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In all the annals of living horror, one name stands out as the epitome of Evil!

Magic mirror on the wall, who is the most terrifying one of all?: The Witch’s Mirror

Now Playing: The Witch's Mirror (El espejo de la bruja; 1962)

Pros: Very spooky atmosphere; Effective visuals and great production value for a low budget film
Cons: The mash-up of old school witchcraft and mad science (which takes over the 2nd half of the film) may not be everyone’s cup of witch’s brew

This post is part of the 3rd Annual Spooky Classic Movies Blogathon, hosted by Kristen at Hoofers and Honeys. If you need any more last minute recommendations for your Halloween viewing, be sure to check out the blogathon entries at Kristen’s place.

In my last post (“In Praise of MMA, Part Two: Masked Mexican Athletes vs. the Monsters”), I wrote about how, in the late 1950s, actor/producer Abel Salazar started a Gothic horror trend in Mexico with his hit, The Vampire (El vampiro, 1957), which may in turn have influenced Hammer to try its luck with the genre.

While Hammer went all in on reinterpreting Universal’s classic monsters after their breakout hits The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula (1958), Salazar kept busy stocking his monster movie-verse with more vampires (The Vampire’s Coffin/El ataúd del vampiro, 1958 and The World of Vampires/El mundo de los vampiros, 1961), a cursed pianist who is turned into a monster after trading his soul for otherworldly musical talent (The Man and the Monster/El hombre y el monstruo, 1959), a 300-year-old warlock who returns as a brain-eating monster (The Brainiac/El barón del terror, 1962), and an ultra-creepy variation of the vengeful, ghostly La Llorna from Mexican folklore (The Curse of the Crying Woman/La maldición de la Llorona, 1963).

To this Mexican monster mix, The Witch’s Mirror (also produced by Salazar) adds an eclectic mix of its own, including a vengeful witch, demons (who are mostly unseen, adding to their eeriness), and a classic mad doctor hell-bent on restoring the ruined looks of his new wife, no matter the cost.

But make no mistake, the witch of The Witch’s Mirror is no garden-variety B movie sorceress. She isn't burned at the stake, and she doesn’t do anything drearily mundane like returning from the dead to inflict horrible retribution on her executioners and their descendents. Rather, she is Sara (Isabela Corona), the seemingly prim and proper housekeeper for the estate of Dr. Eduardo Ramos (Armando Calvo), and godmother to Ramos’ beautiful young wife Elena (Dina de Marco).

Sara looks to a higher, diabolical power to keep things running smoothly at the casa.

Sara takes her godmothering responsibilities very seriously, and at the beginning of the film, she is worried for Elena’s well-being. With Elena in tow, Sara turns to the main witchy tool she has at her disposal -- a magic full-length mirror through which she can communicate with the spirit world.

The mirror reveals that Elena has a rival for her husband’s affections, and that her life is in mortal danger. That evening, Eduardo poisons Elena’s bedtime glass of milk, which the troubled woman dutifully drinks. In another part of the house, Sara begs the spirits to protect her goddaughter, but she is told that nothing can be done, Elena’s fate is sealed.

With Elena conveniently dispatched, Eduardo brazenly brings his new wife Deborah (Rosita Arenas) to the manor, where Sara is playing it diabolically cool, pretending nothing is amiss. Unbeknownst to the happy couple, she is also communicating with Elena’s spirit, promising to avenge her.

As Sara looks grimly on, Eduardo and Deborah find out there’s Hell to pay (although poor Deborah seems blissfully unaware of the crime that elevated her to mistress of the house). The new bride suddenly finds herself playing a piece on the piano that she has never heard before -- to Eduardo’s great discomfort, since it was a favorite of Elena’s.

Deborah and Eduardo react to a special spirit-powered piano that plays itself.

The first half of the film is all high Gothic spookiness full of disturbing, fog-shrouded images in the occult mirror, sepulchral spirit voices (or are they demons?) talking to Sara, statues in deep shadows that seem to move, almost imperceptibly, flowers that unaccountably wilt in seconds, and pianos that play by themselves.

Just at the point where we’re wondering what other tricks the spirits have up their sleeves for the unhappy couple, The Witch’s Mirror takes a hard turn, leaving Spooky Town for the bright, garish lights of Mad Doctor-ville.

