Neutrón, el enmascarado negro (1960) User Reviews

First in a series of low rent Santo copies

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 3 September 2016]

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!

Oh to be a Mexican wrestler...

[Mr. Pulse · 2/10 · 27 May 2002]

It's not easy being Neutron, let me tell you. American wrestlers, they get off light. All they have to do is wrestle. Mexican wrestlers, on the hand, are called upon by their society to act as masked peacekeepers against the forces of evil. Such is the life of Neutron, who is the hero of our film, a mediocre entry in the Mexican wrestler genre.

An important scientist is working on a brand new type of bomb, confusingly called a neutron bomb (No, it doesn't have any connection to Neutron the wrestler). He's killed by a duplicitous lab assistant and the police later discover the formula for the bomb is actually broken into several small pieces which must be recovered to protect the world from the evil Doctor Curante (Julio Alemán). Luckily for the free world, the scientist's son is best buddies with Neutron, so he starts to investigate the case. We're also fortunate that the police seem content to have a son of a murdered man and his wrestler friend assisting in the investigation.

The only treat this movie has to offer is the character of Doctor Curante, an inspiringly silly villain. Wearing a white shirt and pants combo, white gloves and a bandage mask similar to Darkman's, he strikes an uncomfortable image, especially when the script calls for him to trudge down long hallways barking orders to his midget sidekick. It's unclear exactly what he's a doctor of; he does little to suggest any medical knowledge, though he's especially good at insulting his minions and denigrating the heroes. He acts more like a bad guidance counselor than a doctor. Foolishly, the filmmakers banish Curante to limited scene time and focus on the less interesting supporting cast.

There's little else to recommend in Neutron and the Black Mask, including the title; Neutron IS the guy wearing the Black Mask, so it's redundant. The fight scenes aren't as exciting as some of the Santos movies, and while the production values aren't bad, they are squandered on a meandering plot and weak characters. I told you it's tough being a Mexican wrestler; even your movies stink!

'Neutron' Bombs--But I Like It

[clemente_luca · 8/10 · 19 June 2006]

The plot of Neutron—the Man in the Black Mask revolves around a doomsday weapon in the shape of a small spiked ball, which is confusingly called "the neutron bomb" despite the fact that it bears absolutely no resemblance to the real neutron bomb designed by Edward Teller. In this storyline, the bomb is a peculiar gas-emitting weapon created by a brilliant Mexican physicist named Professor Norton. The professor is presented as a humanitarian whose only motivation for creating "the most destructive bomb in history" is the achievement of world peace. "This little bomb is so powerful that no one would dare start a war now," muses the delusional Norton to his skeptical assistant. But no sooner does Norton utter those words than the assistant---a "mediocre" scientist named Walker---murders the professor and steals the bomb formula. One might think that a crime of this potentially genocidal magnitude would attract the attention of federal authorities, but the case is handled by a single, rather ineffective local police inspector named Lansing.

When Walker proceeds to join forces with the real villain of the story---the megalomaniacal Dr. Caronte---the pace begins to step up. Caronte is a would-be conqueror who plans to take over the world with an army of obedient, bulletproof zombies. He is convinced that the only obstacle to his success is the existence of the "neutron bomb," and he rants incessantly about possessing the secret of the bomb's destructive power. Walker shares his stolen data with Caronte, but it turns out that Professor Norton only possessed part of the formula. The rest of the bomb plans were divided between three other scientists in the interest of national security. And so, predictably, the remainder of the movie consists mostly of Neutron failing to prevent Caronte's zombies from assassinating the other scientists and stealing their parts of the bomb formula. Incredibly, the zombies, despite their rather inconspicuous appearance and ponderous gait, are able to murder the scientists, collect the entire formula, and kidnap Nora without being detected. With the complete plans, Walker succeeds in constructing a "neutron bomb" for Dr. Caronte, and all seems lost.

But Neutron has a plan. He recruits a British physicist named Thomas---a man described as the only living scientist who understands the bomb's technology---to publicly pretend to be able to counteract the bomb. Professor Thomas (a man of apparently limitless courage and trust) then allows himself to be kidnapped by the zombies(!) and brought before Caronte and Walker. Neutron, however, has secretly trailed the zombies back to Caronte's hidden laboratory. Just as Walker is ready to shoot Professor Thomas and Nora, Caronte intervenes. "I have something better in store for them!" he says, as a wall panel rises to reveal his army of zombies. At that moment, Neutron leaps into action against Dr. Caronte and proceeds to fight the zombie army to a standstill. During the ensuing melee, a mindless zombie mistakenly murders Walker, and Dr. Caronte and all of his zombies are disintegrated by Caronte's own bomb.

One would be hard-pressed to imagine either Neutron or Caronte existing outside of the film's surrealistic universe, but the other characters in the film react to the two masked men as if wearing a costume in public was nothing unusual.

Neutron is unusual even by superhero standards, however. He bears no resemblance to friendly archetypal characters such as Superman or Captain Marvel. As is perhaps fitting for a Mexican superhero, Neutron dresses in the manner of a lucha libre wrestler. His all-black costume comprises tights, leather gloves and wrestling boots, a belt with a big 'N' on the buckle, and a full-face wrestling mask with three white lightning bolts on the forehead. One thing his costume is lacking, however, is a shirt. While it is not unusual to see a shirtless wrestler in the ring, it is somehow disquieting to see this muscular, half-naked man in a mask sneaking around in the dark and creeping into people's houses. In any case, Neutron is a man with complete confidence in his deodorant. Incidentally, no explanation is ever given why the hero bears the same name as the bomb.

In contrast, Dr. Caronte is garbed entirely in white. His costume comprises a short sleeve tunic, tights and boots, a full-face wrestling mask, and rubber dishwashing gloves. Caronte's costume effectively identifies him as the doctor/wrestler he is, but one would think that he would make his dwarf assistant, Nick, wash the dishes. Perhaps the zombie chemicals give him dishpan hands when he doesn't wear the gloves. Perhaps he just does things the way he was trained at undead medical school.

The entire film is silly, but the dialogue in some of the scenes is particularly ridiculous. When Walker first meets Dr. Caronte, the former praises the latter for being logical. The doctor takes offense and chastises Walker. "I detest that word…Do you see any logic in all this? Do you think my creatures are logical?" challenges Caronte. "I've done the impossible!" James, Charles, and Martin seem to find themselves at the nightclub every evening. On more than one occasion, the nightclub setting provides an opportunity for the director to insert an incongruous musical number, which completely disrupts the flow of the action.

Special effects are practically nonexistent. They consist of the smoke emitted from the "neutron bomb" and a few bizarre sound effects. The bomb itself looks as if someone attached long spikes to a baseball and spray-painted it silver. The zombies are nothing more than tall actors wearing lumpy, faceless masks and messy black wigs. Strangely, all of the zombies are dressed in automotive repair jumpsuits. Considering the number of zombies under Caronte's command, I would guess he was probably able to buy the jumpsuits wholesale. After the last zombie has been dissolved and Dr. Caronte is no more, the final result of all of this absurdity is a truly terrible film that paradoxically succeeds in entertaining the viewer despite itself.

Solid start for the Neutron series.

[MonsterVision99 · 8/10 · 21 June 2021]

A very exciting and highly entertaining entry in the luchador subgenre. Mad doctors, deformed henchmen, superweapons, zombie robots and fun fight scenes.

Neutron doesnt have a big part and theres a couple of musical numbers that feel slow but its never dull in any way.