The Panther Women is a glorious late 60’s Mexican cinematic feast of masked superhero wrestling action, coffin creaking ‘n’ mist swirling gothic vibes, and detective ‘n’ gangster pulp. With side orders of female wrestling, lumbering-to-crawling creature feature, and a hell of a lot of campy ‘n’ creepy fun. Here from Powerhouse is a recent release of this wonderful crossbred- coming as either a UHD or Blu-Ray. Both feature a new 2k scan of the film, a commentary track, a few other extras, and an eighty-page inlay book.

The Panther Women( Las Mujeres Panteras) is from 1967- been directed by Havana, Cuba-born René Cardona. He had an impressive one hundred and forty-three feature-length credits to his name. These went from the comedy-fantasy drama Don Juan Tenorio ( 1937), musical comedy Hotel de Verano(1944), ancient stone idol horror The Living Idol (1957), Father Christmas battles Satan fantasy Sanat Claus( 1959). He helmed a fair few films in the masked wrestler vs evil Santo series, the sleazy mad doctor & brutal creature feature Night Of The Blood Apes (1969) plane crash in the snow disaster film Survive (1976), and Mexican sex comedy Las computadoras (1982 ).

Over its just under an hour and a half runtime the film very much swings back and forth between the creepy gothic and campy wrestling/ related side of things. On the gothic/ horror side of things, we have a group of black-clad female witches in their graveyard crypt hangout- trying to rise an evil warlock by murdering members of a notable family- by poring their victim's blood into a creaking & mist-hazed coffin. 

And on the wrestling side of things- we have female wrestling pals Loreta Venus(Ariadne Welter) and Golden Rubi(Elizabeth Campbell) fighting matches, and getting involved in the mystery. And Santo like masked superhero Angel( Gerardo Zepeda) trying to track down the witches- he has a bullet & fireproof cape, which gets shown off in one wonderful ridiculous scene.

Added into the mix we have suave and brill creamed Capitán Arturo Díaz(Eric del Castillo), and meant to be comedic sidekick Leocadio (Manuel 'Loco' Valdés)- who is constantly acting weird, saying bizarre things & being scared. On the creature feature side of things- we have two razor-crawled & teethy Panther women and a lumbering breathing heavy zombie.

Put simply The Panther Women is a wonderful romp of a film- with the wrestling, gothic horror, pulpy noir, and generally campiness mixed to perfection. They don’t make films like this anymore!

Moving onto this recent release, we get presented with a 2k scan of the film. It takes in good crisp black & whites, as well as easily readable English subs for this Spanish language film.

On the extras side, we get a few new things. First off is a commentary from Keith J Rainville -he’s the publisher of From Parts Unknown and screenwriter of Los campeones de la lucha libre. And it’s both a well-researched and passionate for the genre track. We find out this is the fourth film in a series of female wrestling films. He points out actors as they appear- giving bios on a few notable folks. He discusses the use of staged fights in the film to pad runtimes out and discusses genre tropes- such as locker room chats, and musical/ cabaret numbers. He talks about how these films were built as family affairs to appeal to a wide audience, and how back when they were released theatres with aircon would have been a big pull. He gives a brief bio of René Cardona and the film's screenwriter Alfredo Salazar- mentioning other notable titles worth checking out. Later on, he points out certain wacky costume choices, and the way that the Panther appears throughout Mexican mythology. He talks about the films freeway car ch ase, and how usual these were in the genre. He discusses how functional the masked wrestlers' superhero costumes were, and how ahead of their time they were. He talks about how the film to hand was thought of as lost for many years, and how even up to the 2000’s all that was around was a dark TV cut of the film. And of course a lot more- well worth a play track.

Next, we get Let Them Fight!(14.26) with the Killer Film, el critico enmascarado (the masked critic), lucha libre specialist, and filmmaker behind the Monterrey female wrestlers documentary La Femenil. He talks about the film to hand, and the female wrestling genre in general. This is most interesting- though unfortunately some of the white subtitles do clash with poster artwork at points, so one does lose the odd word/ sentence. There’s Cat Fight (23.38) which is with  Valeria Villegas Lindvall- who is an academic and Latin American horror specialist. She discusses the struggle for empowerment and the subversive representation of the female characters in the genre films- this is ok, though at times did feel a little dry/ academic lecture-based.

Otherwise, we get an original theatrical trailer, and an image gallery: promotional and publicity material. The finished release comes with an eighty book featuring a new essay by Iain Robert Smith, archival essays by Janina Möbius and Ricardo Cárdenas Pérez, an archival interview with Guillermo Calderón, and full film credits.

It most certainly is wonderful to see Powerhouse releasing more Mexican genre films. And The Panther Women is a hell of a lot of fun with its mixing and blending of wrestling, gothic horror, and pulpy noir tropes.