The precipitating scene is as shocking as it is surprising. Deborah, seeing Elena’s ghost in the haunted mirror, promptly faints. Eduardo, rushing into the room, also sees Elena in the mirror, and throws the oil lamp he’s carrying at the specter. The lamp smashes the mirror, but then caroms onto Deborah, setting her on fire. All the stunned Eduardo can do is bolt after his wife as she runs screaming from the room, completely ablaze. For her part, Sara impassively watches the grisly scene play out.

Elena practices being spooky in front of the mirror.

A blurb on the back of my CasaNegra Entertainment DVD copy penned by David Wilt of the Mexican Film Bulletin reads:

“Chano Urueta’s The Witch’s Mirror is an exercise in pure cinema, in which countless allusions to previous movies and a virtual catalog of special effects techniques are used to illustrate a delirious tale of witchcraft vs. mad science.”

One obvious allusion is to the French horror film Eyes Without a Face, released a couple of years earlier, which jump-started the Eurohorror trend of guilt-ridden mad surgeons trying to restore the disfigured faces of wives, girlfriends and daughters with the help of unwilling live donors. (1962 was a banner year for the theme, with Jess Franco’s The Awful Dr. Orlof and another Spanish horror film, Face of Terror, joining Witch’s Mirror in the face grafting frenzy. Later entries include Corruption, 1968, with Peter Cushing; The Blood Rose, 1970, from France; and Faceless, 1988, with Jess Franco returning to the theme.)

While Eduardo’s profession is only hinted at in the first part of the movie, in his extreme guilt he goes full blown mad doctor in the latter. An assistant, Gustavo (Carlos Nieto) suddenly shows up, who helps him steal bodies from the town morgue and a funeral parlor for the er, um, raw material that he needs to restore Deborah’s looks. Meanwhile, Deborah, swathed in bandages like a mummy, wanders zombie-like around the mansion, as Sara hovers.

Poor Deborah is caught in middle between her crazy husband and the malevolent housekeeper.

Before it’s all over, a prematurely buried body will be dug up (shades of Edgar Allan Poe!), the police will become involved, Eduardo will attempt to transplant new hands onto Deborah (shades of The Hands of Orlac!), and witchcraft will ultimately frustrate the designs of mad science.

The sudden thematic shift midway through not only contributes to cognitive whiplash, it reinforces the film’s surreal qualities.Viewing The Witch’s Mirror is like sleeping through one nightmare, waking up briefly, then plunging into a new nightmare, while your unconscious mind keeps the same cast of characters for economy’s sake.

The one character that you can rely on, so to speak, is Sara. She seems as old as the manor itself, and her loyalty to her goddaughter Elena is total, even after death. Eduardo is the completely amoral newcomer to the household, willing to do anything (including murdering his wife) to get his way. He is arrogant when things are going his way, superstitious and desperate when they’re not. His “science” is no match for Sara’s occult arts.

Deborah is a pitiful figure. There’s nothing to suggest that she was in on the murder plot -- instead, she appears to be an innocent tragically caught in the mortal struggle between the new world (mad science) and the old (witchcraft). After being horribly burned, Deborah is outfitted with head bandages so thick, they almost look like a paper mache fright mask. She has become a sacrificial lamb and a grotesque reminder of Eduardo’s criminality and hubris. We feel for her, but she never stood a chance.

Rosita Arenas (Deborah), was the daughter of noted Spanish actor Miguel Arenas, who helped her break into the movies. During her lengthy career, she appeared in a lot of varied movies and TV, but of most interest to readers of this blog are the horror films she was cast in starting in the late 1950s, including three Aztec mummy movies (The Aztec Mummy, The Curse of the Aztec Mummy, and The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy), and The Witch’s Mirror and The Curse of the Crying Woman (1963) in association with Abel Salazar (whom she would eventually marry).

-"Tell me Rosita, how many Aztec Mummy movies did you make?"
-"Well let's see, there was The Aztec Mummy, then Curse of the Aztec Mummy, and then..."

