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Return of the Lucha Libre for Cinema con Queso - August 24, 2018

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Cinema con Queso marks the return of the lucha libre to Liberty Hall, on Friday, August 24

We'll be showing El Enmascarado de Plata (The Silver Mask), made in 1954. This isn't the first lucha libre film, but it IS the first lucha libre superhero movie. It was intended for El Santo, but he turned it down, so the starring role went to El Medico Asesino (The Killer Doctor), who was extremely popular at the time due to numerous appearances on televised wrestling matches on Mexican TV. In fact, the story is that, as a dig at El Santo for rejecting the movie, they made the man in the silver mask one of the bad guys.

Unlike many of the lucha libre films that followed, this is an extremely well made film which cleverly captures the look and style of old Republic action serials like Spy Smasher and The Adventures of Captain Marvel.

This film was originally intended to be a 12-chapter serial itself but, for some reason, it was never released in that form. Instead, it was edited into a feature film that was widely shown in Mexico and had a brief run in Spanish language theatres in Southern California. It's never been dubbed into English or subtitled...until now. We've commissioned a translation, so we'll be showing the first-ever subtitled version of El Enmascarado de Plata anywhere!

The second feature is Fantomas vs. The Iron Claw, an absolutely ridiculous and unbelievable Turkish superhero movie. For a brief time in the 1960s, the Turks were ripping off Superman, Captain America, Spider Man and Star Wars in a series of cheesy movies. Fantomas is based on the anti-hero of a very popular series of French pulp thrillers in the early 20th century, where Fantomas is a gentleman thief, always outsmarting the police. Here Fantomas is the bad guy, up against a homegrown Turkish hero known as The Iron Claw. This movie is almost guaranteed to cause brain damage.

Join us at Liberty Hall in downtown Lawrence, Friday, August 24. Tickets are $10, available at the doors, which open at 6:30 p.m.