Brujería negra

I won't waste time repeating all the positive points other reviewers have made about this film.

Rosanna Arquette is absolutely stunning in the lead role. You can see why Martin Scorsese advised her to play the part, she's perfect.

The fact that Arrow have restored this little gem on Blu-Ray is a rare piece of good news in this terrible year of 2020.

That is definitely a well hidden gem that needs more recognition. No idea why it has such a low rating. It surely is better than many much bigger names in the genre.

I found this movie purely on accident while i was looking for Black Rain. But it cought my eye, even as i had low expectations for it. Boy, i was i wrong. It's a B-movie that can challenge many of the "top horror classics".

The movie has decent script. Not overly complex, but not flat and dumb. Leaning more towards typical thriller script. While it's kinda predictable, the movie manages to actually deliver very good suspense that escalates and intensifies towards the end. Which is something i actually see very rarely in the genre (and i've seen almost 1400 horror/thriller movies so far).

Cinematography was good at times even more than that. Acting was to my pure delight - spectacular for such movie. The main actress in particular delivers great sene near the end, with one of the best scream/screeches i've heard in the old horror movies. Easily stealing the scream title from much more popular actresses' performance. Her character is well written, has good arch, and it even has interesting twist that kinda caught me off guard. Nothing mindblowing, but nice touch.

Overall , highly recommended. It exceeded my low expectations , so it's between 6 and 7 in my books.

"Black Rainbow" is an uncategorizable film: an unusual and ambitious mix of such different genres as metaphysical horror, corruption/conspiracy thriller, family drama, even a backstage look at the way evangelist/medium "shows" are set up. The mix doesn't always work (the ending, for example, is not consistent with some of the previous events), but the movie is still definitely worth seeing. There are at least two or three brilliant scenes (the most notable of which is, arguably, the way Hodges "films" an explosion without actually showing it), and Rosanna Arquette gives an impressive performance. (***)

This is not a film everyone would enjoy. It takes a poke at an old and established con game -- for want of a more precise term, fake mediumship -- and then stands it on its head.

Spoilers follow.

Before an audience in a mining town, Arquette's character tells various audience members of their losses, while the victims are still alive! She's proved to be wrong, and then, later, the persons die in the manner she describes. This happens more than once. Had she been a local lady, she might have been a murder suspect, or possibly hanged as a witch.

The story builds slowly, and each incident just throws another log on the fire, making the atmosphere murkier and more mysterious. The film opens ambiguously and ends the same way.

As noted before, not for every taste. But for those with the appropriate taste buds, the taste of this is rich and flavorful.

Black Rainbow is a low-budget mystery with supernatural overtones, a rare genre that I'm particularly fond of. The sound and the picture quality on the print I saw was not great but was certainly watchable. I really enjoyed the premise: a fake psychic starts actually prophesizing people's deaths -- both the why and how -- which makes her a target for a hit man. Arquette is pretty good in the role -- kind of a mystical and ethereal nymphomaniac and Robards is great as always. The plot meanders a bit and sometimes gets a little slow, but I still enjoyed it. The ending didn't really make a lot of sense to me -- maybe I missed something earlier in the movie -- but I was surprised by this ending and liked it even if though it didn't seem to be supported by the rest of the movie.