This incredible Mexican adventure film is an early example of the wrestling movies which were extremely popular in Mexico in the '60s - and continued right through to the '80s. The most popular of these starred Santo and the Blue Demon, whilst Neutron himself is more like a low budget (who am I kidding, all of these films had poverty row budgets!) spin-off who had a whole five films to himself before disappearing from the screens. NEUTRON, THE MAN IN THE BLACK MASK, is the first of these five adventures, although its sometimes difficult to tell as different sources offer different years of production and the like.
Things begin with a scientist being double-crossed by a friend, getting killed, then the friend killing the hired killer before being mutilated himself by a bomb explosion. This is all in the first three minutes! The paucity of the special effects are immediately evident in the explosion of the neutron bomb. A brief white flash and a couple of clouds of smoke (err...radon gas in fact) are all it takes to turn flesh into liquid with this amazing contraption which looks like a hollow rubber ball painted silver with a few cardboard spikes sticking out of it. Looks like somebody has made it in five minutes in a backyard shed somewhere! Thus we have the first villain of the film, the creepy and scarred Dr. Walker who spends most of his time lurking in a basement, to avoid his niece who thinks that he was killed in the explosion. The minute she's out of the house, however, he emerges before donning his favourite smoking jacket and taking a seat in the study! Walker isn't too happy about being relegated to a subterranean cellar so attempts to murder his niece, chasing her through a park at night with a knife. Genre convention states that the running female victim should be wearing a negligee at this point, which of course she is. Unfortunately for him, he fails, so he has to go back and skulk for the rest of the movie.
At this point we are introduced proper to the second villain of the film, Dr. Caronte. Caronte is an evil maniac who has a cackling dwarf assistant (!) and lives in his own castle, apparently. Caronte is masked too, making his real identity a secret throughout the movie. He proved to be such a formidable foe that he returned for two of the sequels. Caronte is dangerous because a) he has a chain in one of his corridors that makes an electronic whooshing noise when he pulls it, and b) he has a pit of indestructible, boiler-suited (!) monkey men who live quite contentedly in his cellar! These men aren't human, apparently, and are created on the operating table by Caronte. Not sure how that works but there you go! For what it's worth, Caronte's lair, with its ornate stone carvings, many staircases and pillars, is pretty impressive on a tacky scale.
Blink and you'll miss the third villain of film, the cackling dwarf sidekick! He is introduced through a couple of scenes which show him and Caronte - holding hands - walking down an underground passageway. After this the dwarf guy disappears never to return! He returns in a later film too though so we'll have to see what happens to him. Along with this, we get lots of plot about three other scientists who have pieces of instructions which, if put together, will spelt out the method to build a bomb. The police investigation is typically slow and goes nowhere. Three young men are introduced as "friends" (sounds a bit suspect to me) and spend a lot of time wisecracking and looking macho.
All this goes on for 33 minutes which is when Neutron rears his masked head for the first time. In he bounds through an upper doorway before biffing a gang of policemen in the hallway! The fight scenes in this film are hilarious and the best parts of it, they resemble the classic comic book bouts of the '60s TV series BATMAN and are great fun. Neutron smacks, punches, and kicks his way through multiple opponents before escaping into the night. And on we go, the film moving back down into first gear as more characters are introduced, some brief romance is enjoyed along with lots of grating musical interludes to pad out the time (seemingly a must for most foreign films of this period). Neutron appears again, fighting off the monkey men single-handedly before jumping through a window. Hilariously, the movie freeze-frames on the smashing window for about fifteen seconds while stirring music plays before moving on! Shortly after this we get a black screen with the caption "One moment please while we change reels" - on a VIDEO?!! After a while the film is over, with Neutron facing an identity crisis which must be resolved in one of the following films. It's as poorly made as you would imagine, with wooden acting from the entire cast, but the short running time (71 minutes to be precise) and the wealth of action and plot keep things moving along swiftly, although there is far too little of Neutron for my liking - four or five scenes with the masked avenger are not enough in my mind! Altogether this is a fun film for adventure lovers, from a forgotten era, which contains all the right ingredients for an enjoyable B-movie: a muscular, athletic hero, evil villains, monsters, mad scientists, and dim-witted police. Good stuff!
