Let's discuss "Santo in The Treasure of Dracula"

Regarding This Film Is Not Yet Rated, it’s been years since I watched it, but I don’t recall it advocating for a government censorship board at all. I’ve looking up a few recaps and reviews, and I guess the film points out how the MPAA’s CARA (Classification and Rating Administration) is worse than a government censorship board (no transparency, accountability, etc. ), but I don’t think the film reaches the conclusion “therefore, we should have a government censorship board instead.” Rather, I think the film is advocating for changes/reform of CARA.

In terms of alternatives to the MPAA’s method of rating films, TV Parental Guidelines are self-assessed and assigned by the TV network and/or streaming service. Likewise, the ESRB assigns ratings to digital-only games based solely on a questionnaire the game publisher submits. Both only do after the fact auditing of ratings to see if they’re being properly assigned. It turns out that the content creators/distributors in general are fairly good assessors of the age-appropriateness of what they’re selling, and aren’t going to abuse the system by assigning blatantly wrong ratings.

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It was a minor part of the movie, yes, along with “the MPAA colludes with the military to acclimate the public to war” and “sex should be less strongly rated than violence”.

You’re right that this is the main thrust of the film. I’d just point out that “reform” is one of those pleasant sounding yet meaningless words.

That’s a better system, I’d agree.

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See, I don’t recall those points either.

I know the film industry, especially the major studios, work with the military for a lot of the military portrayals in films, and the US military requires itself be presented in a positive light, which limits the types of stories that are told. But that’s not a ratings issue.

Also, I think the movie makes the argument that there’s currently a disparity between sex and violence where, in the film’s opinion, sex is judged much more harshly than violence. The film was arguing for parity with violence, not for nudity to appear in G films.

And the use of the word “reform” was mine, as a general summary of the arguments in the film. The film itself lays out a number of specific changes it’d like to see in CARA.

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There was a Kickstarter to make a movie about paint drying with the goal of making the British Film Board have to sit and watch a movie about paint drying for as long as possible. The final project was a 607-minute opus. They concluded that 'Paint Drying is a film showing paint drying on a wall “and therefore 'suitable for all.” The Trollenberg Terror (The Crawling Eye) was considered inappropriate for anyone under 16. I watched it as a child on TV and it was uncut. Censors are nuts.

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To get back to the film at hand, I’m a bit puzzled why the edited “clean” version shown in Mexico was only in black & white. Color is a big part of the very 1960’s look & feel of this movie. The exact same movie, but in black & white, I think would be a slightly different film experience. Not necessarily worse, but definitely different if you take away all that groovy period color.

I can appreciate the cost of making color prints vs. b&w prints of the movie for distribution, but it seems like it would have been worth the cost. Was this the first Santo movie shot in color? I’m sure his many fans back in the day would have preferred to see him in living color in this movie.

If anything, I would think the ticket buyers for the “European” edit would not have cared if the T&A was in b&W.

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It certainly does. I’ve mentioned (probably ad nauseum) that I’ve been hearing the argument since I was a kid and I find it less compelling over time.

First, what would “parity” mean? How much violence is equivalent to how much sex?

I remember the anti-violence crew back in the '80s. They went after a cop show that averaged 40-50 kills per hour. That certainly sounds violent, doesn’t it? A murder a minute, basically. Of course, the show was “Police Squad!” and the violence was comedic. The same logic led to censoring Bugs Bunny cartoons.

So what’s the equivalent amount of sex for that? How much sex should Bugs Bunny have, for example, to achieve parity? What is the equivalent sex to match the violence in, e.g., the Star Wars and Marvel franchises?

There are a whole lotta other issues with the premise, too.

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That’s when you cut in 2 seconds of hardcore porn at minute 359.

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I remember the 70s when they did non-violent Tom & Jerry cartoons. The only funny thing about them was the fact that they existed.

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Actually, there’s one other good thing about those Tom & Jerry cartoons- the music soundtrack was lots of fun.

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I wish I knew more about the specific TV practices before color broadcasting was the norm, but I think broadcasters often used black and white prints of color films instead of the original color prints, since a color print on a B&W TV looks muddier.

Apparently Mexico didn’t fully support color broadcasting until 1970:

For whatever reason, the color prints of Santo en El Tesoro de Dracula were “lost” by the time anyone started looking for them for home video, etc., and only recently rediscovered.

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The color vs black and white thing is kind of odd for this film. I could see them filming the TV version in B&W to save money but you would think they would have wanted a color version for theater use in Mexico? Color and widescreen were the hooks to get people away from TVs and into theaters. Did theaters in Mexico make a lot less money than in Europe so color prints were too expensive?

Unless it was that the studio intended to use the nudie print in Mexico and Santo didn’t object until the movie was done, so the only print they had to show in Mexico was the B&W one?

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I’m pretty sure it was released to the theaters in color. It’s just that from 197? to 2009 the only extant copy was in black and white. I have referred to this copy as a “print,” but on reflection, I suspect it was probably on videotape.

