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> I've been watching El Santo films, Old Mexican films starring a masked pro wrestler
Wounded Ronin
post Nov 14 2010, 05:49 PM
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In order to learn more about Hispanic culture, and try and learn Spanish, I've been watching old El Santo films.

For those of you who aren't familiar with El Santo, he was basically the Mexican Rikidozan. He always wore a mask, and never took it off until his final retirement from public life. In Mexico pro wrestlers are buried wearing their masks after they die and the masks are never removed, ever. It's part of the character/persona.

In the El Santo films, El Santo often battles supernatural menaces using his 1960s style pro wrestling. I've seen him battle werewolves, infernal fiends, and I've even seen him go into hell and battle hordes of demons in order to rescue the soul of an innocent maiden. Sometimes the storytelling in the movies is very Catholic, meaning that El Santo encountered demons who are not defeated no matter how many times they're body slammed, but who disappear when presented with a crucifix. Other times (probably different directors) religious stuff doesn't come into play at all, and El Santo just battles supernatural menaces. Sometimes he also fights gangsters and, get this, evil landowners who abuse migrant workers.

I've seen two movies where the storytelling actually starts in the 1600s, where El Santo is in the 1600s, and he's wearing his mask and everything, and he gets invested with divine religious powers to battle evil. Typically before the transformation he is dressed in a nobleman's outfit and fights using a sword, and his face is not shown. Then he is transformed and is running around with his mask and pro wrestling outfit, and usually he has some infernal nemesis, i.e. Blue Demon, another pro wrestler. It's awesome because all the medieval people take his pro wrestling outfit for granted. The storytelling seems to imply that El Santo is reincarnated in modern times to continue to his primal, trans-historical struggle against evil for the common man.

Given all this, you know what I'd like to see? An oddball CoC adventure starring El Santo.

The idea already came up to do Scooby Doo in a CoC adventure. I say, for people who can appreciate the reference and understand the cultural backdrop, El Santo in a CoC adventure would be mind shatteringly awesome. I can see it now...El Santo travels to Innsmouth to investigate the disappearance of his promoter, who went there in order to arrange for a pro wrestling tournament to occur there. Maybe they're trying to promote Mexican pro wrestling in the US. Maybe the promoter is trying to revitalize the economy there or something. Change the setting to the late 50s or early 60s, and it would be the right time period for El Santo. When El Santo shows up he eventually has to pro wrestle endless streams of fish people to find his missing promoter. The finale would be when El Santo power bombs Dagon.

EDIT: Just realized you can't comprehend that which cannot be comprehended. You must watch instead. Here's a clip of El Santo battling zombies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0tOR7HuX0M

EDIT 2: Thought about this some more. To make the campaign more interesting, you could have a bunch of 1950s or 60s pro wrestlers. So you'd have El Santo, Rikidozan, Lou Thez, or whomever else you wanted. When they finally confront Dagon, Dagon is actually a pro wrestler with some kind of scary fish head for the purpose of the campaign.
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