Things begin with a scientist being double-crossed by a friend, getting killed, then the friend killing the hired killer before being mutilated himself by a bomb explosion. This is all in the first three minutes! The paucity of the special effects are immediately evident in the explosion of the neutron bomb. A brief white flash and a couple of clouds of smoke (err...radon gas in fact) are all it takes to turn flesh into liquid with this amazing contraption which looks like a hollow rubber ball painted silver with a few cardboard spikes sticking out of it. Looks like somebody has made it in five minutes in a backyard shed somewhere! Thus we have the first villain of the film, the creepy and scarred Dr. Walker who spends most of his time lurking in a basement, to avoid his niece who thinks that he was killed in the explosion. The minute she's out of the house, however, he emerges before donning his favourite smoking jacket and taking a seat in the study! Walker isn't too happy about being relegated to a subterranean cellar so attempts to murder his niece, chasing her through a park at night with a knife. Genre convention states that the running female victim should be wearing a negligee at this point, which of course she is. Unfortunately for him, he fails, so he has to go back and skulk for the rest of the movie.
At this point we are introduced proper to the second villain of the film, Dr. Caronte. Caronte is an evil maniac who has a cackling dwarf assistant (!) and lives in his own castle, apparently. Caronte is masked too, making his real identity a secret throughout the movie. He proved to be such a formidable foe that he returned for two of the sequels. Caronte is dangerous because a) he has a chain in one of his corridors that makes an electronic whooshing noise when he pulls it, and b) he has a pit of indestructible, boiler-suited (!) monkey men who live quite contentedly in his cellar! These men aren't human, apparently, and are created on the operating table by Caronte. Not sure how that works but there you go! For what it's worth, Caronte's lair, with its ornate stone carvings, many staircases and pillars, is pretty impressive on a tacky scale.
Blink and you'll miss the third villain of film, the cackling dwarf sidekick! He is introduced through a couple of scenes which show him and Caronte - holding hands - walking down an underground passageway. After this the dwarf guy disappears never to return! He returns in a later film too though so we'll have to see what happens to him. Along with this, we get lots of plot about three other scientists who have pieces of instructions which, if put together, will spelt out the method to build a bomb. The police investigation is typically slow and goes nowhere. Three young men are introduced as "friends" (sounds a bit suspect to me) and spend a lot of time wisecracking and looking macho.
All this goes on for 33 minutes which is when Neutron rears his masked head for the first time. In he bounds through an upper doorway before biffing a gang of policemen in the hallway! The fight scenes in this film are hilarious and the best parts of it, they resemble the classic comic book bouts of the '60s TV series BATMAN and are great fun. Neutron smacks, punches, and kicks his way through multiple opponents before escaping into the night. And on we go, the film moving back down into first gear as more characters are introduced, some brief romance is enjoyed along with lots of grating musical interludes to pad out the time (seemingly a must for most foreign films of this period). Neutron appears again, fighting off the monkey men single-handedly before jumping through a window. Hilariously, the movie freeze-frames on the smashing window for about fifteen seconds while stirring music plays before moving on! Shortly after this we get a black screen with the caption "One moment please while we change reels" - on a VIDEO?!! After a while the film is over, with Neutron facing an identity crisis which must be resolved in one of the following films. It's as poorly made as you would imagine, with wooden acting from the entire cast, but the short running time (71 minutes to be precise) and the wealth of action and plot keep things moving along swiftly, although there is far too little of Neutron for my liking - four or five scenes with the masked avenger are not enough in my mind! Altogether this is a fun film for adventure lovers, from a forgotten era, which contains all the right ingredients for an enjoyable B-movie: a muscular, athletic hero, evil villains, monsters, mad scientists, and dim-witted police. Good stuff!