Armando Calvo (Eduardo) was also a second generation Spanish actor who broke into the theater business at a very early age. From the mid-40s through the early ‘60s he worked steadily in the Mexican film industry, primarily in Westerns (although he did appear in The Hell of Frankenstein in 1960). Shortly after The Witch’s Mirror he returned to Spain to work in the theater, but ended up back in Mexico for good in the 1970s. The CasaNegra DVD bio states that he often portrayed characters with “a certain edge” -- as in ruthless, crooked, ethically compromised and obsessive. As Eduardo, he’s all that and more.

The Witch’s Mirror appears to be the only horror film on Isabela Corona’s (Sara) lengthy resume, consisting primarily of romances and costume dramas. At first glance, Corona doesn’t appear to have much to do in the role -- Sara is mostly a hovering, malignant presence. But she makes this singular role her own with subtle facial expressions that reflect vengeful triumph as the lives of Eduardo and Deborah come crashing down.

Perhaps the real stars of the show were the people behind the camera, who, whether it involved the supernatural or crazy mad science, created an exceedingly creepy atmosphere on a very low budget. All the action takes place on one set used many times before by other productions, but so much is going on that you don’t notice (or care about) all the little economies.

By this point in his career, director Chano Ureta knew how to get the most out of limited resources. Rear projection is employed in some of the mirror scenes, but mostly it’s live actors performing within the mirror frame that provide an effective illusion. Sara’s transformations into various creatures of the night -- an owl and a black cat -- consist of simple camera dissolves. A scene in a funeral parlor is accomplished by redressing one of the mansion corridor sets. (CasaNegra DVD commentary by Frank Coleman).

Never fear dear reader, that is not a real severed head on the table.

Jorge Stahl Jr.’s cinematography, emphasizing deep shadows and otherworldly light sources, adds an eerie gloss to the production. Gustavo César Carrión’s music hits the right somber notes without intruding. And the production design and set decoration (by Javier Torres Torija and Dario Cabañas, respectively) lend an air of mystery to the proceedings, especially in scenes where Sara, surrounded by witchy paraphernalia, is communicating with the spirits. The various statues, icons and other obscure, ominous-looking items that dress-up the witch's environs seem to have their own dark tales to tell. 

Finally, mention should be made of the film’s elaborate pre-titles sequence, in which a narrator solemnly intones on the history of witches and their evil doings against the backdrop of a series of surreal, witchcraft-themed drawings by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746-1828). The sequence, which sets a morbid tone for what is to follow, was excised from the dubbed U.S. version of the film.

“To use their diabolical powers, witches resort to special potions, brooms, skeletons of children and animals, every kind of untanned hide, flasks and vessels of every shape, secret powders and dreadful poisons, and an infinite variety of lethal herbs. All this is used by an average witch. But only a superlative witch, endowed with a genuinely profound knowledge of the occult, can make use of a magical object of infinite powers and properties… the mirror!” [from the pre-titles sequence]

Fortunately, those interested in staring into The Witch’s Mirror have access to a diabolical tool: video streaming (not to mention DVD for old school occultists).

Where to find it: Streaming | DVD/Blu-ray  

In Praise of MMA, Part Two: Masked Mexican Athletes vs. the Monsters

Back in August, I conducted a poll on X.com to gauge interest in themes for my October blog posts. The options were:

• Monster rallies
• Sinister healthcare
• Terrifying Travel
• Mexican horrors

In a spirited race, Mexican horrors started out strong, and managed to win with 38.2% of the vote despite a surge for Monster rallies. I decided to indulge myself with a post on Universal’s monster rallies in September, but now, with the advent of October and the official Halloween season, a promise is a promise, so now I turn to Mexican Monster Action.

In a brilliant move, I thought I would have my cake and eat it too by following up my last post with one about Mexican Monster Rallies -- and there are a surprising number of them to choose from (please, no thanks are necessary!).

In 1957, at the very height of American B movie makers' infatuation with all things science fiction, a Mexican movie producer, Abel Salazar, swam against the tide, releasing a high Gothic horror film, El Vampiro (The Vampire), starring Germán Robles. The film, heavily influenced by the Universal horrors of the ‘30s and ‘40s, itself may have sparked the worldwide resurgence of Gothic horror in the late ‘50s. According to film scholar Doyle Greene,

