Customer Reviews

Samson Vs. Vampire Women

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

of course it's a badly dubbed, mexican vampire/wrestling movie...I knew that going in. If you know anything about this movie, you know it's good for some laughs because it's so ridiculous and also it does have some nice scary, atmospheric scenes that lovers of cheesy horror will love. But my main gripe is with Amazon's format description--there's no dolby sound, there's no way this was restored...it looks like a cheap DVD-R copied from an old tape, there is no color and there are absolutely no extras.It's not a special edition and not a director's cut. It's not from Cinevue and not from 2005.When I told this to customer service their response was that if I wasn't satisfied to send it back. They don't understand the concept of correcting the description. We definitely had a failure to communicate.

Probably the best known of all the masked wrestler/superhero movies,SANTO(SAMSON)vs.THE VAMPIRE WOMEN is the GONE WITH THE WIND of the genre.It features all the cliches that make the Mexiluchahero genre such fun.A virginal heroine and a seductive villianess(actually several),wrestling action(both in and out of the squared circle),inept police(are there any other kind in these films),supernatural menace,and an athletic hero who wears a mask but doesn't have a secret identity.Great high camp fun!But would it have been too much to ask to put Santo's image on the box cover?Oh well until someone gives this movie the treatment it deserves(digitally remastered in both English and Spanish with a film commentary)this is the DVD for you.

I ordered this DVD fully aware of another reviewer's assessment from three years earlier that his edition of SAMSON (Santo) VS THE VAMPIRE WOMEN was, in fact, a poor quality knock-off, and not at all what was described in the Amazon product description. Unfortunately, those three years have made no difference, and the disc I received was probably the same shoddy quality DVD-R that he reviewed in 2006. The laser-printed cover insert, the amateurish (and almost unreadable) label on the disc, and the purplish hue of the disc itself, are all pretty good indicators of a DVD-R. Not to mention the fairly atrocious quality of the contents of the disc. The movie played fine, with no freezing or skipping, but the source material must have been pretty dismal, and at least one point, the picture disappeared for several seconds, and then reappeared.

That being said, I still thoroughly enjoyed the movie itself, and had a great time watching my first Santo film in well over 40 years. I'm pretty sure I had seen SVTVW all those years ago, as well as one or two others of the handful of Santo films that were dubbed into English. Watching this brought back great memories, and to be honest, the quality of the print I saw back then probably wasn't any better than this DVD.

If you're a Santo fan, or like me, are rediscovering Santo films from decades gone by, and enjoy watching the few Santo films available in dubbed English, this DVD will do until a better edition comes along. My personal barometer for measuring an inferior DVD's desirability, is that it is better to have a poor quality copy, than to not have it at all. I will certainly be on the lookout for a better version in the future. In the meantime, I will enjoy having this disc in my collection, and will surely watch it again and again.

Bottom line. The movie gets four stars. The DVD itself really should only get one star due to its poor quality. But I'll have to give it two, for it to average out to three. There's simply no way I can give such a fun film less than three stars overall.

Samson vs. the Vampire Women is about Samson/Santo, a wrestling hero who fights evil. In this episode, Santo protects a woman from a group of vampires that want to mate her with the devil and the "mistress" uses hypnosis to disguise how ugly the vampire women really are. Santo is a batman like character with his own hideout and a wrestling mask to hide his identity.

If you like wrestling there are plenty of wrestling scenes.

I purchased "Samson vs. the Vampire Women" and "Sampson in the Wax Museum" out of the cheapie-bin based on their title. I had never heard of these movies before and decided to take a chance based on the cover (not always a good move) and on the short write-ups.