The 1962 film Santoy las Mujeres Vampiro  (Santo and the Vampire Women) was due to be screened for the first time last week at Mexico’s Guadalajara Film Festiva. Unfortunately, one wrestler’s relatives intervened and got the film pulled from the festival. Morality was cited as the reason for its removal. El Santo was an iconic wrestler known for wearing a silver cloth mask with his leotard and cape. He never showed his face in public.  According to his son, who is now also a silver masked wrestler known as El Hijo del Santo (the Son of El Santo), his father never agreed to have the movie shown in Mexico because the vampire women appear topless. He said that it violated all forms of decorum.

The film was a classic “B” movie, which was made in Mexico for foreign audiences. The story is about a professor who recruits a professional wrestler to protect his daughter from vampires who want to kidnap her and marry her off to the devil. The movie was directed by Alfonso Corona Blake , who directed 27 Mexican films in the 1950s and 1960s.

El Santo performed from 1942, when he adopted his stage name, until 1984. He was one of the most famous wrestlers in Latin America. Mexican wrestling, called Lucha Libre, is acrobatic and more dramatic than the sport practised in the United States. Traditionally a lower middle class sport, wrestling has begun to attract more sophisticated fans in recent years. The most famous wrestler today is Mistico, a short nimble wrestler who also wears a mask and can do acrobatic turns like a circus performer. He is now scheduled to begin wrestling in the United States under the World Wrestling Entertainment brand.