Goldface is a costumed wrestler and a crime fighter, and secretly a research scientist who works at a large corporation. When that corporation is blackmailed by the criminal organization The Cobra (conveniently led by The Cobra), Goldface goes into action against them. This Italian take on the Mexican Santo series plays like a cross between a James Bond film and the Batman TV series, only racier ... Goldface has no compunction against having sex with his female admirers. Sadly, this isn't as good as any of it's inspirations. It's badly edited and just generally unexciting. Goldface's African, peanut-eating wrestler sidekick Lothar will not play well to modern audiences ... not at all.
3 Reviews
Fascination
BandSAboutMovies16 May 2020
Warning: Spoilers
Bitto Albertini may be better known for Black Emanuelle and his two bonkers mondo efforts, Safari Rally and Naked and Cruel or his giallo Human Cobras or his other two Emanuelle films - Black Emanuelle 2 and Yellow Emanuelle. You may also know him for his sequel to Starcrash (Escape from Galaxy 3) or his Shanghai Joe sequel (Return of Shanghai Joe) or his three Three Fantastic Supermen sequels (Three Supermen in Tokyo, Three Supermen in the Jungle and Supermen Against the Orient). Basically, I'm here to tell you that he's known for everything but this Eurospy/lucha libre effort.
I'm here to change all that.
This movie has everything you want: a villain named the Cobra who has relationship issues. A hero named Goldface who also has 99 problems and Pamela - his girl - is all of them. And tons of Caracas, Venezuela's finest pro wrestlers, who have lengthy battles that take up much of this movie's screentime.
This is the kind of movie that I sit on the couch and scream at the TV until my wife tells me that I have to start settling down.
The Cobra is destroying industry all over Venezuela and asks for just $2 million dollars to settle down. That seems like a paltry sum. Maybe that's why Number 2, who seems like his girlfriend, has so many issues with him. When the good guys attack ala Thunderball at the end, he wants to run away. She basically has to goad him into giving his soldiers a speech to get them fired up. She's the kind of girlfriend that gets you into fistfights with numerous people at bars because someone disrespected her. Except, you know, these aren't drunken hijinks, this is an entire army led by a masked wrestler with a cape and a submachine gun.
The Cobra has great clothes, like a long-length kimono that covers part of his face. Maybe he wears that to hide him talking under his breath at Number 2 when she makes him do things that he doesn't want to. If you were dealing with her - she's played by Evi Marandi from Bava's Planet of the Vampires - you'd probably do anything she asks too.
The Cobra only rises every thousand years. He'll be sure to tell you that many, many times in this movie. But hey - are you surprised that The Cobra ends up being one of the very industrialists that he's trying to scam? He just isn't sure of his idealogy, but what bad guy is?
Goldface doesn't have it so easy either. He's in love with Pamela - who the Cobra keeps trying to kill - but she doesn't love his scientist alter ego Doctor Vilar. She's only into that sweet, sweet Goldface. I mean, scientist or pro wrestler? I know where I stand on this longstanding argument. Well, then again, Goldface is pretty much sleeping with every single woman that he gets close to, so his problems aren't really problems. Even his assistants in his lab are attractive ladies always down for some...experiments.
Our hero is played by Espartaco Santoni, who was in Lisa and the Devil, Death Will Have Your Eyes and The Feast of Satan. He had a lot in common with Goldface, as he was married eight times - actresses Teresa Velázquez (The Killer Must Kill Again), Marujita Díaz and Carmen Cervera (the Ted Mikels-written Missile X: The Neutron Bomb Incident) were three of his ex's - and romantically linked to Ursula Andress, Princess Caroline of Monaco and Danger: Diabolik godess Marisa Mell. After his acting career ended, he ran disco pubs in Spain.
Goldface has a sidekick named Kotar - yes, just like Lothar in The Phantom - who dresses like an African tribesman, bugs his eyes out, speaks gibberish and loves peanuts. Yes, it's as racist as 1967 was. And Albertini would make plenty more movies that define problematic to today's eyes. Anyways, Kotar is played by Cuban actor Mario Lotario, who was also in a lot of Venezuelan movies and TV shows.
The end of this movie is astounding, because it isn't Goldface who ends up taking out the bad guy. No, he falls out of a helicopter and the military forces - anonymous men who are unmasked and not trying to be superheroes - are the ones who kill The Cobra, not long after Number 2 is shot by Pamela. It's kind of depressing.
The true ending is when Pamela does a run-in to Goldface's big match - his one-footed dropkicks suck - and pins him to win his heart. She also looks way trashier and hotter than she does in the rest of the movie, kind of like when Ms. Elizabeth joined the NWO. Bravo to all concerned.
I'm here to change all that.
This movie has everything you want: a villain named the Cobra who has relationship issues. A hero named Goldface who also has 99 problems and Pamela - his girl - is all of them. And tons of Caracas, Venezuela's finest pro wrestlers, who have lengthy battles that take up much of this movie's screentime.
