La bruja

Borrowing heavily from its uber-influential neighbors to the north, Mexico's Epoca De Oro (1930s - 1950s) can best be described as "Hollywood in a fun house mirror", an era as passionate and extravagant as its people and unafraid to blend baroque religious symbolism with primitive superstition. A prime example is LA BRUJA with lovely Lilia del Valle, the exotic star of many a cabaretera ("noir musicals" for lack of a better description). Blending Cinderella, FRANKENSTEIN, and Tod Browning's FREAKS, it's about a kindly doctor who invents an antibiotic that an unscrupulous trio of businessmen attempt to steal from him by breaking into his lab and killing his daughter. Hellbent on revenge, the doc asks Paulescu, a "king of the gypsies" figure, to borrow his horribly deformed servant who he turns into a ravishing beauty using another secret formula he'd been working on. Playing Pygmalion to her Galatea, he transforms the hag into the ravishing Countess Nora Novak who lures two of the thieves to their deaths before trouble brews big time when she falls in love with the third...

If Hollywood had made this it would have been with Acquanetta at Universal for the Saturday matinée crowd but south of the border, this wasn't a horror movie as much as a "romantic fantasy" of the kind audiences couldn't get enough of. The witch, shunned and mistreated by all, is first and foremost a woman who has never known kindness and she's torn between her duty to the doctor who made her desirable and the handsome man who loves her. Set in the Balkans, the tale is atmospherically filmed in black and white with quite a few WTF? moments, most notably Paulescu's "Night Court", a motley crew of cripples, misfits, and outsiders who band together to mete out justice to evildoers. This was obviously a star vehicle for Lilia del Valle (looking a bit like Hollywood's Faith Domergue) who's transformed from sympathetic monstrosity under lots of Lon Chaney makeup to cold-blooded killer garbed in the latest gowns, jewels, and furs to a woman in love who's willing to sacrifice all. Played straight, LA BRUJA is fantastique fun all the way around and an enjoyable introduction to Mexico's "Golden Age".

Surprisingly effective and atmospheric Mexican horror film directed by Chano Urueta, which mixes elements from every story featuring a mad scientist or a woman falling in love with the wrong man, with a bit of Fritz Lang's "M". However, it takes above anything else the basic premise of "The Miraculous Serum" (1952), first adaptation of Stanley G. Weinbaum's short story "The Adaptative Ultimate", made for the TV series "Tales of Tomorrow". It was remade twice, first -again for television- as "Beyond Return" (1955) for the series "Science Fiction Theatre", and two years later as the feature "She Devil", in which Mari Blanchard played a brunette with TB who was turned into a lethal and invulnerable blonde. There is a big difference, though: after "The Witch" (called as such because of her extremely ugly face) is injected with the serum, turned into a beautiful woman, and educated and polished to pass as a rich countess (Lilia del Valle), she remains emotionally vulnerable. She has to kill three business men who supposedly wronged a scientist (Julio Villarreal), but she falls for the young, dashing Fedor (Ramón Gay), leading the story to tragedy, when all the marginal and handicapped men and women from the underworld (as in "M") create their own court of justice… It is funny how in these strange Mexican fabrications, names and locations from Eastern Europe are candidly mixed with native elements, and in the end get away with it. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why many of them are so fascinating, including others directed by Urueta, as "El monstruo resucitado", "El espejo de la bruja" and "El barón del terror".

This movie really have everything: Monsters/freaks, murders, revenge, evil people, crazy science and lots of excitement.

I had expected to see a true B-movie but this movie did blow me away. The pace in the movie is fast. The script is good and tight. The acting is fine.

It is really too bad this movie is forgotten. I would say given the time it is made it would have been a classic horror movie with a high reputation if it was made in English.

If you require colors to think a movie is good then skip it. If you don't mind subtitles then I would suggest to give it a chance if you can find it.