After Santo (Santo) defeats the Strangler (Roberto Canedo) the body is sent to the morgue. The Strangler had been killing actresses at a nearby theater. The murderer, however, is not dead. The Strangler’s assistant, Tor (Gerardo Zepeda) kills the morgue attendant and steals the body. The Strangler is revived and, with the help of Tor, plans on continuing his killing. Tor creates masks to cover the Strangler’s deformed face. With Tor’s masks the Strangler can pose as anyone he wants.
Inspector Villegas (Carlos Lopez Moctezuma) contacts Santo and tells him about the disappearance of the Strangler’s body. The Inspector wants to lure the Strangler into a trap. To do that he wants Laura (Maria Duval) and her sister Irene (Begona Palacios) to reopen the theater that had been closed due to the Strangler killing all the actresses.
Temptation looms and the Strangler begins strangling again. He then threatens to kill Santo’s ward, Milton (Milton Ray), if Santo doesn’t agree to meet him. Santo falls into the trap, but Milton overhears the exchange and calls the police. Santo escapes but the Strangler is not done with his killing.
“Santo vs the Ghost of the Strangler” AKA “Espectro del estrangulador” was released in 1966 and was directed by Rene Cardona. It is a Mexican horror film and a luchador movie. It is a sequel to “Santo vs the Strangler” (1965).
Not much thought was put into the sequel. There were a lot of story points from the original film that were never brought over to explain what was happening in the sequel. The film is peppered with lots of songs and a couple wrestling matches. Most of the songs are just annoying and interrupt the flow of the movie. I don’t mind a couple songs but eight or nine is a bit much. There are also a couple battles between Santo and the villains that are standard fodder for Santo movies, but other than that the movie isn’t very interesting. I’m not even sure why the bothered to do a sequel. It is a scattered mess of songs, bad acting and some halfway decent wrestling with a tad of horror movie sandwiched in.
If they had cut out a lot of the music, and Milton, they could have expanded the Strangler story and created an interesting horror movie. Instead, they added the extraneous stuff and never really bothered coming up with a plot. The character Tor was never in the first film so where he came from is a mystery. It’s also never explained how the Strangler was revived. It is not my favorite Santo film by any means.
There is a strange sequence where Santo is buried alive and the side view of him in the coffin is weird but interesting. That and the fighting and wrestling sequences are the best parts of the movie.