Editorials
How Lucha Libre Birthed Mexico’s Wildest Horror Films
Though schlocky B-horror is often associated with American films of men in cheap rubber monster suits and small casts running around in the desert, past our southern border Mexican pop culture has a strong, storied history of B-horror surrounding luchadores, masked wrestlers. Movies where the kings of the ring beat down on anything demonic or alien that crosses their path. But those films themselves have a wild origin, stemming from a post-war hunt for identity and censorship on the basis of sex. Truly, the luchador films that became the bulk of mexploitation cinema as we know it today didn’t come from a strong desire to uplift lucha but from attempts to suppress it. To understand lucha libre and how it became popular enough to be banned from television, we have to get back to the first half of the 20th century, with the end of the Mexican Revolution.
Today’s story is one of domino effects. Of how cultural moments and political decisions can send out ripples that no one can see coming, to the most unlikely of places sometimes. It’s about the unpredictable and ephemeral nature of life, on and off film. And about how cool it is to see a guy in a silver mask elbow-drop a werewolf. This is the story of how Lucha Libre birthed some of Mexico’s wildest horror films.
Though schlocky B-horror is often associated with American films of men in cheap rubber monster suits and small casts running around in the desert, past our southern border Mexican pop culture has a strong, storied history of B-horror surrounding luchadores, masked wrestlers. Movies where the kings of the ring beat down on anything demonic or alien that crosses their path. But those films themselves have a wild origin, stemming from a post-war hunt for identity and censorship on the basis of sex.
Truly, the luchador films that became the bulk of mexploitation cinema as we know it today didn’t come from a strong desire to uplift lucha but from attempts to suppress it. To understand lucha libre and how it became popular enough to be banned from television, we have to get back to the first half of the 20th century, with the end of the Mexican Revolution.
Mexicanidad and the Rise of Masked Wrestlers
To those unfamiliar with the particulars of the Mexican Revolution, it stands as one of the most violent times of political upheaval in human history. After the deposition of decades-long oligarchical dictator Porfirio Diaz and his regime, multiple parties began to fight for control of the country as its residents sought economic relief, agrarian reform, and the cession of land back to indigenous populations.
The Revolution saw a revolving door of commandants, a cadre of different political groups fighting for a variety of different reasons, and the loss of (by the most conservative estimates) over a million lives in a civil war never before seen in Mexico. Needless to say, the Mexican national identity had been wounded severely by the conflict as doubt and fear filled the populace, and political figures like Lázaro Cárdenas, who found themselves in power following the Revolution, began to try and restore that identity.
From this turning point comes the concept of Mexicanidad, a push for Mexican pride and a reaffirming of the image of the Mexican people that was driven by the tastemakers of Mexican society in politics and media. And for Mexican men, and specifically Mexican working-class men, that evolved into an emphasis on masculinity, virility, athleticism, and what would eventually evolve into our modern conceptions of machismo.
The Television Ban That Birthed Lucha Libre Horror Films
And so came the revitalization of lucha libre, for many reasons. Wrestling as a sport had and still has a fairly low barrier to entry, making it the perfect cheap entertainment for the working class. It had previously captured the hearts of Mexican citizens as far back as the late 1800s when wrestling made its way to the country. It involved masculine displays of strength and agility, which was perfect for the Mexicanidad crowd to endorse. The sport also had a rotating cast of colorful characters, usually the same guys you saw last week but fighting with different masks on, which was the perfect draw for young audiences who soon began to see their favorite luchadors at the comic stands and in wider media.
The craze of professional wrestling spread like wildfire, and more importantly, it spread to a female audience. As female athletes became a point of cultural interest, luchadoras became a very popular element of lucha libre despite being in the minority of performers. There began a melding between the rigid roles of masculine and feminine energy, undesired by many of the political and cultural elites of mid-century Mexico.
The cultural thermometer rapidly cooled due to lucha, and in 1954, federal authorities imposed a 30-year-long ban on lucha libre on Mexican television to prevent the waters from being muddied by such “dangerous” concepts. Soon, lucha had gone from a sport beloved by all people to a brutish, lowbrow event. Which, couldn’t be further from the truth, but cultural hegemony is a hell of a drug!
