Rating: C+
Dir: José Nieto Ramírez
Star: Ian Hodgkinson, Gloria Mayo, Sergio Bustamante, Pierroth Jr.
a.k.a. The Canadian Vampire in Night Warrior
This kind of amusing nonsense is why I love Tubi so hard. This does not appear ever to have received any kind of English language release – there’s a really poor-quality Mexican language print on YouTube. But a post on the badmovies subReddit by No-Chemistry-28, alerted me to it having shown up without any fanfare in a dubbed version on Tubi, under the alternate title listed above. My goodness: even by the quirky standards of Mexican luchador films, this is something. The Santo films are best-known in this genre, but there have been many others. We’ve covered a few before, such as Los Canallas. That one is positively staid by comparison.
We should start, however, by discussing the star. You may have noticed the not-exactly Hispanic name of the lead actor, and the description of him in the alternate title as “The Canadian Vampire”, which is certainly a unique label. Hodgkinson is one of the few Anglos to have become a superstar south of the border in lucha libre. This likely far outstrips his fame in America, though he was a WCW tag champion for… um, one day, when the fed was touring Canada in 2000. He may be best known outside Mexico as the colour commentator on Lucha Underground, a wrestling show that ran for four seasons on Robert Rodriguez’s El Rey television network from 2014-2018.
Hodgkinson was born in Ontario, and at one point was drafted as an ice-hockey goalie. But in 1991, he went to Mexico and was signed by the CMLL promotion there, becoming an instant star due to his good looks and charisma. According to Wikipedia, he was given the persona of “Vampiro Canadiense”, simply because he told them he liked vampires. He says, “I had always been a fan of the book Dracula. I liked the character, the fact that he was different, and the fact he was misunderstood by people. People treated him different and that was a huge thing for me in my life… I was really passionate about life, but I felt like an outsider. When I would read the Dracula book and saw things from his point of view, he became my superhero.”
It worked, propelling Vampiro to heights matched by few foreigners. The Cuban-born Konnan might be the only other whose fame rivalled Vampiro. The two reportedly had a real-life beef after Konnan got a telenovela role originally intended for Vampiro, because of his better Spanish. That Konnan was a star for CMLL’s biggest rival, AAA, likely didn’t help. But in the nineties, they were at the top of their game. Which brings us to Guerrero de la noche, a sci-fi actioner which feels like a lucha remake of They Live. Albeit by someone who’d never actually seen They Live, and was going off a poorly-translated synopsis on a Chinese bootleg DVD, described to them by a friend who was considerably worse the wear for tequila.
This confusion is apparent even in the tagline on the Mexican sleeve, which translates as “May the vampire force be with you.” Hmm. Well, I guess there are aliens in this. At least one, possibly two: I’m not sure if the main antagonist, Lastre is an Earthling with ambitions or another ET. He’s played by Bustamente, looking like a Hispanic version of manager Paul Heyman, who was big in WCW/ECW at this time. He does appear to be in possession of alien weaponry, in particular a gauntlet that fires a death ray or something. But his main plan is to create a gas called Zok which “he intends to use to wipe out humanity”. Why? Because he’s the bad guy.
Going up against him are Vampiro (Hodgkinson), and a slew of other luchadores of the era, most notably Pierroth Jr. as Acero, who seems to run a low-tier biker gang. I actually possess one of Pierroth’s masks, so seeing him here was cool. There’s also Larrosa de las Estrellas (Mayo), who appears to be reprising the same character she played in the previous year’s Luchadores de las estrellas. Not having seen that, I can’t comment, but if this is a sequel to it, might explain the slew of dangerous alien artifacts which are just lying around Mexico City here. Again, for reasons best described as vague, Lastre kidnaps Vampiro: maybe to give him as a plaything to his pair of female minions (top). He kidnaps Larrosa too, which makes more sense since she is the one actively trying to stop his evil plan.
Adding further bizarreness to the situation – and the evidence for a Lucasfilm cease and desist – she’s accompanied by Pet, an alien… something, which looks like an Ewok, but sounds like R2-D2. My thought is that this could be a mini-estrella, one of the midget wrestlers beloved in lucha. However, the listed name for the actor inside the furry suit doesn’t match any known luchador. Regardless, watching an alien Furby trying to hail a taxi is a scene which is contained in this film. Interestingly, when it comes to the final confrontation, it’s not Vampiro who takes on Lastre, it’s Larrosa, with a little help from Pet grabbing Lastre’s Doomsday device, after she first defeats an evil clone (played by female wrestler Fabi Apache) sent to replace her.
For nineties Mexploitation, this is impressively progressive. While Vampiro does get a reasonable share of screen time, it’s enough to make me wonder if he was a late addition to the cast, resulting from his recent rise to fame. To take advantage of his popularity, he may have been bolted onto this production, and the title changed to give him a prominence he doesn’t fully deserve. However, if you’re a fan of loopy, low-budget SF silliness, there’s a good deal to appreciate here. At seventy-five minutes, it’s not going to tax your patience, and the obligatory wrestling matches are more a garnish than the main course. It’s the kind of goofy nonsense which, for dumb entertainment, puts most WWE productions to shame.