This is the kind of movie that I sit on the couch and scream at the TV until my wife tells me that I have to start settling down.
The Cobra is destroying industry all over Venezuela and asks for just $2 million dollars to settle down. That seems like a paltry sum. Maybe that's why Number 2, who seems like his girlfriend, has so many issues with him. When the good guys attack ala Thunderball at the end, he wants to run away. She basically has to goad him into giving his soldiers a speech to get them fired up. She's the kind of girlfriend that gets you into fistfights with numerous people at bars because someone disrespected her. Except, you know, these aren't drunken hijinks, this is an entire army led by a masked wrestler with a cape and a submachine gun.
The Cobra has great clothes, like a long-length kimono that covers part of his face. Maybe he wears that to hide him talking under his breath at Number 2 when she makes him do things that he doesn't want to. If you were dealing with her - she's played by Evi Marandi from Bava's Planet of the Vampires - you'd probably do anything she asks too.
The Cobra only rises every thousand years. He'll be sure to tell you that many, many times in this movie. But hey - are you surprised that The Cobra ends up being one of the very industrialists that he's trying to scam? He just isn't sure of his idealogy, but what bad guy is?
Goldface doesn't have it so easy either. He's in love with Pamela - who the Cobra keeps trying to kill - but she doesn't love his scientist alter ego Doctor Vilar. She's only into that sweet, sweet Goldface. I mean, scientist or pro wrestler? I know where I stand on this longstanding argument. Well, then again, Goldface is pretty much sleeping with every single woman that he gets close to, so his problems aren't really problems. Even his assistants in his lab are attractive ladies always down for some...experiments.
Our hero is played by Espartaco Santoni, who was in Lisa and the Devil, Death Will Have Your Eyes and The Feast of Satan. He had a lot in common with Goldface, as he was married eight times - actresses Teresa Velázquez (The Killer Must Kill Again), Marujita Díaz and Carmen Cervera (the Ted Mikels-written Missile X: The Neutron Bomb Incident) were three of his ex's - and romantically linked to Ursula Andress, Princess Caroline of Monaco and Danger: Diabolik godess Marisa Mell. After his acting career ended, he ran disco pubs in Spain.
Goldface has a sidekick named Kotar - yes, just like Lothar in The Phantom - who dresses like an African tribesman, bugs his eyes out, speaks gibberish and loves peanuts. Yes, it's as racist as 1967 was. And Albertini would make plenty more movies that define problematic to today's eyes. Anyways, Kotar is played by Cuban actor Mario Lotario, who was also in a lot of Venezuelan movies and TV shows.
The end of this movie is astounding, because it isn't Goldface who ends up taking out the bad guy. No, he falls out of a helicopter and the military forces - anonymous men who are unmasked and not trying to be superheroes - are the ones who kill The Cobra, not long after Number 2 is shot by Pamela. It's kind of depressing.
The true ending is when Pamela does a run-in to Goldface's big match - his one-footed dropkicks suck - and pins him to win his heart. She also looks way trashier and hotter than she does in the rest of the movie, kind of like when Ms. Elizabeth joined the NWO. Bravo to all concerned.
Yet ANOTHER Italian masked wrestling superhero!
El-Stumpo22 April 2004
Taking his cues from the Mexican Santo adventures AND masked jungle adventurer The Phantom, director and co-writer Bitto (aka Adalberto) Albertini shrinks the Three Fantastic Supermen concept down to just one super hero, the ubiquitous yet fairly ordinary Goldface; the next year he would decide three stockinged heads are better than one and continue the increasingly successful franchise of Three Supermen In Tokyo, Three Supermen In The Jungle (1970) and Three Fantastic Supermen In The Orient (1974). An Italian/Spanish co-production filmed partly in Venezuela, Goldface bears all the hallmarks of an Albertini film - cheap, goofy, sub-Terence Hill and Bud Spencer knockabout humour, and wildly idiosyncratic to boot. Even his kitsch erotica Black Emanuelle (1975), Yellow Emanuelle and Black Emanuelle 2 (both 1976) now seem a little childish and just slightly retarded. And therein almost lies his films' charms.
Unlike his model Santo, whose identity goes to the grave with him, Goldface is a much more straight-forward comic book superhero. By day he's mild-mannered scientist Dr Villar (played by `Robert Anthony'/Espartaco Santoni), but lurking just under the lab coat is Goldface, famous masked wrestler and crime fighter with no superpowers to speak of other than a few sneaky high-kicking wrasslin' moves. True to the conventions of a Santo film, the costumed Goldface makes his first appearance at an extended wrestling sequence not ten minutes into the film, and what a costume it is: blue stocking suit (the obvious nod to Superman), gold mask (naturally), red cape, and what appears to be a flaming vagina on his chest. The entire female audience ends up panting over him; one German journalist notes, `I wonder if he's so rough when he makes love!' Four wrestlers are thrown against him - the Panther, Jack The Ripper, one called The Bouncing Ball - and are dispatched in rapid succession. The triumphant Goldface heads to his corner to be massaged by his negro manservant Kotar (Big Matthews), a half-naked, thick lipped racist cartoon who refers to Goldface as `b'wana'. Between spitting peanuts and lapsing into `ooga booga' speak, Kotar is an early example of Bitto's colonial fascination with `darkies' (see his Three Supermen In The Jungle and 1972's Zambo: King Of The Jungle for more reasons why Italy is no longer welcome in the Congo).