I think there is still be no extant color copy of Santo en El Tesoro de Dracula in its entirety. The MST3K version omits entirely the “Dracula’s inspection of the vampire ladies” scene instead of showing the version where Dracula inspects them fully clothed. I suspect that’s because they don’t have color footage of that version of the scene.

This seems to be confirmed by this version of the movie, shown on the Cine Mexicano network, which is clearly just an edit of the “Sexo” cut:

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OK, that’s what I was uncertain about.

According to Wikipedia, Santo’s first color film came just the year before, Santo in Operation '67. It wouldn’t make sense to his fans to go back to b&w for the following movies.

After this movie, I’m really looking forward to The Batwoman. Say what you may about his films, but both here and in Santa Claus, Rene Cardona and his crew of set & costume designers always gave the viewer a pretty big visual bang for their buck (or pow for their peso).

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The most WTF thing about the movie to me is how blasé everybody is about Santo discovering time travel AND Dracula.
Just another Wednesday for Team Santo.

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Well, if you look at the past, some nudity used to appear in PG-13 and even PG films, and the MPAA has clearly gotten more prudish about that over time.

Also, when looking at R rated films, and the amount of violence/gore one can include before it becomes NC-17, then look at the amount of nudity/sex one can have before it becomes NC-17, it seems off, especially since you’re starting with an R rating, so nobody under 17 without a parent.

There is an issue in that it’s hard to exactly quantify this stuff, and when it does get quantified it seems silly, like how the MPAA allows one “f**k” per PG-13 film. But it does seem odd that one can show a pile of dead bodies in a PG-13 film, but not anyone naked.

I don’t believe this anecdote. Police Squad was only a half hour long, and I don’t recall anything close to 20 deaths in any of its six episodes. You may be misremembering key details.

And it’s not that movies MUST include sex/nudity, but for those that do they maybe could be rated a bit more fairly. In terms of comedy, I watched the film Orgazmo, and I recall that film was rated NC-17 when submitted, even though the sex and nudity in it is pretty tame. Like, there’s zero reason why that film shouldn’t be an R rated film.

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Yeah, that’s me. Always remembering key…oh, wait:

Enjoy four people shot on screen in less than 30 seconds, followed by a pile of bodies.

It’d probably take me longer to dig up, say, an episode of “Donahue” where this comparison was made ranking the most violent shows, but I assure you, I am not misremembering.

You don’t remember it because it’s silly. But it was violent. Just like Bugs conspiring to have Elmer shoot Daffy a dozen times in a minute.

And I’m saying “parity” and “fairly” imply an equivalence. I would have no problem showing a very young child “Police Squad” or “Bugs Bunny”. I want to know what level of sex is “fairly” rated against it.

Censors do not have a sense of humor. And you may not find the NC-17 appropriate, whereas some would say the entire discussion of “DVDA” worthwhile, never mind being entirely about making a pornographic film. Just recalling a random element off the bat.

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Actually, that Youtube video looks like a fan-edit of the Cine Mexicano broadcast, since there’s other copies of that broadcast on the net that show they showed the full “sexo” cut.

There’s a recent Blu-ray box set of Santo movies that reportedly contains the full family-safe cut in color. I found one review that mentions one particular scene that’s different between the two cuts.

The MST3K cut it odd though, since it’s just all the nude scenes cut, instead of the non-nude scenes used. Tubi has the exact same cut available to watch (sans riffing of course):
https://tubitv.com/movies/654296

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Let me add that this episode where we see the four people shot is done to recreate the opening scene where two people were shot. That’s six deaths in 25 minutes, assuming they’re not counting the at least one extra body in the pile, and there are no other deaths in the episode (which I don’t recall well enough to say).

That’s 14.4 deaths/hour. And it’s obviously bogus. But it’s not obvious how you say “Well, we don’t want children”—children are almost always the excuse—“exposed to violence” while acknowledging that context is critical and at the same time presume to be objective.

This is the censor’s dilemma, if they dare to step beyond, “Well, this offends me so out it goes.”

You could say, “Well, it’s comedy,” but that’s no good. Alfred Hitchcock said (and I agree) Psycho is comedy. The nudity of the PG movies of the '70s was generally pretty static and the violence bloodless but you know, the violence was fake—the nudity was real.

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Skimming through that episode, there’s 7 deaths total: the “guest star” death in the opening credits, the initial double homicide that leads to the investigation, and the 4 deaths in the bit you referenced. So that’s 14 deaths per hour. So, like I said, far less than 20 deaths per episode.

But the movie ratings aren’t supposed to be about sense of humor or what one finds “worthwhile,” but about what’s age appropriate. Do you think 17 year-olds can’t handle frank discussions about sex in the films the watch?

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I’m the one saying censorship is inherently odd and idiosyncratic.

Here’s the other kicker: so are people. Some 17 year olds can handle all kinds of things. Some adults can’t handle much of anything. I had a 4-5 year old who loved horror movies, and a much older kid who felt Thor 2 was too scary.

It’s a parent’s job to know these things and act accordingly. Parents outsourcing responsibility have no right to complain about the results. And I’m not particularly interested in the adults fighting to arrogate that responsibility on themselves.

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