The Count (and Films From Beyond) bids you welcome, and wishes you a...
In all the annals of living horror, one name stands out as the epitome of Evil!
The Count (and Films From Beyond) bids you welcome, and wishes you a...
In all the annals of living horror, one name stands out as the epitome of Evil!
This post is part of the 3rd Annual Spooky Classic Movies Blogathon, hosted by Kristen at Hoofers and Honeys. If you need any more last minute recommendations for your Halloween viewing, be sure to check out the blogathon entries at Kristen’s place.
In my last post (“In Praise of MMA, Part Two: Masked Mexican Athletes vs. the Monsters”), I wrote about how, in the late 1950s, actor/producer Abel Salazar started a Gothic horror trend in Mexico with his hit, The Vampire (El vampiro, 1957), which may in turn have influenced Hammer to try its luck with the genre.
While Hammer went all in on reinterpreting Universal’s classic monsters after their breakout hits The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula (1958), Salazar kept busy stocking his monster movie-verse with more vampires (The Vampire’s Coffin/El ataúd del vampiro, 1958 and The World of Vampires/El mundo de los vampiros, 1961), a cursed pianist who is turned into a monster after trading his soul for otherworldly musical talent (The Man and the Monster/El hombre y el monstruo, 1959), a 300-year-old warlock who returns as a brain-eating monster (The Brainiac/El barón del terror, 1962), and an ultra-creepy variation of the vengeful, ghostly La Llorna from Mexican folklore (The Curse of the Crying Woman/La maldición de la Llorona, 1963).
To this Mexican monster mix, The Witch’s Mirror (also produced by Salazar) adds an eclectic mix of its own, including a vengeful witch, demons (who are mostly unseen, adding to their eeriness), and a classic mad doctor hell-bent on restoring the ruined looks of his new wife, no matter the cost.
But make no mistake, the witch of The Witch’s Mirror is no garden-variety B movie sorceress. She isn't burned at the stake, and she doesn’t do anything drearily mundane like returning from the dead to inflict horrible retribution on her executioners and their descendents. Rather, she is Sara (Isabela Corona), the seemingly prim and proper housekeeper for the estate of Dr. Eduardo Ramos (Armando Calvo), and godmother to Ramos’ beautiful young wife Elena (Dina de Marco).
Sara looks to a higher, diabolical power to keep things running smoothly at the casa. |
Sara takes her godmothering responsibilities very seriously, and at the beginning of the film, she is worried for Elena’s well-being. With Elena in tow, Sara turns to the main witchy tool she has at her disposal -- a magic full-length mirror through which she can communicate with the spirit world.
The mirror reveals that Elena has a rival for her husband’s affections, and that her life is in mortal danger. That evening, Eduardo poisons Elena’s bedtime glass of milk, which the troubled woman dutifully drinks. In another part of the house, Sara begs the spirits to protect her goddaughter, but she is told that nothing can be done, Elena’s fate is sealed.
With Elena conveniently dispatched, Eduardo brazenly brings his new wife Deborah (Rosita Arenas) to the manor, where Sara is playing it diabolically cool, pretending nothing is amiss. Unbeknownst to the happy couple, she is also communicating with Elena’s spirit, promising to avenge her.
As Sara looks grimly on, Eduardo and Deborah find out there’s Hell to pay (although poor Deborah seems blissfully unaware of the crime that elevated her to mistress of the house). The new bride suddenly finds herself playing a piece on the piano that she has never heard before -- to Eduardo’s great discomfort, since it was a favorite of Elena’s.
Deborah and Eduardo react to a special spirit-powered piano that plays itself. |
The first half of the film is all high Gothic spookiness full of disturbing, fog-shrouded images in the occult mirror, sepulchral spirit voices (or are they demons?) talking to Sara, statues in deep shadows that seem to move, almost imperceptibly, flowers that unaccountably wilt in seconds, and pianos that play by themselves.
Just at the point where we’re wondering what other tricks the spirits have up their sleeves for the unhappy couple, The Witch’s Mirror takes a hard turn, leaving Spooky Town for the bright, garish lights of Mad Doctor-ville.
The precipitating scene is as shocking as it is surprising. Deborah, seeing Elena’s ghost in the haunted mirror, promptly faints. Eduardo, rushing into the room, also sees Elena in the mirror, and throws the oil lamp he’s carrying at the specter. The lamp smashes the mirror, but then caroms onto Deborah, setting her on fire. All the stunned Eduardo can do is bolt after his wife as she runs screaming from the room, completely ablaze. For her part, Sara impassively watches the grisly scene play out.
Elena practices being spooky in front of the mirror. |
A blurb on the back of my CasaNegra Entertainment DVD copy penned by David Wilt of the Mexican Film Bulletin reads:
“Chano Urueta’s The Witch’s Mirror is an exercise in pure cinema, in which countless allusions to previous movies and a virtual catalog of special effects techniques are used to illustrate a delirious tale of witchcraft vs. mad science.”
One obvious allusion is to the French horror film Eyes Without a Face, released a couple of years earlier, which jump-started the Eurohorror trend of guilt-ridden mad surgeons trying to restore the disfigured faces of wives, girlfriends and daughters with the help of unwilling live donors. (1962 was a banner year for the theme, with Jess Franco’s The Awful Dr. Orlof and another Spanish horror film, Face of Terror, joining Witch’s Mirror in the face grafting frenzy. Later entries include Corruption, 1968, with Peter Cushing; The Blood Rose, 1970, from France; and Faceless, 1988, with Jess Franco returning to the theme.)
