We haven't seen much of former Saturday Night Live star Horatio Sanz since Lorne Michaels & Co. gave him the axe in 2006. After laying his impressions of Rubeus Hagrid and Saddam Hussein to rest, Sanz dropped about 100 lbs and made some sporadic SNL cameos, returning to reprise his rendition of "I Wish It Was Christmas Today" with Jimmy Fallon, Tracy Morgan and Chris Kattan when Fallon hosted last December. But it looks like Sanz is returning to his sketch comedy roots; he recently teamed up with Upright Citizens Brigade director Todd Bieber in creating a new web series on UCBComedy's YouTube channel.
The series, titled ESPANTO, stars Sanz as the title character, a Nacho Libre-esque Mexican ex-wrestler in a mustard yellow head mask who moves to New York to fight crime, all the while being followed by a hapless film crew. The first installment is a five minute webisode entitled "Espanto vs the Deadly Pimps:" It features Espanto trying to crack a Chinatown prostitution ring, breaking into a massage parlor and confronting the (non-brothel related) couple living in a ground floor apartment. Some of the humor is pretty goofy—there's a lot of emphasis on Espanto's heavy accent to make things funny, for instance—but some of the tongue-and-cheek comedy is cute, and it's nice to see Sanz onscreen again.
Bieber and Sanz plan on premiering new episodes on YouTube every Wednesday, so keep checking back to see what vigilante hijinks Espanto gets himself into next.
