to Paul Naschy from that other series of Spanish-language werewolf films that were popular around the same time. Still, those other films are from Spain, and this was clearly Mexican, so it may or may not have been a coincidence.

It still has luchadores in full-head masks as the heroes, but this is a much more entertaining film than the previous one (“Santo and the Blue Demon Vs. The Monsters.”) The creature effects and masks are better than before, and this time, the monsters actually have plans and powers, and are not just an ugly bunch of fighters. Dracula uses his hypnosis, turns into a bat, and other things, while the werewolf does werewolf things. The plot makes sense, and most of the characters act within the context of the situation.

The cinematography, soundtrack, and pacing are all quite good for a low-ish budget Mexican film. To me, it gave off a lot of the same vibes as the 1960s Batman series, which, I suspect, is what they were going for. I mean, it’s still ridiculous and campy, but that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.