El espejo de la bruja

You really never know what to expect from the Mexican Horror movies from the late 50's-early 60's. The rights to most were bought by K Gordon Murray.He dubbed the films generally using the same actors and the same stock music and ham handed re-editing cutting out crucial dialogue/scenes etc. Sometimes the dubbed dialogue is absolutely hysterical (and it shouldn't be).Every once in a while a great film sneaks through.

The Witch's Mirror is much better than most.The story concerns a witch's(Sarah) godchild(Helen) who sees her own murder in a mirror. The killer is her husband (a doctor/scientist) who is having an affair.As much as the witch tries to prevent the murder she is unable to do so.Helen is poisoned leaving him free to marry Deborah.

Sarah uses the powers of black magic to communicate with Helen in the grave. Helen is able to use the mirror to terrorize hubby and his bride.Flowers die instantly in a vase;cold winds blow through the house and the piano plays Helen's favorite songs..by itself.

Blaming the mirror for the haunting the doctor shatters it with a lit oil lamp. Deborah somehow is turned into a screaming fiery torch.She lives but is horribly disfigured.The doctor tries skin grafts from cadavers to restore her beauty.Then he moves on to living women for his needed tissues.Then Helen really gets p----d and her revenge is cruel and ruthless.

While you feel for Helen you also feel for Deborah who actually didn't know that her new hubby was married before.The cruelties inflicted on her are almost unwarranted.The husband deserved more punishment than she did.Then again having his wife's beauty destroyed ruins his life in a mad pursuit to restore her.

The dubbing isn't as inane as often happens in this film. The plot is good and the film moves along nicely with no tedious scenes.There also isn't any of the usual quick edits in the scenes that jar these films so often.

Studio Azteca is really not used to its full advantage as it has been in other films(The Vampire, The Brainiac etc).That's a minor quibble.Gets a big 9+.

A delirious concoction of Rebecca, Hands of Orlac, The Uninvited, and Eyes Without a Face, 1962's El espejo de la bruja wastes no time plunging us into the Gothic and even less time on useless characterization. This is a brutally efficient horror pic which rejects nothing, no matter how absurd, and despises the crippling effect common sense has had on the poetry of the macabre. The protagonists act as if hypnotized, stepping out of ghostly mirrors, wandering doomy-eyed, or running down dark staircases in terror--a Last Year at Marienbad done as a haunted soap opera, and curiously enough, released the same year.

Co-scriptwriter Carlos Enrique Taboada would go on to write and direct several Henry James-style moody horrors, but I much prefer his kitchen sink approach here. The lively, demented plot is well matched with Jorge Stahl Jr's arty, careful camerawork which invokes maximal imaginative power via simple effects such as voice-over, shadows, fog, cut-outs, and double exposure. Budget considerations limit this one to mostly set-bound interiors, but this only adds to the cramped paranoia, punctuated by hysterical outbursts at a piano playing itself or the presence of a dead woman in the title mirror.

The film's characters seem to shift from victim to tormentor on a dime, presided over by a cackling vengeful witch (Isabela Corona) whose folk religion is somewhat like Santissima Muerte mixed with medieval European diabolism (ominous credits and a warning as to the powers of witchcraft crawl over Goya copies, bookending the action). Shadowy and intricate, she prays to alters resembling Surrealist sculptures. Magic is real. There is no cop-out. The detectives at the end wonder what the hell they've seen. Everyone gets their just deserts. The moral: Beware the wrath of women, especially outwardly-loyal housekeepers.

The Witch's Mirror is a fine, mad thing, blissfully short on psychological subtlety, and as locomotive as the flipping pages of a gaudy sensacionale.

Witch's Mirror, The (1962)

*** (out of 4)

Mexican horror film from director Chano Urueta about a husband who murders his wife so that he can marry his mistress. Unfortuantly for him, he kills her in front of a witch's mirror, which allows her spirit to come back for revenge. The first thirty minutes of this film are great due to Urueta making the most of his small budget. The opening sequence is brilliant and there's some great atmosphere and art direction but things start to unravel in the final act. The first half of the film certainly isn't original but the second half seems like a mix between Eyes Without a Face and The Hands of Orlac.

