The Royal Eagle (1973) User Reviews

A satisfying Santo movie with La Tigresa.

[MonsterVision99 · 6/10 · 4 December 2021]

Santo meets La Tigresa. That says it all. The strangest Santo movie, not because it features over the top genre elements like some others, but out of the sheer insanity of the story, yet its one the most "mexican" ones as well with the hacienda and the cock fights and all that.

A mostly forgotten film in Santo's career but its an enjoyable ranchera movie with enough action and comedy to make it entertaining. Not particulary great but far from bad and with a ludicrous twist ending.

Not one for animal lovers

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 24 September 2021]

SANTO AND THE ROYAL EAGLE is a low rent adventure for our Mexican wrestler hero in which he's called in to act as a bodyguard for a rich lady who keeps finding attempts made on her life. Turns out some scruffy looking bad guys are responsible which leads to a bit of brawling action although not as much as in other Santo movies. Instead the focus of this one seems to be on shocking animal violence and cruelty, with horses going off cliffs, cock fighting, cat drugging and the eagle itself being abused throughout. Certainly not my cup of tea and it feels like prolific director Alfredo B. Crevenna is on autopilot here.

Santo forgets about animal violence

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 26 July 2021]

Also known as Santo y el águila real and The Royal Eagle, this movie puts Santo into a strange situation. He gets a call for help from Irma "La Tigresa" Morales (Irma Serrano*, known as La Tigresa de la Canción Ranchera (The Tigress of Ranchera Music) and the star of another movie made in 1973, La Tigresa, in which was directed by one member of this movie's directing team, Alfredo B. Crevenna**). Her father and brother have already been killed for their land and she fears that she's next on the list of the evil Manuel Villafuerte.

Santo is able to work his way into any genre and this time, he's in a combination western and an exploration of the simple village people of Mexico. And these non-city folk seemingly love nothing more than the senseless slaughter of animals, as this movie features a flashback in which we see Irma's brother go off a cliff on a horse that is completely real, as well as an honest-to-goodness cockfight. She also shoots a rabbit for real to show Santo her marksmanship abilities and then, after Santo's wine gets drugged, he tests the poison out of a kitten. Later, La Tigresa's protective eagle La Serrana is placed in a bag and smashed numerous times into a wall, yet somehow survives.

Who was under that silver mask, Ruggero Deodato?

Somehow, this movie also has numerous musical numbers, dancing scenes and a dungeon full of humanity malformed by incest, including an evil hunchback, who all beat the heck out of Santo before he starts giving back body drops to dudes into the hard dirt.

All Santo movies are wild on some level, but this one is one of the oddest ones. Santo is barely even the star of his own movie, standing back so La Tigresa can be tecnico Tura Satana and win over all of our hearts.

*Irma is amazing in this, fighting dudes with her fists and a bullwhip, boasting through song and owning her own cock - for fighting, you little raincoater. In real life, she bought her own theater where she put on highly erotic shows like her take on Emile Zola's Nanå. In 1977, she collaborated with Jodorowsky to perform the stage play Lucrecia Borgia. They fought throughout and both ended up putting on their own version of the show.

She also put on plays like A Lady Without Camelias, Oh ... Calcutta, Yocasta Reina, The Cross-legged War and A calzón amarrado, which was based on her controversial biography as well a series of adults-only midnight plays Emanuele LIVE, Jail for Girls, Vampira! (Emanuele de ultratumba) and Carmen.

La Tigresa is a controversial figure, as she was jailed by Guadalupe Borja, the First Lady of Mexico, for traveling to Los Pinos, the presidential residence, and singing to President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz. It would be more than thirty years before Irma owned up to the affair, defending his honor and saying that she was not the person who ordered him to attack the students in the 1968 massacre of Tlatelolco.

She won a senate race in her home state of Chiapas and a few years later, went to jail for brandishing a gun and threatening to kill an ex-tenant. She's still alive at 87 and one assumes has lived an insane life.

**René Cardona Jr. Is the other half of the directing duo.

It's bad...and chock full of animal abuse!

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 8 July 2009]

The other review was correct, there was tons of animal abuse in this film. While I am far from an animal rights advocate, I was horrified at the Mexican film industry and its cavalier attitude about animal abuse. Some of the many abusive portions included filming a cock fight (yes, I know this is cultural and may not be seen as abusive in Mexico), a horse being tossed off a cliff (and it's a real horse and it bounces many times and at the very least it broke a few legs--necessitating it being put down), drugging a cat and abusing a bird of prey (I think it was a Golden Eagle).

