5 Totally Crazy Film Genres You Had No Clue Existed

In the same way that Hollywood continually casts WWE legend The "Dwayne Johnson" Rock, Mexico produced a horde of films starring their own famous wrestlers. But whereas Hollywood usually limits Johnson's enemies to CGI monstrosities and his own dialogue, these luchadores would battle every conceivable otherworldly threat, from vampires to aliens to stick shifts.

The most famous filmic luchador was El Santo, who starred in over 50 films that inexplicably required an overweight man in a mask to fix things. Several other famous wrestlers also took part. During the genre's heyday, over 150 luchador films were made. Champions Of Justice is a sordid tale about an evil doctor who builds a machine that turns midgets into super strong wrestlers. To stop this horrifying development, five luchadores must band together to defeat these meaty homunculi in battle. The film features several scenes wherein fully grown men get the crud beaten out of them by dwarfs.

In Santo Contra El Cerebro Del Mal, Santo is brainwashed and turned into an unwilling minion of Doctor Campos, sort of like if Hawkeye ever bothered to wear a mask in The Avengers. To break the curse, another luchador pounds Santo in the face until his brain is no longer evil, and together they go kill a bunch of gangsters. This is what's known in the business as "a perfect script."

In a decidedly sexy turn for the genre, Operacion 67 capitalized on James Bond's popularity by recasting the suave British spy as a masked Mexican wrestler. The hero refuses to remove his signature silver mask for the entire film, because "doing so would put all other men to shame." Then there's Neutron The Atomic Superman Vs. The Death Robots, which is pretty self-explanatory.

Eventually, the luchadores had defeated every conceivable threat and the genre petered out, because no one wanted to watch El Santo Versus Weakening Eyesight And The Doctor Who Says He Should Stop Clotheslining People For The Sake Of His Heart. But we'll always have the beautiful memories.

In Johnny Firecloud, Mr. Firecloud returns from the Army to find his tribe being harassed by a rich white rancher. Firecloud and the rancher have a good old-fashioned heart-to-heart. It goes about as well as you'd expect.

This ludicrous genre died out sometime in the '90s, when everyone outside of Cleveland, Washington, D.C., and Steven Seagal's entourage finally acknowledged that Native Americans probably weren't all mystical warriors secretly looking to get revenge on small-town America.

Ultime Grida Dalla Savana (Savage Man Savage Beast) is a barely connected collection of footage related to hunting, including a real(ly staged) scene of a man getting ripped apart by lions while his family watches in horror. Further sliding down the rabbit hole, La Donna Nel Mondo (Women Of The World) promised an in-depth look at naked women from other cultures. They threw a few whiteys in there too, but the movie existed solely to show exotic lady butts. In that, it delivered.

Farewell Uncle Tom is considered the horrific peak/nadir of the genre. The film depicts American slavery, and used hundreds of Haitian extras to give it that authentic feel. Robert Ebert's response was, "They have finally done it. Made the most disgusting, contemptuous insult to decency ever to masquerade as a documentary." The film was ridiculously violent, exploitative, and racist, but the directors claimed that having endless scenes of naked black women being brutally raped and killed was in fact "anti-racist," so really, who can say? Hey, the excuse works for Tarantino.

Bad Black is probably about a doctor getting trained to fight, but all you really need to know is that the credits feature both "Kung Fu Villager" and "Kung Fu Cop."

They've even begun to diversify by adding violent music videos to their explosive catalogue.

Nobody in Wakaliwood is under the impression that they're making high art. The films are knowingly over the top, and when they're shown in Ugandan theaters, they're often presented by a "Video Jockey." This emcee talks over the entire movie, yelling things like "Now expect the unexpectable!" and "Action is coming, I promise you!" (the latter of which is also DC's new marketing campaign). And because many of these films are recorded in several different languages, the VJs will often translate for their audiences. So every showing is a live Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode wherein the audience is riffing on a film that was only ever intended to be riffed on. It's movie joke inception.

One short, Attack On Nyege Nyege Island, was made at a film festival over a period of two days, and anyone who wanted to be an extra could be -- as evidenced by the film's "Waka Stars" musical group, which is made up of little kids who use martial arts to take down the Tiger Mafia.

All of this madness is actively ongoing, and they've set up a Patreon for people to donate to their bloody cause. And unlike a typical Hollywood production that uses audience money to pay for sexual harassment lawyers, money donated to Wakaliwood covers stuff like electricity and an Adobe Creative Cloud license.

Jordan Breeding wants to make a film genre called Jordansploitation, all about people who read his blog and follow him on Twitter -- naked.

You could create your own insane genre, couldn't you? Get that script started with a beginner's guide to Celtx.

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For more, check out 5 Ridiculous Movie Genres We Used To Be Obsessed With and 5 Extremely Specific Movie Trends That Nobody Remembers.

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