CDMX’s airwaves had become a no-fly zone for masked wrestlers, and a lost media massacre ensued that caused little to no recordings of those classic matches from the 40s and 50s being kept in circulation. Whole careers had evaporated from record overnight.
But…that didn’t stop luchadors from going to the movies.
Gothic Horror Revival in Mexican Cinema
The film wasn’t just a smash hit at the box office, it was a superkick to the mouth of Mexican cinema that ended up causing a true gothic horror revival. The film’s producer and star, Abel Salazar, found enough success with the film that the Mexican market was soon saturated with gothic horror of his own design, as Hammer Horror took over the British film market.
EL SANTO, BLUE DEMON, AND THE RISE OF LUCHA LIBRE IN HORROR
Despite the television ban, you couldn’t make Mexico forget its masked heroes so easily. The two most significant of which were El Santo y Demonio Azul (more commonly referred to as Blue Demon). Well, technically both of them began as rudos (heels, or bad guys) and later became tecnicos (faces, or heroes). The point is, Santo and Blue Demon’s rivalry was a legendary one, with their masks becoming a piece of indelible Mexican iconography and recollections of their matches being burned into people’s brains.
El Santo was convinced by fellow wrestler, Fernando Osés, to join him on the set of a film he was shooting, as the recent TV ban opened up opportunities in film for wrestlers. Santo was initially signed to star in one of the first lucha films called El Enmascarado De Plata (The Man in the Silver Mask), but backed out last minute because of fears the film would fail and damage his reputation.
Santo’s actual debut pulled him into the world of monster movies that had begun to thrive in Mexico, with his first film being Santo Contra El Cerebro Del Mal (Santo vs. The Brain of Evil) in 1961. From there he went on to do Santo Contra Los Zombies (Santo vs. The Zombies), and by the time he had shot Santo vs. The Men from Hell and Santo in The Hotel of the Dead, he had been locked in as a b-horror icon.
He was of course reunited with Blue Demon throughout his career, and the two often teamed up like superheroes to fight a wide variety of fiends. Ranging from alien spiders to vampire women to Mesoamerican mummies on a rampage, there was nothing they weren’t willing to powerbomb into oblivion. Blue Demon starred in 25 films over his lifetime– Santo starred in more than 50. The two were prolific actors and artists, and despite the often irreverent nature of the films they made and the questionable quality of many of them, the two were horror icons that most of the world is simply unaware of.
Many of their films were not distributed widely, let alone localized to English-speaking territories; only a total of 4 Santo films ever got English language versions. But even if those dubs never came, we can stand and salute the wild history of b-horror that these luchador legends have given us.
Top Lucha Libre Horror Films to Watch Today
Arañas Infernales (Hellish Spiders) is a really fun piece of schlocky, monochrome, nuclear bug horror from the late 60s; the little evil alien spider puppets in this film are so doofy looking, I want ten of them. It’s pure ham and cheese as far as content goes, but it’s impossible to say it isn’t fun.
Santo y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos (Santo & Blue Demon vs. The Monster Men) is some oh-so-glorious technicolor nonsense that brings us a six-man grudge match between the heroes, a mummy, a werewolf, a vampire, and a Frankenstein. I don’t even have to say anything else, you know it’s too hype of a concept to turn down.
Santo Contra Las Mujeres Vampiro (Santo vs. The Vampire Women) has some genuinely unparalleled ambiance and set design, with this black and white gothic horror mixing a modernized Mexican aesthetic with the pseudo-Victorian mansion where the finale takes place. Santo dives into a nest of female vampires in white dresses to rescue a damsel in distress, and hilarity ensues. It is probably the most technically competent of all of these when it comes to its directing.
The Mummies of Guanajuato was ultimately one of if not the biggest moneymakers, as it brought the three most famous luchadores together: Santo, Blue Demon y Mil Máscaras united to put the squeeze on some mummies killing Mexican citizens. Those monsters by the way, actually look great thanks to their makeup! All the ring exhibition stuff of them wrestling in the film is impressive as well. This one is my true favorite. If I could only watch one, it would be this.