In addition, the film is tough to watch simply because the English captioning is so bad. Most of the time you can understand what they were saying, but occasionally the captions were so mangled, I was left scratching my head. A lot of the mistakes were just the result of the translator only having a passable knowledge of English. Occasionally, too, I noticed that what the people were saying in Spanish and English weren't exactly the same. On a scale from 1 to 10, the captioning was a 2.

Now there is one final problem with the film. The DVD was of very dubious quality. It looked bad even for an old and highly degraded VHS tape! The picture was generally very fuzzy and the sound also, naturally, pretty bad as well.

As for the film itself, it is an amazingly dull film. I've seen a couple other Santo films and this one has such a pedestrian plot, I was surprised. No Dracula, no Frankenstein, no apocalypse...just Santo staying with a rich lady and occasionally trying (very unsuccessfully) to come to her rescue. In fact, I was surprised just how poor this great Mexican wrestler looked in the film--getting a beat down several times. I could try to explain the plot, but frankly it isn't worth it. It's just too uninteresting to get into it--suffice to say, it's about a not terribly good Luchador (Mexican wrestler) who always runs around wearing his silver mask. Heck, he even keeps it on when he's eating (though amazingly, he never gets any food on it despite the tiny mouth hole). I wish the film would have had a nude scene. Usually I don't like this in films and think it hurts the movie, I would have loved to see him having sex while wearing the mask--it would have been pretty funny.

While I have enjoyed the zany weirdness of several Luchador movies, this one has nothing to offer. No odd characters, no bizarre plot twists and nothing to like. It's like eating an entire meal of melba toast--no particularly exciting or filling. Plus, they killed the horse!

Hilariously bad, but a warning to animal lovers

[curtis-8 · 8 September 2004]

"Santo y La Tigresa" is hilariously bad as only a Santo wrestling movie from the 70s can be. This one, however, doesn't have the added interest of monsters with horribly amateur makeup. "Tigresa" is more like an episode of "Big Valley" mixed with some "Starsky and Hutch." It's actually pretty darn funny, with loads of 70s hair, clothes, and music adding to the camp value of a big fatass eating, sleeping, loving, and carrying on serious conversations in a silver wrestler's mask as though that were normal. Oh yeah, and he occasionally kicks some ass. But "Tigresa" has a few moments that animal lovers might find offensive. There is an extended cockfight and a cat is deliberately poisoned (though the scene was obviously faked, since the cat is still moving once everyone in the scene insists it is dead).

The transfer on the DVD currently available from Vanguard Cinema is very, very poor, however--much more like that of a $3.99 budget disc than a $15 to $20 one. The sound is passable, but the picture is annoyingly soft and washed out, with background characters' faces disappearing almost entirely into mush in the longshots.

Another Bad, but Funny film....

[fr_7814 · 11 August 2011]

The animal abuse was not shocking to me (I've lived in Mexico); it was simply part of the culture. Animals are abused in Spain as well (bull abuse). One can either accept it, or not. Typical Santo film; beautiful women, fast cars, and corny characters. The first generation Corvette was nice to see. As predictable as Santo films are, they still fun to watch. La Tigresa fights in this picture as well as El Santo. At least El Santo gets dirt on his white shirt during one of the later fights. La Tigresa wears a 1960s bra during her parts, "it hold, it molds;" at least her makeup was not overly done, it could have been worse. Now, on to the next Santo movie......

Surprisingly entertaining

[orvuus · 27 August 2011]

I had read about Santo movies before, so I had to try out one. The print I saw (Vanguard) is in bad shape, and the movie is subtitled (at least partially), but the sound is okay. Still, once past the opening the movie becomes a fascinating culture study of a sort of country living in Mexico. For entertainment at one point they see a cock fight (yes it's real and violent) and it is fascinating to see what kind of manners people use with each other, even in a fictional movie. Santo is always the gentleman -- speaking very correctly both to friends and enemies! The basic plot begins with Santo going to the aid of a woman, the owner of a ranch, who is being threatened by unknown persons. The way the plot unfolds is not as entertaining as seeing the characters interact. It does appear there is animal abuse in the film, since most of the filming seems to be in a one-take mode, but one can never be sure about that. After all, the fights look real enough but were faked no doubt in terms of blows connecting, so maybe they did something similar with the filming of the animal scenes. All in all I have to give this film for both entertainment and amusement value, though perhaps I was just in the right mood. I'm going to check out more Santo movies after this.