The Witch's Mirror is a film that mixes numerous horror ideas into one incoherent, but brilliantly fun little film. The Witch's Mirror is directed by Chano Urueta, who also made the completely bizarre Brainiac in 1962. It's clear that Urueta has an eye for visuals and isn't too bothered about telling a story, as both The Witch's Mirror and Brainiac are heavy on the style without putting too much focus on the plot. This film has borrowed from numerous horror classics, from American films such as Mad Love to the French classic Eyes Without a Face. The plot focuses on witchcraft and sorcery, and more specifically; the act of mastering the use of a mirror. A witch named Sara enchants a mirror in order to protect Elena, her adopted daughter, from her nasty husband Eduardo. However, the enchantment doesn't work as planned, and when it fails; Elena is murdered, which leads the witch to try and get her revenge through a series of supernatural spells and sorcery.

The fact that the plot is incoherent obviously hinders the film, but there's so much going on that it's not a big problem. The Witch's Mirror isn't dull for a moment as there's always something going on to hold the audience's interest. The film includes themes of witchcraft and sorcery, as well as a big dose of mad science, as the film's doctor attempts to reconstruct his wife's deformed face. The special effects are superb considering the film is almost forty five years old, and they're also a marked improvement over the largely silly effects seen in Brainiac. The film is rather arty - more so even than The Curse of the Crying Woman, but that's not a negative comment as The Witch's Mirror features some truly beautiful sequences, which are well utilised and make the film more memorable. Overall, I can't see a good reason not to enjoy this film. It's not dull for a second, features some of the best art sequences in horror and does well at mixing a number of different horror ideas. It's not the best film from the recent batch of Casa Negra releases, but it's still well worth watching!

Mexico's "The Witch's Mirror" (El Espejo de la Bruja) was that rare Abel Salazar production where he does not perform on screen, kicking off Nov. 14, 1960, with director Chano Urueta at the helm. Pretty blonde Helen Hanley (Dina de Marco) is dismayed to learn from godmother Sara (Isabela Corona) that her death has been preordained by the powers of darkness, and that her supposedly devoted surgeon husband Edward (Armando Calvo) will be the one responsible for her murder. The fateful moment arrives when he brings her a fatal glass of milk at bedtime, collapsing before her bedroom mirror; it's not long before the doctor returns with new bride Deborah (Rosita Arenas, herself just recently wed to producer Salazar), who wants to prove she's not jealous by visiting Helen's old room. The vengeful spirit makes its chilling presence felt, and when Edward breaks the mirror with a kerosene lamp, Deborah is the one encased in flames that disfigure her once lovely features. At this point the picture becomes a Mexican combination of "The Hands of Orlac" and Georges Franju's "Eyes Without a Face," the now quite mad surgeon obsessed with restoring the beauty of his loved one, an attempt at grave robbing resulting in a still living subject suffering from catalepsy, with perfect pianist hands. It may not be clear at first, but poor Deborah turns out to be entirely innocent of any wrongdoing, the villainous Edward coming off as such a cold fish that it's a mystery as to how he'd be such a babe magnet. The presence of a (mostly) benevolent witch is capably handled by Isabela Corona, never once suspected by her employer or his latest bride, unable to save her mistress but not holding back when exacting revenge. The scarred makeup does not disappoint, and the occasional bursts of gore (even in black and white), such as severed hands and stumps on arms, must have been shocking in its day (amazing how such similar titles all emerged at the same time from different countries: France, Mexico, and Spain's "The Awful Dr. Orlof"). Small details abound, such as flowers that wither and die in mere seconds, a piano that plays itself, and the observant owl watching things go badly in the surgery. Chano Urueta truly rises to the occasion in ways that he couldn't on the better known "The Brainiac," another triumph for producer Salazar, whose marriage to pretty Rosina Arenas endured until his 1995 passing at age 78.