And that’s all! Well, I’m off to go watch Santo vs The Zombies again, stay chill Horror Press rea–
What’s this?
ITS EDITOR JAMES-MICHAEL WITH THE STEEL CHAIR?
HES COMING IN BECAUSE OF MY HELLBOY ARTICLE BEING TOO LONG?!
LORD HAVE MERCY!
***
Major thanks to Marjolein Van Bavel, a professor of Modern Cultural History at Radboud University, whose writing formed most of the research on the historical part of this article. She discusses luchadoras in much more detail in her article “Morbo, lucha libre, and Television: The Ban of Women Wrestlers from Mexico City in the 1950s”, which I highly recommend you check out. Her writing was one of the major resources used for this article, and as such, deserves a shoutout.
And another shoutout to Brian Schuck of Films From Beyond, who pointed me towards Doyle Green and his book Mexploitation Cinema, which is a huge resource on lucha libre in horror. Both of them are incredible, please show them some love!
And as always, good luck, and happy watching horror fans!
I learned early on that I was not supposed to make it to the end of a horror movie. As a kid, I was drawn to slashers before I fully understood them. The VHS covers promised danger, chaos, and a kind of freedom that felt transgressive. Horror was loud, bloody, and thrilling in ways other genres were not. But the longer I watched, the clearer the rules became. The girl who survives is careful. She is observant. She is often white. She is someone the camera stays with, someone whose fear is treated as meaningful, even noble. Everyone else exists to prove the stakes. Black characters, especially Black girls, rarely make it past the first half of the movie.
The Final Girl as a Moral Framework
The final girl is not just a character archetype, she is a moral system. In classic slashers, survival is tied to innocence, restraint, and respectability. The final girl is allowed to be scared, but not unruly. She can scream, but only when it is justified. She can fight back, but only at the climax, after enduring enough suffering to earn it. Her survival reassures the audience that order can be restored. Those values were never built with Blackness in mind.
When Black characters appear in these films, they are rarely framed as people the story wants to protect. We are friends, sidekicks, background figures, or early warnings. Our deaths are fast and functional. Sometimes they are shocking. Sometimes they are played for humor. Rarely are they treated as losses the film wants us to mourn. The camera does not linger. The narrative does not slow down to grieve.
Watching Yourself Disappear as a Black Horror Fan
As a Black horror fan, I learned to accept this without ever being asked to. Loving the genre meant learning how to watch myself disappear. Horror trained me to identify with survivors who did not look like me, whose fear was treated as universal, while Black pain was treated as inevitable. Even knowing it was fiction, the pattern settled in. Who gets to live tells you who is expected to matter. This is why the final girl feels fundamentally different when she is Black.
When Black filmmakers and writers began reshaping the genre, the shift was not cosmetic. Films like Candyman, Get Out, and later Black-led horror did not simply place Black characters into existing formulas. They questioned the formulas themselves. The threat was no longer just a masked killer or a supernatural force. It was history, memory, and systems that follow Black characters no matter where they go. In these stories, survival is not about purity. It is about awareness.
Survival Through Awareness, Not Obedience
Black final girls do not survive because they obey the rules. They survive because they recognize the trap. Their fear is layered with cultural knowledge and lived experience. When danger appears, it is rarely surprising. It is familiar. The horror comes from seeing it made literal.
When a Black woman runs in a horror movie now, she is not just running from a monster. She is running from everything that has told her she should not be there, that she is disposable, that her fear does not deserve space. Her survival feels radical because it contradicts the genre’s long history of erasure.
Complexity, Joy, and Humanity in Black Horror
What makes this evolution powerful is that Black horror does not limit itself to suffering. Even when it confronts violence and trauma, it also makes room for humor, desire, anger, and joy. Black characters are allowed to be complex without being punished for it. They can be loud, flawed, scared, and still deserving of survival.
