Luchador
Entry updated 14 July 2025. Tagged: Film, Theme.
["Fighter/Wrestler"] Mexican subgenre of Cinema featuring masked wrestlers (luchadors or luchadores) as crime-fighting Superheroes; the subgenre is also known as lucha libre, for the Mexican sport of freestyle wrestling. As with other masked and costumed Superheroes lacking actual Superpowers beyond unusual strength and resilience (Batman for example), these cinematic wrestlers are from time to time pitted against Aliens, Mad Scientists, sf or supernatural Monsters, Robots and so on.
Luchador films with entries in this encyclopedia are: El Enmascarado De Plata (1954; vt The Silver Masked Man) – which though not the first masked-wrestler film established the template for those that followed – Arañas Infernales (1968); The Batwoman (1968; original title La Mujer Murciélago); Blue Demon: El Demonio Azul (1965); The Curse of the Aztec Mummy (1957); Doctor of Doom (1963); Neutron vs The Death Robots (1962; original title Los Autómatas de la Muerte; vt Neutron the Atomic Superman vs. the Death Robots); Santo the Silver Mask vs The Martian Invasion (1967); and Wrestling Women vs. the Killer Robot (1969; original title Las Luchadoras Vs El Robot Asesino).
Professional wrestling bouts naturally abound in Luchador movies, Neutron vs The Death Robots being an odd exception here. As a rule these masked wrestlers tend to be male, but Doctor of Doom introduced women wrestlers, also found in its remake Wrestling Women vs. the Killer Robot; another stars in The Batwoman. [DRL]
previous versions of this entry