What makes a mad scientist mad? Is it the realization that his skill set is not sufficient to achieve the medical breakthroughs he envisions or the fact that the medical community is too unenlightened to understand his genius? In the case of Don Panchito aka The Professor (Carlos Riquelme) it’s a little bit of both. His goal is to build a master race of super beings with the help of his two assistants but so far the experiments aren’t working. The Professor has been kidnapping world class athletes and wrestlers and transplanting monkey brains into their bodies (yes, that again) but so far none have survived. Maybe the problem is that he needs a stronger body so his quest continues in Ladron de Cadaveres (English title: The Body Snatcher, 1957), the first Mexican horror/fantasy genre film to combine mad scientists, brain transplants and wrestlers in an audience pleasing formula that would soon inspire a series of movies pitting the popular wrestler El Santo against a variety of supernatural creatures.
Directed by Fernando Mendez, The Body Snatcher opens appropriately enough with a gravedigger in a fog-bound cemetery. Under the watchful eye of The Professor, he is disposing of another corpse from a failed experiment. The scene has the eerie, atmospheric ambiance of similar scenes from classic Universal horrors like 1931’s Frankenstein although on a more modest budget. In fact, most of the mad scientist scenes in the laboratory seem like a homage to other mad scientist movies from earlier American movies, especially the monkey brain transplant plot device which figures prominently in The Monster and the Girl (1941) and The Strange Case of Doctor Rx (1942). Who cares if it’s derivative? It is just the sort of outlandish, wacko premise that makes genre outings like this fun for fans of vintage Hollywood horror flicks.
Carlos Riquelme gives an amusing, scene chewing performance as the mad Professor and gets to spout the most ludicrous dialogue (even the English subtitles are funny). He also masquerades as a street beggar who regularly frequents a wrestling club to sell lottery tickets under the guise of choosing his next specimen. Almost as funny is the slow-witted police investigation of the missing wrestlers led by Captain Robles (Crox Alvarado). When he is visited by Guillermo (real life wrestler Wolf Ruvinskis), an old friend from the country looking for work. Guillermo comes on like a brawny, not too bright cowboy but he has the chops to be a great wrestler and soon he begins building a career as the masked champion El Vampiro. All of this is part of Robles’s master plan to use Guillermo (with his cooperation) to serve as bait for the mysterious kidnapper/murderer.
Mendez adds a romantic subplot too with the voluptuous Lucia (Columba Dominguez) being pursued by the brash but naïve Guillermo. At first she proves resistant to his charms and their first date is not promising. He shows her photos of his prize piglets from the farm as if they were his own kids while Lucia is clearly looking for the exit door. In time her aloof demeanor turns to love and she begins to worry about his safety….and her instincts are right.
Guillermo ends up getting drugged and carted off to the Professor’s lair where he is shaved bald and given a monkey brain. This time the experiment works (for a time) and Guillermo is transformed into a mindless slave, knocking down brick walls and whatever else he is commanded to do while the Professor shouts, “I will rule over humanity. I have become God.”
The Body Snatcher builds to an action-packed climax in which the masked Guillermo enters the ring for a championship match and turns into a hideous ape creature in front of the terrified audience. He goes on a rampage, kills several people, abducts Lucia and ends up battling his police buddy on a rooftop. Compared to later, more grisly Mexican horror pictures like Rene Cardona’s Night of the Bloody Apes (1969), The Body Snatcher will be s-l-o-w going for contemporary audiences but for former monster fans of the Universal horror classics, the movie is a nutty delight with several memorable sequences.
In one scene real life wrestler Guillermo Hernandez playing a fighter who goes by El Lobo Negro is stalked and stabbed in the back while taking a shower. Another highlight is when Lucia is awakened by an intruder in her room and is confronted with the sight of her former boyfriend covered in fur and baring his fangs. The wrestling matches are also surprisingly violent, realistic and beautifully choreographed, none of that phony theatrical stuff here
The black and white cinematography by Victor Herrera makes the most of foreboding lighting schemes that accent the nocturnal world where The Professor and his minions prowl for victims. Yerye Beirute is also effectively creepy as Cosme, the Professor’s right hand man and gravedigger (the title of the film is actually named after him since he does all of the Professor’s dirty work). With his dark, sinister features, Beirute would go on to play villainous roles in other horror outings like Pepito y El Monstruo (1957), The Vampire’s Coffin (1958) and La Casa del Terror (1960).
The Body Snatcher was a rare foray into the horror genre for Columba Dominques, who was more famous for prestigious dramas like Maclovia (1948), which won her the Silver Ariel Award (Mexico’s version of the Oscar) for Best Supporting Actress. She was first discovered by legendary director Emilio Fernandez (he played the general Mapache in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch) and later married him, which resulted in a rocky longtime relationship. Famous for her serene beauty and the ability to project both strength and volcanic emotions, Columba is no shrinking violent in The Body Snatcher and is a refreshing change from screaming, helpless female heroines.
In the role of the hero turned monster, Wolf Ruvinskis is merely adequate and his offscreen life is much more intriguing than his on-camera persona. An immigrant from Latvia in the Baltic States region, Ruvinskis relocated with his family to Argentina during WWII. He began a wrestling career in his late teenage years and became as famous in Mexico as some of his rivals in the ring like El Santo and El Medico Asesino. Ruvinskis was also an accomplished singer, magician and a tango dancer but most people know him today as Neutron, the masked wrestler/superhero who appeared in several action-fantasy films beginning with Neutron, El Enmascarado Negro (1960).
As for director Fernando Mendez, he directed a number of westerns, comedies and melodramas before he launched the golden age of Mexican horror with The Body Snatcher (1957). Although the film was a commercial hit in Mexico, it was Mendez’s follow-up feature El Vampiro (1957) that is generally regarded as the film that truly opened the floodgates for more Mexican horror films. Loosely based on the 1931 Universal classic Dracula but substituting a hacienda for a castle, El Vampiro not only made a star of German Nobles, a native of Spain appearing in his first movie, but also attracted the interest of American distributors who ended up buying the rights for television syndication in the U.S. Mendez would go on to helm several other supernatural chillers that are now considered classics of the genre such as The Vampire’s Coffin (1958), The Black Pit of Dr. M (1959) and The Living Coffin (1959).
For some strange reason, The Body Snatcher is practically forgotten today while El Vampiro has gone on to achieve classic status. But it is almost certain that The Body Snatcher inspired the Santo series starting with Santo vs. the Evil Brain and Santo vs. the Infernal Men in 1958. Both films did not get picked up for wide distribution until 1961, which was the year Santo became a box-office phenomenon in his own country.
The Body Snatcher has been available in various formats over the years but only in Spanish language versions with no English subtitles. Thanks to VCI Entertainment, English friendly versions of The Body Snatcher and a co-feature El Escapulario, a 1968 supernatural drama set during the Mexican Revolution, were released on Blu-ray in March 2022. The golden age of Mexican horror lives on!
Other links of interest:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/aug/15/columba-dominguez-dead-85-film-actor
https://markdavidwelsh.wordpress.com/tag/wolf-ruvinskis/
Cinema Sojourns 
Thanks for an informative article!