This is one low, low budget film and an obscure slice of Mexican madness that offers up some entertainingly bad schlock for the bad movie lover - a film that already looked about twenty years dated when it was first made. Starting off well, with a surrealistic sequence in which a man is chased through the woods by torch-wielding demon riders who proceed to burn him, ZORRO VS. Satan offers such delirious delights as a nightmare sequence in which a girl is haunted by devil and zombie faces, a bar-room brawl with a difference in that the opponents are demons, and a truly overdone opening sequence which pays close homage to Zorro's whip in endlessly repeated 'cracking' shots.
After foiling an attempted witch-hanging, Zorro (as played by the untalented Juan Miranda, who is masked most of the time anyway so you don't really notice his acting or lack thereof) finds himself up against shaggy-haired emissaries of the devil and manages to stave off an attack with a few cracks of his whip. He follows them back to their mountain lair where he discovers that their muscular leader is a guy with a distinctive white circle on his chest. After a barrage of disturbingly weird sound effects and music so loud and intrusive that it actually hurts, Zorro survives a sweaty encounter with beasties in the dank passages of the mountain before escaping on horseback as they give chase.
Later on, a priest is disturbed from his prayer by the arrival of Satan, a goat-headed monster on horseback who threatens him in a loud, booming voice before riding off into red mists - another striking and surrealistic sequence. More of those damned demon riders arrive and prove themselves to be pretty mean knife-throwers. In a classic cliffhanger situation, the priest is tied to a tree and almost burnt alive before Zorro arrives and takes out all the bad guys in hand-to-hand combat. In the film's finale, Zorro arrives just in time to stop a ritual sacrifice taking place, and the villagers - all decked out in BIG HATS (if you can't fight, wear a big hat, as my grandfather used to say) - face their fears and take on the demon army. Mucho whip-cracking antics follow before the shocking surprise that Satan is, in fact, an overweight old guy.
Director Alfredo B. Crevenna (a seasoned genre regular) has some pretty offbeat ideas in this movie; repeated stock footage inserts of an erupting volcano and bubbling lava are what he uses to create suspense, whilst his cameraman appears to be just plain drunk with all the disorientating camera angles and jiggling photography. Despite the lack of budget, ZORRO VS. Satan actually manages to make use of some striking locations, particularly the real-life Aztec temples which serve as a backdrop for the film's cool beginning. The rest of the film is all shadows, darkness, and flames, used to give it a minimal atmosphere.
Another interesting thing is the actual danger some of the actors put themselves in - there are no stuntmen with a budget this low. Instead, we watch as one guy falls off a ladder and thunks his head into a wall painfully, or as Zorro actually has to wade through REAL flames to save his friends - earlier on in a film there's a shot of a guy on fire who isn't wearing a flame-proof suit either! Whilst the opening scenes involving the villagers are pretty tough to sit through, pretty soon the film becomes one bizarre and fantastic yarn and a stream of constant action which is worth a sitting - even if you can't understand what they're saying (unless you speak Spanish of course).
After foiling an attempted witch-hanging, Zorro (as played by the untalented Juan Miranda, who is masked most of the time anyway so you don't really notice his acting or lack thereof) finds himself up against shaggy-haired emissaries of the devil and manages to stave off an attack with a few cracks of his whip. He follows them back to their mountain lair where he discovers that their muscular leader is a guy with a distinctive white circle on his chest. After a barrage of disturbingly weird sound effects and music so loud and intrusive that it actually hurts, Zorro survives a sweaty encounter with beasties in the dank passages of the mountain before escaping on horseback as they give chase.
Later on, a priest is disturbed from his prayer by the arrival of Satan, a goat-headed monster on horseback who threatens him in a loud, booming voice before riding off into red mists - another striking and surrealistic sequence. More of those damned demon riders arrive and prove themselves to be pretty mean knife-throwers. In a classic cliffhanger situation, the priest is tied to a tree and almost burnt alive before Zorro arrives and takes out all the bad guys in hand-to-hand combat. In the film's finale, Zorro arrives just in time to stop a ritual sacrifice taking place, and the villagers - all decked out in BIG HATS (if you can't fight, wear a big hat, as my grandfather used to say) - face their fears and take on the demon army. Mucho whip-cracking antics follow before the shocking surprise that Satan is, in fact, an overweight old guy.
Director Alfredo B. Crevenna (a seasoned genre regular) has some pretty offbeat ideas in this movie; repeated stock footage inserts of an erupting volcano and bubbling lava are what he uses to create suspense, whilst his cameraman appears to be just plain drunk with all the disorientating camera angles and jiggling photography. Despite the lack of budget, ZORRO VS. Satan actually manages to make use of some striking locations, particularly the real-life Aztec temples which serve as a backdrop for the film's cool beginning. The rest of the film is all shadows, darkness, and flames, used to give it a minimal atmosphere.
Another interesting thing is the actual danger some of the actors put themselves in - there are no stuntmen with a budget this low. Instead, we watch as one guy falls off a ladder and thunks his head into a wall painfully, or as Zorro actually has to wade through REAL flames to save his friends - earlier on in a film there's a shot of a guy on fire who isn't wearing a flame-proof suit either! Whilst the opening scenes involving the villagers are pretty tough to sit through, pretty soon the film becomes one bizarre and fantastic yarn and a stream of constant action which is worth a sitting - even if you can't understand what they're saying (unless you speak Spanish of course).