After his victory, the Council calls Villar as a leading scientific authority to an emergency meeting. It appears the world is being held hostage by an arch fiend called the Cobra and his army of masked commandos. He has demanded $2 million - a unambitious sum even for 1967 - or all plant life will be destroyed. `Let's pay him in cash,'offers Villar, `and save on the interest.' The Council sends Villar with the suitcase but expresses concerns over his safety since, as Villar points out, `I'm no Superman!' Villar delivers the money to a masked blonde (with daisies on her mask!), then returns in costume to take it back. The Cobra is a bizarre creation: he pontificates at length on his own importance, declaring a leader of men such as himself appears once every thousand years, and precedes every sentence with bombastic phrases like `I, the Cobra...' He outwardly despises weakness and corruption, although he thrives on it, and punishes his underlings by shooting them MANY times (`You are guilty of being and acting incredibly stupid!'). Goldface embarks on a seemingly endless quest to discover the identity of the Cobra, punctuated with boat chases, half-speed motorbike chases, and the final showdown on the Cobra's private beach and jungle retreat.
Bitto's idea of action scenes is simple: get a bunch of grown men to slap each other silly, then throw the camera around until the audience is exhausted. The talking head scenes are just as exasperating, awkward dubbing trying to match the endlessly moving mouths with soooooooo much dialogue, it goes to almost surreal lengths to fill in the blanks. Still, the film fails to match the delirium of Three Fantastic Supermen In The Orient, except perhaps in this exchange between Kotar and a young admirer... Boy: You talk funny. Kotar: Yes, I know - Barumbahhhh!!!
Unlike his model Santo, whose identity goes to the grave with him, Goldface is a much more straight-forward comic book superhero. By day he's mild-mannered scientist Dr Villar (played by `Robert Anthony'/Espartaco Santoni), but lurking just under the lab coat is Goldface, famous masked wrestler and crime fighter with no superpowers to speak of other than a few sneaky high-kicking wrasslin' moves. True to the conventions of a Santo film, the costumed Goldface makes his first appearance at an extended wrestling sequence not ten minutes into the film, and what a costume it is: blue stocking suit (the obvious nod to Superman), gold mask (naturally), red cape, and what appears to be a flaming vagina on his chest. The entire female audience ends up panting over him; one German journalist notes, `I wonder if he's so rough when he makes love!' Four wrestlers are thrown against him - the Panther, Jack The Ripper, one called The Bouncing Ball - and are dispatched in rapid succession. The triumphant Goldface heads to his corner to be massaged by his negro manservant Kotar (Big Matthews), a half-naked, thick lipped racist cartoon who refers to Goldface as `b'wana'. Between spitting peanuts and lapsing into `ooga booga' speak, Kotar is an early example of Bitto's colonial fascination with `darkies' (see his Three Supermen In The Jungle and 1972's Zambo: King Of The Jungle for more reasons why Italy is no longer welcome in the Congo).
After his victory, the Council calls Villar as a leading scientific authority to an emergency meeting. It appears the world is being held hostage by an arch fiend called the Cobra and his army of masked commandos. He has demanded $2 million - a unambitious sum even for 1967 - or all plant life will be destroyed. `Let's pay him in cash,'offers Villar, `and save on the interest.' The Council sends Villar with the suitcase but expresses concerns over his safety since, as Villar points out, `I'm no Superman!' Villar delivers the money to a masked blonde (with daisies on her mask!), then returns in costume to take it back. The Cobra is a bizarre creation: he pontificates at length on his own importance, declaring a leader of men such as himself appears once every thousand years, and precedes every sentence with bombastic phrases like `I, the Cobra...' He outwardly despises weakness and corruption, although he thrives on it, and punishes his underlings by shooting them MANY times (`You are guilty of being and acting incredibly stupid!'). Goldface embarks on a seemingly endless quest to discover the identity of the Cobra, punctuated with boat chases, half-speed motorbike chases, and the final showdown on the Cobra's private beach and jungle retreat.
Bitto's idea of action scenes is simple: get a bunch of grown men to slap each other silly, then throw the camera around until the audience is exhausted. The talking head scenes are just as exasperating, awkward dubbing trying to match the endlessly moving mouths with soooooooo much dialogue, it goes to almost surreal lengths to fill in the blanks. Still, the film fails to match the delirium of Three Fantastic Supermen In The Orient, except perhaps in this exchange between Kotar and a young admirer... Boy: You talk funny. Kotar: Yes, I know - Barumbahhhh!!!
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