For me, the first time I saw a Black character positioned as someone the story wanted to protect, it was disorienting. I did not realize how much I had internalized until that moment. I was used to bracing myself for disappointment, for the early exit, for the confirmation that this ending was not meant for me. Seeing a Black woman make it to the final frame did not just change how I watched horror, it changed how I understood its power.
Survival as Defiance in Black Horror Cinema
Horror has always been about fear, but fear is shaped by context. For communities that already live with heightened vulnerability, survival fantasies carry a different weight. Black horror understands this. It treats survival not as a reward, but as an act of defiance.
When Black creators take control of the genre, they do more than add representation. They reframe what horror is allowed to care about. The final girl no longer exists to reassure the audience. She exists to endure, to remember, and to refuse erasure.
Loving Horror While Watching It Change
I still love classic slashers. I still enjoy their excess and chaos. But I watch differently now. I notice who the camera follows, whose pain is given time, whose death is treated as unavoidable. Horror did not always love us back, but Black creators are teaching it how.
The final girl was never me, until she was. And the genre is stronger for it.
There is a huge difference between a movie being remembered for being good and a movie being remembered because it’s controversial. As a writer, I can forgive an okay film with an amazing script. However, I find it frustrating when it feels like no one believed in the project, so just leaned into the controversy. Stunts were pulled, shock value was sought after, and I am now wondering when the creatives stopped believing in their project.
Animal Cruelty as Shock Value in Horror Cinema
Cannibal Holocaust, a pivotal step toward found footage horror films as we know them today, is remembered for all of the scenes of sexual assault and the murder of actual animals. This takes away from its historical significance because the first thing I remember about it is watching a turtle get murdered and ripped apart. I have a similar issue with Wake in Fright. It’s hard to remember Donald Pleasence, Gary Bond, or the queer implications of this thriller because the filmmaker had kangaroos executed for this film. The scene feels like it goes on forever, and I’m yet to understand why murdering animals needed to be part of the process.
I finally watched Megan is Missing a couple of years ago, and the exploitative nature of the assault of a fourteen-year-old is what stays with me. Whatever Michael Goi’s intentions were, they were lost because the shock factor of that moment outweighs everything else.
When Shock Value Replaces Meaningful Horror
It feels gross and like yet another male filmmaker mishandling assault on camera. Meanwhile, the film was serving its purpose and had other truly disturbing imagery that would have gotten a reaction out of audiences. It also would have allowed for more discussion about the film as a whole, instead of that scene that becomes the conversation. It’s another instance of male filmmakers mishandling the weight of sexual assault on film.
Things Aren’t Getting Better
However, the movies mentioned above are from different eras. We’d like to think filmmakers by now understand that shock factor doesn’t equal a quality movie. We would be wrong to assume that, though, because Dashcam (2021) didn’t stop at basing a character on an awful person. They actually cast the Trump-loving, anti-vax, and very vocal bigot Annie Hardy to play the character. This led to horror fans familiar with her brand of ignorance being turned off before the movie was even released. It also undid a lot of the goodwill that director Rob Savage earned with his previous movie, Host. To make matters worse, Savage repeatedly defended the choice all over the internet. At one point, he tried to blame her behavior on mental health, and people pointed out that doesn’t excuse racism, antisemitism, and homophobia.
Some of Annie’s Infamous Tweets
This is an especially head-scratching situation in this case. The team was riding the steam of a very popular found footage film. They were also primed to make a video game called Ghosts that had a successful crowdfunding campaign. People would have shown up for this before casting for shock value became the priority. We have had multiple films similar to this that sidestepped using known monsters. What was the reason? The idea came about because of her show, but any actress could’ve pulled that off. It was irresponsible to attempt to give this woman an even bigger platform . It was also the ultimate sign that no one was serious about this project.
Have We Tried Trying?
While making chaotic choices is one way to be memorable, is it worth it? In theory, someone(s) spent a lot of time and energy writing these stories. Wouldn’t actual storytellers prefer people to compliment their work instead? Celebrating their imagination, uniqueness, and skill instead of yelling about controversy and shock value. This isn’t a censorship thing. I’m used to being unimpressed with movies and asking, “What was the reason?” As a writer, I also know that there are ways to elicit responses from people without traumatizing them. We are literally tasked with putting characters and situations on the page that make people think and feel. Which is why going through the process of getting an idea greenlit and then leaning into something ghoulish like animal cruelty is baffling. Instead of casting a known Twitter bigot, you could just write a character based on assholes of that ilk.