“El Vampiro’s commercial and critical success in Mexico not only provided the impetus for the increased production of Mexican horror films throughout the next two decades, but Christopher Lee reportedly stated that El Vampiro, a popular and critical success in Europe as well as Mexico at the time of its original release, was a major source of inspiration for Hammer Studios’ glossier Horror of Dracula (1958, made one year after El Vampiro) -- a film instrumental in launching the Hammer dynasty of horror films.” [Doyle Green, Mexploitation Cinema: A Critical History of Mexican Vampire, Wrestler, Ape-Man and Similar Films, 1957-1977, McFarland, 2005, p. 8]

Corresponding to the flood of Hammer horror films, El Vampiro spawned a mini-universe of Mexican monsters, including vampires, werewolves, man-made monsters and mummies that would have felt right at home on Universal’s backlot. Salazar, knowing a good thing when he saw it, went on to produce (and even act in) some of the better, surreally frightening Mexican horrors, all of which have earned passionately loyal fans: The Vampire’s Coffin (El ataúd del vampiro, 1957), The World of Vampires (El mundo de las vampiros, 1961), The Witch’s Mirror (El espejo de la bruja, 1962; which I will be reviewing later this month), The Brainiac (El barón del terror, 1962, with one of the craziest monsters of them all), and Curse of the Crying Woman (La maldición de la Llorona, 1963), among others.

Around the same time that Salazar was creating his monster mini-universe, the enormously popular masked luchador and folk hero El Santo (born Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta in 1917) was lured into making films by a fellow wrestler. After playing the hero’s sidekick in his first two films, Santo’s movie career took off when he became the main hero and star of Santo vs. the Zombies (Santo contra los zombies) in 1961. Santo would eventually complete 53 movies before hanging up his distinctive silver mask. [Wikipedia]

In the course of his film career, Santo went up against every type of monster, as well as more conventional adversaries like crime bosses and spies. And he wasn’t always alone. His fellow luchador (and rival in the wrestling ring) Blue Demon (Alejandro Moreno) -- who would branch out into his own solo movie career -- joined Santo to fight evil in a number of films. Crime bosses are one thing, but a gang of monsters calls for teamwork.

Bless their heroic hearts, in the early ‘70s, at a time when Hammer had just about exhausted its reinterpretations of the classic monsters, the masked luchadores were just getting started battling bargain basement versions of Dracula, the Frankenstein monster, the Wolf Man and the Mummy -- and sometimes all of them at once.

To those fun-loving fans who enjoy rummaging around in bargain basements, here are a couple of Santo-Blue Demon collaborations that maximize the monster mayhem, and are fine examples of Mexican monster rallies:

Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monsters (Santo el enmascarado de plata y Blue Demon contra los monstruos; 1970)

In “real” life (meaning Mexican wrestling life), Santo and Blue Demon were bitter rivals. This carried over into the wrestler team-up movies, where Blue Demon was “particularly unhappy about being reduced to Santo’s sidekick in their film pairings.” [Greene, p. 86]

The tension between the two is perfectly reflected in this monster rally, via the plot device of the villainous mad scientist (Bruno Halder, played by Carlos Ancira) kidnapping Blue Demon and making a perfect duplicate of the wrestler, which obeys Halder’s every command.

In addition to duplicating people, Halder has perfected the art of reviving the dead, which he puts to good use, creating his own gang of burly, green-faced zombies. In an ambitious move, Halder next resuscitates a monstrous A-team of a top-hatted vampire, an overweight werewolf (hombre lobo), a Frankenstein monster knock-off (bewilderingly named Franquestain, complete with a mangy beatnik-style mustache and beard!), an anemic, emaciated mummy, and a Cyclops creature that can live underwater (bargain basement Creature from the Black Lagoon anyone?).

For all this effort, Halder’s primary goal seems to be nothing more than to destroy his brother Otto (Ivan J. Rado), an academic who works for good instead of evil, and his beautiful niece Gloria (Hedi Blue), who just happens to be Santo’s girlfriend. But before he dispatches them, Halder wants his family members to witness his awesome powers in assembling a monster army (Bwwwahhhahahahaha!).

If you’re going to do a monster rally, then gosh darnit, the monsters should rally! And rally they do, not once but several times (with Blue Demon’s evil twin leading the way) -- in the woods where they ambush Santo, in the wrestling arena where they interrupt a match, in a fancy nightclub, and finally at Halder’s castle for the final confrontation between Good and Evil.

The kitchen staff at Halder's castle wondered what happened to their salad bowls.

