New Nightmare is terrific.  It's effectively a direct ten-years-later sequel to the first movie that disregards the other sequels, so I'd recommend watching the original and New Nightmare back to back for best effect.

I think Kate McKinnen outperformed all of the original 1984 cast single-handedly and that Leslie Jones was perfectly adequate, but the others were a train wreck, and the writing was even worse.

Folks weren't fair to this film, but it wasn't fair to itself either. Mckinnen deserved a better vehicle for her efforts and talent.

I haven’t got a copy to hand, but I sincerely hope someone here reviews this before the end of the month:

The Santo films are fantastically fun.

Ask and ye shall receive, as much as 40 year-old high school Spanish will allow, not to mention an early morning for work.  The film opens with Santo facing off against Angel Blanco, in the squared circle, the Silver Masked Man splits falls, then comes back in the third fall for the victory, with a surfboard (the arm wrench move, not a literal surfboard).  He won the first fall with a camel clutch, submitted in the second and then recovered in the third.  He is met in the locker room by his girlfriend, Lina Cristaldi.  At this point, Santo if 56 years old and Lina, played by Nubia Marti is 19!

Lina's uncle is Professor Cristaldi, who has some kind of warning about dark forces messing around and something about his ancestor, the great magician Cristaldi, who defeated Dracula, with a dagger that the professor now has.  With the professor is his daughter Laura, and granddaughter Rosita, as well as young maid Josefina.  Grandpa gets kidnapped by a servant of Dracula, Eric, who looks like a Mexican Severn Darden.  He hogties him and then hoists him up off the ground, upside down and then cuts open some skin so that blood drips onto the corpse of Dracula reviving him.  Dracula looks a bit like a Mexican James Brolin.  Severn Darden drags gramps over to another grave and drips more blood and revives Rufus Rex, el Hombre Lobo (Wolfman, to you and me).  Rufus has raided Luke Cage's wardrobe and borrowed his fine yellow shirt.



Dracula has a whole bondage dungeon filled with hotties, for some blood, and some guys, for equal measure, who are turned into werewolves.

After Professor Cristaldi's disappearance, Santo calls in Blue Demon, after he defeats Renato el Hippie in two straight falls.  Poor Blue Demon can't even escape Santo's shadow in the locker room, as there is a big painting of the guy on the wall.  After he changes into a blue sweater and matching pants, he joins Santo, Laura and Lina at their home and play some cards.  Dracua turns up, while they are distracted and tries to get at the granddaughter, Rosita, but she borrowed the dagger and it is beside her bed and Drac can't get near her because of its power.  He buggers off to find some AB- in another neighborhood.  Meanwhile, Rufus, transformed back into human mode, romances Laura and infiltrates the place, then grabs her and Drac puts the whammy on her.  Lina gets whammied by Drac and lured out to his tomb and Blue Demon sees her leave and follows.  he gets jumped by werewolves and hauled off and chained up.  Drac controls Josefina, the maid, who drags the brat along and then dumps her in the lobby of the tomb.  Mom turns up, still under a spell and she drags the kid along, then dumps her in a catacomb.  Santo goes hunting them and locates the place and it turns into a battle royale of masked men vs vampires, on a plank, above a pit of stakes.  Santo and Blue Demon unload a can or two of whoop ass on the were wolves, then Blue Demon and Rufus face off.  Drac tries to interfere in the match and Santo and Blue Demon dump them in the pit, killing them.  Everyone celebrates and the film ends with Santo and Blue Demon defeating Angel Blanco and Renato el Hippie in two straight falls.  They will go on to face Frankestein's Monster and the Aztec Mummy, in the finals.

These movies are goofy fun, usually, and this one fits that, though it is slow going at the start.  At one point, Blue Demon and Santo check out a warehouse, while Lina stows away in their car, like Spritle in Speed Racer.  They get cornered by hoods, until she hops on a forklift and crashes through boxes, then it turns into a wrestling match.  Santo, at one point, climbs up a pile of crates and executes a full body splash off the top, onto the hoods below.

The basic formula for these things was to open with some lucha action and introduce the villains/monsters, then Santo consults with someone, fights some monsters here and there, and has another wrestling match, later in the film.  Santo is the bigger star; but Blue Demon was always the better wrestler.  Even with the mask, Santo looks pretty old to be chasing around Lina and Nubia Marti was legit 19, at the time.  However, she is a hottie and likes to wear her skirts barely down to there, while the older Laura (Maria Eugenia San Martin) wears hers at a slightly more modest two inches below barely down to there.  When Lina sneaks out in Santo's car, she is wearing white hip hugger slacks which give you a nice view of the mechanics of her hips, when she walks.  Ai chihuahua!

The 1960s Santo films tend to be better than the later ones (this is 1973) and I recommend Santo vs The Vampire Women, where he not only fights vampires in the street, he wrestles a couple in a match.
If you like those, then you have to watch the two Wrestling Women films:  Wrestling Women vs The Doctor of Doom and Wrestling Women vs The Aztec Mummy.  For the ultimate lucha fun, catch Los Campeones de Justiceros, for a whole Justice League of luchadors, who are each sponsoring a contestant in a beauty pageant, when the villain and his masked midget henchmen kidnap them.  It has Ble Demon, Mil Mascaras, El Medico Asesino, Black Shadow, Tinieblas, Sombra Vengadora and Golden Boy and Domingo Bazan.  Also worth catching are the Neutron films, with Wolf Ruvinskis as the masked Neutron.  Neutron vs The Amazing Dr Caronte is a favorite of mine.

