Doctor of Doom
Entry updated 12 May 2025. Tagged: Film.
Mexican film (1963; original title Las Luchadoras Contra El Médico Asesino). Estudios Churubusco Azteca. Directed by René Cardona, English language version directed by Manuel San Fernando. Written by Alfredo Salazar. Cast includes Elizabeth Campbell, Roberto Cañedo, Sonia Infante, Chucho Salinas, Armando Silvestre, Lorena Velázquez and Gerardo Zepeda. 80 minutes. Black and white. Note: the characters' names below are those of the Mexican original, not the English-language version redubbed by producer K Gordon Murray (who from the 1950s to mid-1970s redubbed many foreign films for the US market, mainly fairy-tales, Mexican luchador and horror).
A spate of murders where the victim's brains are surgically removed have led to the press dubbing the perpetrator "The Mad Doctor". We join him bemoaning his fourth unsuccessful brain transplant (see Identity Transfer, Medicine) as his latest victim dies on the operating table, declaring the brains weren't strong enough. His assistant points out they were from women with low IQs – perhaps those of more Intelligent women would be better? There is a digression as they go to the basement to check on the doctor's most successful experiment to date: Gomar (Zepeda), a gorilla's brain transplanted into a man, whom the doctor is able to control through Hypnosis; a side effect of the operation means the human body is slowly transforming into that of an ape (see Apes as Human). The doctor now decides to attempt another brain transplant, but this time – heeding his assistant's suggestion – performing it on a professional woman (he believes females are better suited biologically for this operation). Donning a white hood, he tells his gang to kidnap the Scientist Alicia (Infante), seen earlier when her boss, the meek and kindly Professor Ruiz (Cañedo), warned her to be more careful when going home. Alicia is taken – an armoured Gomar attacking the police when they try to intervene – but again the operation fails and she dies. The assistant now suggests an athlete would be a better subject.
Wrestlers (see Games and Sports) and room mates Gloria Venus (Velázquez) – Alicia's sister – and Golden Rubi (Campbell) are to be the next victims, but the two men sent to kidnap them are soundly trounced by the pair and flee. Detective Armando Campos (Silvestre) suspects there will be another attempt and asks that Gloria and Rubi allow themselves be captured, assuring them he and colleague Chema (Salinas) will be following. The plan is a success, despite the detectives getting into difficulty with the kidnappers – fortunately Gloria and Rubi wade in and the Mad Doctor's gang are arrested: however they don't know if the leader is among them (nor do the audience, having only seen him in a surgical mask or hood). In the interrogation room – containing the detectives, the wrestlers, Professor Ruiz and the gang – the assistant agrees to name the Mad Doctor ... but then suddenly collapses and dies. The autopsy reveals a poisoned needle fired from a cylinder gripped in someone's teeth is responsible: the Mad Doctor must have been in the room at the time. However, the police do not know who he was, so everyone is released.
The doctor forms a new gang; we see them force Professor Ruiz at gunpoint into luring Armando and Chema into a trap. The detectives are locked in a room where they are separated from Gomar only by iron bars ... then the opposite wall, embedded with spikes, moves inward, forcing them towards Gomar's clutching hands. Fortunately they had earlier given Gloria and Rubi wristwatches that act as trackers and phones (see Technology): originally intended to save the women, the detectives now use their own to ask for help. After beating up the gang the pair rescue the detectives; but in the melee one side of the Mad Doctor's face ends up scarred. Shortly after we see he is Professor Ruiz – who now seeks vengeance by transplanting Gomar's brain and thus, apparently, his strength into the body of a recently abducted woman wrestler, to fight and tear Gloria to pieces in the ring: naming her Vendetta, he now laughs maniacally (see Mad Scientist). A challenge is issued, with a large financial reward for the winner: Gloria accepts. At the fight both Vendetta, and Ruiz as her manager, wear wrestler's masks – but Rubi recognizes one of the Mad Doctor's henchmen in the audience and tortures a confession from him, informs the detectives, then leaps into the ring to help Gloria. The detectives pursue Ruiz, so he calls Vendetta (with whom he has Telepathic contact) from the ring and they climb to the top of a water tower; Armando follows, trying to persuade them to surrender, but Ruiz orders Vendetta to kill him; a police marksman responds by shooting them both and they fall from the tower.
The entertaining Doctor of Doom is one of the best Luchador (which see) films, which concern heroic Mexican wrestlers and was the first of the Luchadoras or women wrestler sub-genre: see also The Batwoman (1969). When it comes to brawling and fisticuffs Gloria and Rubi are more than a match for any man (see Women in SF) lacking the strength of a gorilla, and there is no attempt to make them bashful about their capabilities (see Feminism), whilst the detectives have no problems with being repeatedly rescued by them; indeed, romance blossoms. Though it is not much of a surprise that Professor Ruiz is the Mad Doctor, Cañedo's performances make this not too blatant; Velázquez and Campbell are likeable leads whose characters would appear in further films. [SP]
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