With the release, success, and celebration of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, I’m hopeful the Western horror subgenre will gain popularity within cinema. It’s been fairly consistent within the literary world thanks to the Splatter Western series. And, it’s been growing in horror cinema with the release of films such as The Pale Door and The Wind. While those two films didn’t necessarily land for me, there is one film that encapsulates the Western aura while sticking to horror conventions. And that film is Santo Vs. The Riders of Terror. I believe the film’s greatness can be attributed to two factors: René Cardona’s directing and Mexico’s decades-long history with the Western genre.
Santo Vs. The Riders of Terror takes place in a small town with a leprosy hospital. The patients within the hospital escape and begin to wreak havoc on the small town. The town becomes split on how to handle the incident. Some are willing to join them, and others want to protect themselves. In the midst of it all, Santo arrives and takes it upon himself to stop the chaos.
While this is a Santo film, Santo Vs. The Riders of Terror doesn’t feel like one of his typical films. Instead, it feels like a Mexican-made Western, which are known as Charro films. This was during the time famous singers such as Pedro Infante and Antonio Aguilar (nicknamed El Charro de Mexico) starred in melodramatic Westerns. While Infante’s music reached worldwide recognition, it was Aguilar’s films that reached an international audience. This is attributed to films such as Zapata, which centers around the Mexican Revolution. It only makes sense to continue this tradition of entertainers starring in these films with Santo, the world-famous luchador.
The 1970s were also an interesting time for Westerns in general. By this point, Westerns in the United States had experienced their heyday. Italy, on the other hand, was contributing its voice to the genre with Spaghetti Westerns. A lot of these films portrayed the United States, and West and Northern Mexico, including Duck, You Sucker and A Bullet For The General. But the majority of the actors were Italians, depicting Mexican characters and even tackling the Mexican Revolution, just like the Charros. The Spaghetti Western subgenre was Italy’s successful attempt at reaching worldwide audiences.
There is one Mexican horror film by director Fernando Duran Rojas that follows the same aesthetic and filmmaking techniques of the Spaghetti Western titled Hot Snake. However, that film is set in the United States. For this article, I wanted to focus on a Mexican film set in Mexico, and Santo Vs. The Riders of Terror fits the bill. Just like the Spaghetti Western, René Cardona wanted to reach international viewers with his films, which he accomplished by including genre tropes.
René Cardona has been known to have two cuts of several films, with one edited to appeal to worldwide audiences. What did he add, you may ask? Cardona edited in explicit content for the International cut, then removed any gratuitous violence or nudity in his Mexican cut due to the country’s censorship laws at the time. Regardless of the cut, Cardona tried to push boundaries with each of his films.
Two of his Santo releases, Santo Vs. The Riders of Terror and Santo in the Treasure of Dracula, have an international version with explicit nudity and sex scenes. Admittedly, it is jarring watching a Santo film with this kind of content. Yet, Cardona manages to completely separate Santo’s persona from the nudity by not having him present during those scenes. Instead, he follows traditional horror conventions by connecting sex to violence. Santo Vs. The Riders of Terror does it seemingly with the leprosy victims.
At its core, Santo Vs. The Riders of Terror isn’t about the fear of leprosy. Instead, the film focuses on how people can exploit the sick through fear-mongering. Within the film’s first five minutes, it’s revealed that several patients from the leprosy hospital escaped. Instead of creating panic, the sheriff explains that they must find the patients while still displaying compassion. Still, Cardona uses them to fulfill certain horror tropes while still getting that message across.
In the first act of the film, the leprosy victims are “attacking” the locals in the town. They first appear during an explicit sex scene between a couple. They invade the house as if they are going to cause harm. But in reality, the leprosy victims are just trying to survive. They don’t wreak havoc or become violent. Instead, they go straight for useful items such as clothing. Once they escape and hide inside a nearby cave, several thieves from the town approach them. They manipulate the sick into performing a heist, with the payment meaning freedom.
The leprosy victims are promised a better life if they allow the men to stay undercover with them. It’s clear the thieves are the real villains of the story. Cardona solidifies it by blatantly showing their evil demeanors when one of the thieves, disguised as a man with leprosy, takes a woman away to another room and takes advantage of her. Throughout this heist, Cardona makes it a point to show the men with leprosy displaying their decaying faces to create hysteria against the locals. But they are not the ones being aggressive and violent. They stand still while the thieves, who are hiding underneath their bandana face coverings, perform these horrendous acts.
In the end, Santo Vs. The Riders of Terror is still a Santo film. He shows up after the first act and, through his goodwill, helps the town get rid of the true evil. He wrestles his way out of certain situations, and we get amazing shots of him riding a horse. This is not Santo’s best film, or Cardona’s. However, it is a solid addition to the Western horror subgenre and an unforgettable entry to Mexican cinema.
Categorized:Editorials Horror En Espanol