Whenever I see films coming out that seem more interested in courting controversy than trying to find their audiences, I pause. I cannot help but wonder who really decided this. Clearly, someone didn’t believe in the script and felt that upsetting people for the wrong reasons was the move. That outdated idea that any press is good press snuffed out whatever spark initially got people on board for the film. It is sad that someone(s) didn’t believe in the power of the written word. They doubted the effectiveness of storytelling and decided to go big in the wrong ways. Instead of stepping it up in the script department and figuring out if the proposed stunt is a band-aid for something missing on the page, they decided to go nuclear. They shocked us in the worst of ways, and now we are stuck on impact rather than intention.
How Did We Get Here?
I’m not trying to sound like a boomer, but the rise of social media has made this worse over the years. Studios seemingly want controversial content rather than actual art. The pursuit of going viral has replaced the idea of trying to actually do or say something. It’s all about adding AI to movies to spark outrage and make it trend. The worst people you know are getting cast in movies, so they can cry witch hunt when accountability enters the chat. Shocking the people for the wrong reasons seems to sadly be at main goal too often.
How did we get here? I’m seriously asking. I mean, we know capitalism and people who don’t value art buying studios are a huge part of it. However, I feel like there is a missing piece of this puzzle. Maybe it’s just collective brain rot, and I want it to be more than that because I know the power of a good script. Hell, I know the power of a mid script in the hands of the right person. I want to believe in writers even if their vision is in the shadows of a circus.
Is The Shock Value Worth It?
What do I know, though? I’m just a girl, sitting in front of a computer, asking the industry to believe in writers again. Back scripts that actually say something instead of figuring out how get them canceled. Make movies that spark conversation for legitimate reasons instead of incredibly head-scratching decisions that pull focus. Some of us deserve smart movies that challenge us for the right reasons. That’s why we flock to the original ideas, live for international films, and look to indie filmmakers. We crave disrupters who manage to break the cycle of crap we constantly get spoon-fed.
That’s what inspires me to keep beating my head against the wall. It’s what gives me hope that I’ll get to make things one day. Maybe I’m naive, but I want to at least try because I love writing. I don’t want to just cast a real bigot and call it a day. Not when I can write characters based on bigots and hopefully prompt actual conversation. I want my people discussing my dialogue and metaphors, instead of animal cruelty that makes people sick. In a perfect world the system would allow more room for that. We deserve scripts that can stand on their own without shock value leading TikTok to talk.
The Final Girl Was Never Me, Rewriting Survival in Black Horror
The Horror Press Podcast Episode 56: Hellraiser & Enemas
‘Tusk’ (2014) Review: The Joke That Went Too Far
The Horrors of Reproductive Health Inspired ‘Brian Won’t Wear Condoms’
Choosing Shock Value Over Writers Is Very Telling
‘Audition’ (1999): A First-Time Watch Review
8 Horror Movies That Are Red Flags When Dating Men
‘Heathers’ (1988) is Very
‘The Strangers: Chapter 3’ Review: Visual Melatonin
The Best Horror You Can Stream on Netflix in February
‘The People Under the Stairs’ Review: A Brilliantly Bizarre Horror Classic
‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ and The Story of William Afton Explained
Slappy Was the Blueprint: How the Dummy from Goosebumps Became A Horror Icon
Glen and Glenda: Don Mancini’s Reverence for Queerness in ‘Seed of Chucky’ (2004)
‘Truth or Dare’: Who Did it Best?
V/H/S Franchise Ranked, Best to Worst
Everything You Need to Know About Jason Voorhees
The 11 Most Disturbing Horror Movies Ever, According to an Actual Horror Fan
[REVIEW] ‘Cherry Falls’ (1999) Brittany Murphy Shines in This Cult Classic Slasher