There are also a pair of films, from Italy, starring Super Argo, a supposed Italian mask wrestler.  He looks more than a little like the Phantom, in his first outing, before they changed the costume, a bit.  He fights mad scientists and their mind controlled living zombies, among others.  The wrestling's not quite as good, but it is decent 1960s style mat work.

Santo and Blue Demon were more mat based, with things like head scissors, monkey flips and shoulder throws for high spots.  You get more high flying with Mil Mascaras and his generation and even more by the 1980s.  Santo and Blue Demon mostly fight monsters and mad scientists, but there are some criminals along the way, especially in later films.  Mil Mascaras fought more hoods, in later films, including a film from the 80s, with brother Dos Caras, where the pair appear in a cantina, without their masks!

Youtube has Santo vs las Mujeres Vampiro but without English subtitles; they do have the English-dubbed version, Samson vs the Vampire Women so I'll probably watch that one unless I can find a subtitled version.

My other feature tonight was 1972's ABC telemovie, The Night Stalker, starring Darren McGavin, as reporter Carl Kolchak. The film was written by Richard Matheson, based on an unpublished novel by Jeff Rice, which was published after the broadcast. Dan Curtis, of Dark Shadows produced and John L Moxey (The Avengers, The Saint, The Baron, Mission: Impossible, Hawaii 5-0, Genesis II). Set in Las Vegas, where a casino cashier is found dead in an alley, with massive blood loss. Reporter Carl Kolchak is assigned to the story for the Daily News and learns of another dead woman, found in roadside waterway, in the middle of a sandy area, with no footprints, also with massive blood loss. Another victim turns up and it appears that Las Vegas has a serial killer, who is somehow draining his victims of blood. A pathology report indicates puncture wounds, consistent with bite marks caused by large canine teeth and human saliva in the wound. Kolchak works the story, first from the angle of a maniac who thinks he is a vampire, until he witnesses him shrug off multiple police, hits from nightsticks, and bullets at point blank range. Kolchak starts to consider that he may really be a vampire. A friend with the FBI turns up an ID on the man, Janos Skorzeny, Romanian, born in 1899 and a former British citizen, where he was wanted in connection with several murders and a set up was discovered with sumps and freezers, to drain and store blood. The suspect has also robbed hospitals of blood supplies and was in the process when he was discovered and fought the police. Kolchak studies vampire lore and advises the police on how to fight it and locates the vampires house, through a stoolie who showed his image to real estate agents. he goes to the address and faces the vampire.

At the time, the movie was the highest rated telemovie in history and it led to a sequel, the Night Strangler, set in Seattle. A third movie, the Night Killers was planned but never produced. Instead, a tv series was commissioned, Kolchack, the Night Stalker. Despite a devoted fan base, the series was cancelled after 20 episodes. The film also factors into a previous entry, Trilogy of Terror, as the film that Karen Black and her date see in the segment, Julie, was footage from The Night Stalker, with the color removed, to look like an old black & white horror movie. The films and subsequent tv series were highly influential on The X-Files, as well as similar takes on horror and mystery stories.

What really makes the film great, aside from Matheson's craft as a writer, was the use of a large cast of character actors. Darren McGavin, Simon Oakland (Baa Baa Black Sheep), Claude Akins (Sheriff Lobo), Ralph Meeker (The Dirty Dozen), Elisha Cook Jr (The Maltese Falcon), Carol Lynley (tons of 70ss tv), Larry Linville (MASH), Kent Smith (The Fountainhead, tons of tv and movies) and Barry Atwater (Judd for the defense, Twilight Zone, Star Trek) as Janos Skorzeny. Carol Lynley is alluded to being a hooker, but never openly identified as such, due to standards and practices, on the network. She is called "an unsavory element" at the tail end of the film. In the original script, it was more explicit. The first victim is dressed rather like a street hooker, in leather hotpants and high heels, while narration says she was coming home from a shift as a cashier, at a casino. Two other victims are listed as a cocktail waitress and a showgirl and both are dressed in a similar manner. It was the 70s and Vegas; but, the attire, at first makes it look like the killer is focusing on prostitutes. A little later in the decade and that would be outright stated.

McGavin narrates, as Kolchak investigates, with bookend sequences of him looking over a manuscript and listening to audio tapes, for a book about the killings.

The early 70s were a big time for horror and ABC put a lot of money into producing telemovies and horror was highly featured with things like this and the sequel, Trilogy of Terror, Bad Ronald, Killdozer and the thriller Trapped, with James Brolin, as a mugging victim who is locked inside a department store, after closing, where aggressive guard dogs have been released. Several Movie of The Week features included horror themes and/or the supernatural, or mystery thrillers, like Steve Spielberg's Duel, starring Dennis Weaver. These early productions had large scale budgets and attracted top talent. some were pilots for tv series and that factor increased over time, with a decline in budget and quality killing things, by 1975.