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The only seemingly unlinked disappearance of several people leaves the
police baffled, but now they have a witness, little Diego (Turry Linar), a
boy who's parents were abducted before his very eyes. Thing is, Diego's in
a state of shock, so the police calls a child psychologist, Doctor Marla
(Diana Golden), to help out. At the same time, masked wrestler Santo
(Hijo del Santo) faces Blue Panther in the ring, a man of almost
superhuman strength who almost kills Santo and seems to be immune to
Santo's own almost superhuman blows. Santo's soon convinced that something
out-of-this-world is involved, and his computer agrees. Then Santo
is called in by police commander Sarmiento (Luis Felipe Tovar) to work on
the missing persons case, and Santo soon proves that he's as good, maybe
better, in breaking the ice with little Diego as Doctor Marla. She
immediately falls in love with Santo of course. And then Diego is abducted
by a gang led by ... none other than Blue Panther. Santo, Doctor Marla,
and two detectives (Héctor Molinar, Arturo Molinar) follow Blue Panther
and company to the sewers and soon find themselves in another world
beneath the sewers, a world that exists independently from ours. The two
cops are soon incarcerated, but Santo and Doc Marla make it to the
headquarters of the underground world, where they meet the leader of the
underground dwellers, none other than police commander Sarmiento. He tells
them his underground civilisation is of alien origin, and he has abducted
all those humans to experiment on them because he (not necessarily his
people) wants to take over the upper world, but nothing doing unless the
subterraneans can adapt to surface life. Sarmiento had little Diego
kindpaped though because he wanted to lure Santo underground, because he's
the only man who stands between him and conquering the upper world (don't
ask why). After having revealed all his plans to him, Sarmiento leaves
Santo at the mercy of Blue Panther, but this time Santo manages to defeat
Blue Panther for good, then he and Doc Marla go after Sarmiento, only to
be lured into another trap. In the meantime the two captured cops have
found out the underground dwellers are sensitive to light and the only
reason they are immune to bullets is because the cops were given blanks at
the station, courtesy of commander Samiento. So the two cops break free,
and arrive just in time when Santo and Doc Marla are about to be killed.
In the finale, Sarmiento's men are defeated, he is arrested, and Diego and
all those abducted by the underground people are freed ... An
attempt to revive the Mexican lucha libre (~ masked wrestler) genre with a
blend of CGI-heavy special effects, fashionable conspiracy theories and a
plot reminiscent of serials like The
Phantom Empire or Undersea
Kingdom, all garnered with quite a bit of wrestling.
Unfortunately, the mix doesn't work our nearly as well as it should:
Basically the film tries way too hard to seem modern and cool for such
out-of-time elements like a masked wrestler or an underground civilisation
(pulp staple and especially popular in the 1930's) to fit in. Add to this
a lazy directorial effort, rather shoddily composed action sequences, a
lack of real highlights of any sort and an underwhelming finale, and
you're left with not all that much. Rather a pity, actually.
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