Santo, the Silver Masked Man, 35 Years After His Death

Today marks 35 years since the death of the greatest hero of the movie screen in Mexico, Santo, the Silver Masked Man, the great star of lucha libre wrestling and of the subgenre known as the wrestler-film genre, much beloved, too, among Macabro fans for his unforgettable on-screen battles against zombies, mummies, she-wolves, vampire women, Dracula, etc.

His real name was Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta, and he was born on September 23, 1917, in Tulancingo, Hidalgo. He began his wrestling career in 1934. However, it wasn't until 1942 that he debuted at Arena México under the name El Santo; he earned his fame as a wrestler after cartoonist and editor José Guadalupe Cruz launched a weekly comic strip. The comic became so popular that it sold a million copies a week.

El Santo made his film debut in 1958 with the films Santo contra el cerebro del mal and Santo contra hombres infernales, both shot in Cuba and produced by Guillermo Calderón; however, the wrestler's on-screen persona truly took shape in Santo contra los zombies, the film that established Santo as a movie star.

Given the excellent reception from audiences, more feature films were made in which the Silver Masked Man faced all kinds of villains in a variety of settings: archaeological sites, cosmopolitan cities, the Old West, and much more, shaping and giving expression to the wrestler-film genre, which, according to film researcher Pete Tombs, has the following characteristics:

"Lucha libre cinema in its purest form featured a protagonist who was both a masked wrestler and a crime-fighting superhero, a sworn enemy of criminals and wrongdoers. It's the combination of those two factors that made them unique. The playboy Bruce Wayne had to become Batman to confront criminals, but Santo is always Santo. In his films, his comics, and his wrestling career, his true identity and real appearance were a closely guarded secret."

Santo starred in around 52 films, production of which ceased in the 1970s; he died of a heart attack on February 5, 1984.

With information from La vanguardia Mx and Mondo Macabro.