This being a low-budget affair with a limited runtime, the script skips any background on how Halder assembled his gang of classic (sort of) monsters -- it’s enough that they’ve reported for duty and are subject to his every command. Writer/producer Jesus Sotomayor Martinez’ heart was definitely in the right place in this homage to the Universal monsters, but for purists it’s a sort of backhanded compliment.

Dracula’s stand-in (David Alvizu) is never without his hat, even in flight (or in his coffin), which provides for some unintentional (?) laughs -- it seems to be affixed to his head with some form of supernatural superglue. Franquestain (Tinieblas) is highly reminiscent of Universal’s monster, so I imagine the stringy facial hair and idiosyncratic name were intended to provide some meager cover for a copyright infringement claim.

Franquestain is confident his disguise will fool Universal's lawyers.

Even more disappointing are the Wolf Man and Mummy stand-ins.These characters look like they were cast by randomly tapping passersby on the street. The portly Hombre Lobo (Vincente Lara), sporting a few tufts of hair glued to his face and plastic fangs, looks like he would be hard-pressed to take on the ring girls at a wrestling match, much less the muscle-bound luchadores. And his skinny compadre La Mumia (Fernando Rosales) definitely could use a hot meal and a place to crash (but at least this mummy got to party with his fellow monsters, which Kharis never got to do in the Universal rallies).

The Cyclops (Gerardo Zepeda) is a fish out of water, looking like a sad reject from Jim Henson’s workshop. A quick scene in which he’s shown hanging out underwater doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the rest of the plot, except to perhaps suggest that he’s a weird one-eyed cousin of Universal’s Gillman. During several fight scenes, the Cyclops is privileged with intermittent close-ups in which he stares skyward with his one red eye, his mouth opening and closing as if he were intently following every move of a lucha libre match. He is weirdly cuddly.

The Cyclops is starstruck at being in the same film with Santo and Blue Demon.

Also strangely endearing are the breaks from monster mayhem to shoehorn in wrestling footage and a dance number or two. The film opens with a lengthy sequence featuring real (or real-looking) footage of a women’s tag team match, with a breathless announcer doing play-by-play, and punctuated by shots of Santo watching the match. Later, Santo, his girlfriend and her father take a break from monster hunting by watching a couple of elaborately staged dance numbers at a nightclub.

This is Old School with a capital O and S, reminiscent of the American movie-going experience of the ‘30s and ‘40s, in which an attendee could expect a newsreel (often covering sporting events), and at least one extended song or dance number inserted into a feature, regardless of genre (the lucha libre films saved time and effort by simply embedding the “newsreels” into the films themselves).

As Doyle Greene explains, heavy-handed government censorship at the time prompted the filmmakers to insert extended footage of wrestling matches (the dance numbers were just icing on the cake):

“This stratagem [insterting match footage] not only capitalized on the widespread popularity of lucha libre in Mexico, but, by placing the wrestling matches in the context of a horror or other film, it allowed movie producers to circumvent the television ban on lucha libre broadcasts enacted by the Mexican government in the mid-1950s and provide the Mexican public an opportunity to see Santo and other famous wrestlers in a mass media setting (film rather than television).” [Greene, p. 11]

Santo, Gloria and Otto enjoy dinner and a show between monster attacks.

Whatever its merits (or lack of them), S&BD vs. the Monsters was made by people who clearly loved the Universal monsters. In a lengthy opening titles sequence wherein each of the major cast members are introduced one-by-one, the monsters are introduced first, with the rest of the cast trailing behind, almost as an afterthought. Sure, we can quibble with the execution while still lauding the intent (let’s face it, the meager budget was stretched pretty thin with all those creatures). Much of it is goofy, but it’s also a lot of fun.

It's monster mayhem in the wrestling ring!

Bonus rally: Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and the Wolf Man (Santo y Blue Demon contra Dracula y el Hombre Lobo; 1973)

Released just a couple of years after S&BD vs. the Monsters, Dracula and the Wolf Man, while retaining the grand goofiness of luchadores going up against Gothic monsters, at the same time has elements that make it seem like a movie from a different era.

Dracula/Wolf Man echoes its predecessor with the villain (the evil Count in this one) fixated on exacting horrific revenge on a family… and then possibly taking over the world if they have any time or energy left. It seems that centuries ago, a wise old alchemist by the name of Cristaldi created a holy dagger with which he killed Dracula (Aldo Monti) and his protege Rufus Rex (el hombre lobo, played by Agustín Martínez Solares) before they could carry out their evil plans.

In present day Mexico, a hunchbacked henchman, Eric (Alfredo Wally Barrón), who is apparently the latest in a long line of acolytes dedicated to serving the Count, sends a letter to Prof. Cristaldi (Jorge Mondragón), a direct descendent of the alchemist, threatening impending doom for his entire family. The professor has a lot to lose, including his widowed daughter Laura (María Eugenia San Martín), a granddaughter, and a niece, Lina (Nubia Martí), who happens to be Santo’s girlfriend. Fearing the worst, he asks Santo for help.

In an unguarded moment, Eric kidnaps the professor and takes him back to a cavernous lair where the bodies of Dracula and Rufus are interred. In a horrifying scene which pays homage to Hammer films and ups the bloody ante considerably, Eric strings up Cristaldi by his feet over the Count’s coffin and slits his throat to allow the blood to drip onto Dracula’s corpse, thereby reviving him. He rinses and repeats over the Wolf Man’s coffin, and voila, the terrible two are alive again to wreak havoc against the Cristaldi clan. (Hammer fans will immediately recognize this as the device that resurrects Christopher Lee’s Dracula: Prince of Darkness. For memories about seeing that scene and others like it for the first time, see my post, “I Can’t Believe My Parents Let Me Watch That, Part 2.”)

Suzi, realizing she was about to be sacrificed, was at least
grateful that the dungeon had forced air heating.

Dracula enlists Rufus, who is quite the ladies’ man when he isn’t growing wolf hair out of every orifice, to seduce unsuspecting Laura, with the ultimate aim of turning mother and daughter into slavish zombies. Meanwhile, Santo enlists Blue Demon in the search for the missing professor. They find him, but too late -- after being drained of blood, the professor suffers the final indignity of being zombified.

For all their legendary folk status, Santo and Blue Demon are particularly clueless in this one. Even when they’re supposedly on guard at the Cristaldi casa, evildoers come and go at will, stealing the magical dagger, menacing the granddaughter, putting the bite on the housekeeper, and generally traipsing through the place like they owned it. Where is that Ring doorbell when you need it? In one particularly egregious case, the wrestlers are preoccupied with a game of chess while Dracula hypnotizes Lina right under their masked noses.

And when they’re not letting their guard down at Cristaldis’ place, they’re blundering into traps. At one point Eric lures the pair to a warehouse where they’re ambushed by henchmen, Adam West Batman-style (only the Pow!, Thunk! And Zap! cartoon balloons are absent). Lina, disobeying Santo’s order to stay home, follows the pair, and saves their bacon by hopping on a forklift and plowing boxes onto the henchmen. (Score one for independent women!)

- "I forgot, whose move is it?"
-"Hey, where's Lina going?"

The final showdown takes place appropriately enough at Dracula’s lair, where Santo and Blue Demon encounter not only the Count and Rufus Rex, but gangs of wolf men and vampire women (make of that particular gender alignment what you will). The surreal fun is enhanced with a couple of rousing games of walk-the-plank over a pit of sharpened stakes. Ouch!

While the wrestlers of course prevail, the mood is much darker than the goofy 1970 monster bash, the heroes more flawed, and the final casualty count among the Cristaldi's is sobering. It's as if the outside world’s political and social upheavals had finally come home to roost in the minds of the filmmakers.

On the plus side, Lina is a scrappy, refreshing change from the typical helpless damsel in distress, saving Santo not once but twice! And in keeping with the darker tone, the look of Dracula and the Wolf Man are much more in line with their Universal counterparts (although Rufus in full make-up gets far too little screen time).

"Just wanted to let you know before we fight these guys, this shirt is dry-clean only."

If you only have the time or patience to see one Santo monster mash, Dracula/Wolf Man's fidelity to the spirit of the classic monsters (not to mention some surprisingly dark and bloody sequences) makes it a strong candidate.

Dracula and the Wolf Man play walk the plank with Blue Demon!

Abject apology: Since this post on Santo and Blue Demon took on a life of its own, look for Waldemar Daninsky in a new post, coming soon!