While Eduardo’s profession is only hinted at in the first part of the movie, in his extreme guilt he goes full blown mad doctor in the latter. An assistant, Gustavo (Carlos Nieto) suddenly shows up, who helps him steal bodies from the town morgue and a funeral parlor for the er, um, raw material that he needs to restore Deborah’s looks. Meanwhile, Deborah, swathed in bandages like a mummy, wanders zombie-like around the mansion, as Sara hovers.
Poor Deborah is caught in middle between her crazy husband and the malevolent housekeeper. |
Before it’s all over, a prematurely buried body will be dug up (shades of Edgar Allan Poe!), the police will become involved, Eduardo will attempt to transplant new hands onto Deborah (shades of The Hands of Orlac!), and witchcraft will ultimately frustrate the designs of mad science.
The sudden thematic shift midway through not only contributes to cognitive whiplash, it reinforces the film’s surreal qualities.Viewing The Witch’s Mirror is like sleeping through one nightmare, waking up briefly, then plunging into a new nightmare, while your unconscious mind keeps the same cast of characters for economy’s sake.
The one character that you can rely on, so to speak, is Sara. She seems as old as the manor itself, and her loyalty to her goddaughter Elena is total, even after death. Eduardo is the completely amoral newcomer to the household, willing to do anything (including murdering his wife) to get his way. He is arrogant when things are going his way, superstitious and desperate when they’re not. His “science” is no match for Sara’s occult arts.
Deborah is a pitiful figure. There’s nothing to suggest that she was in on the murder plot -- instead, she appears to be an innocent tragically caught in the mortal struggle between the new world (mad science) and the old (witchcraft). After being horribly burned, Deborah is outfitted with head bandages so thick, they almost look like a paper mache fright mask. She has become a sacrificial lamb and a grotesque reminder of Eduardo’s criminality and hubris. We feel for her, but she never stood a chance.
Rosita Arenas (Deborah), was the daughter of noted Spanish actor Miguel Arenas, who helped her break into the movies. During her lengthy career, she appeared in a lot of varied movies and TV, but of most interest to readers of this blog are the horror films she was cast in starting in the late 1950s, including three Aztec mummy movies (The Aztec Mummy, The Curse of the Aztec Mummy, and The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy), and The Witch’s Mirror and The Curse of the Crying Woman (1963) in association with Abel Salazar (whom she would eventually marry).
-"Tell me Rosita, how many Aztec Mummy movies did you make?" -"Well let's see, there was The Aztec Mummy, then Curse of the Aztec Mummy, and then..." |
Armando Calvo (Eduardo) was also a second generation Spanish actor who broke into the theater business at a very early age. From the mid-40s through the early ‘60s he worked steadily in the Mexican film industry, primarily in Westerns (although he did appear in The Hell of Frankenstein in 1960). Shortly after The Witch’s Mirror he returned to Spain to work in the theater, but ended up back in Mexico for good in the 1970s. The CasaNegra DVD bio states that he often portrayed characters with “a certain edge” -- as in ruthless, crooked, ethically compromised and obsessive. As Eduardo, he’s all that and more.
The Witch’s Mirror appears to be the only horror film on Isabela Corona’s (Sara) lengthy resume, consisting primarily of romances and costume dramas. At first glance, Corona doesn’t appear to have much to do in the role -- Sara is mostly a hovering, malignant presence. But she makes this singular role her own with subtle facial expressions that reflect vengeful triumph as the lives of Eduardo and Deborah come crashing down.
Perhaps the real stars of the show were the people behind the camera, who, whether it involved the supernatural or crazy mad science, created an exceedingly creepy atmosphere on a very low budget. All the action takes place on one set used many times before by other productions, but so much is going on that you don’t notice (or care about) all the little economies.
By this point in his career, director Chano Ureta knew how to get the most out of limited resources. Rear projection is employed in some of the mirror scenes, but mostly it’s live actors performing within the mirror frame that provide an effective illusion. Sara’s transformations into various creatures of the night -- an owl and a black cat -- consist of simple camera dissolves. A scene in a funeral parlor is accomplished by redressing one of the mansion corridor sets. (CasaNegra DVD commentary by Frank Coleman).
Never fear dear reader, that is not a real severed head on the table. |
Jorge Stahl Jr.’s cinematography, emphasizing deep shadows and otherworldly light sources, adds an eerie gloss to the production. Gustavo César Carrión’s music hits the right somber notes without intruding. And the production design and set decoration (by Javier Torres Torija and Dario Cabañas, respectively) lend an air of mystery to the proceedings, especially in scenes where Sara, surrounded by witchy paraphernalia, is communicating with the spirits. The various statues, icons and other obscure, ominous-looking items that dress-up the witch's environs seem to have their own dark tales to tell.
Finally, mention should be made of the film’s elaborate pre-titles sequence, in which a narrator solemnly intones on the history of witches and their evil doings against the backdrop of a series of surreal, witchcraft-themed drawings by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746-1828). The sequence, which sets a morbid tone for what is to follow, was excised from the dubbed U.S. version of the film.
“To use their diabolical powers, witches resort to special potions, brooms, skeletons of children and animals, every kind of untanned hide, flasks and vessels of every shape, secret powders and dreadful poisons, and an infinite variety of lethal herbs. All this is used by an average witch. But only a superlative witch, endowed with a genuinely profound knowledge of the occult, can make use of a magical object of infinite powers and properties… the mirror!” [from the pre-titles sequence]
Fortunately, those interested in staring into The Witch’s Mirror have access to a diabolical tool: video streaming (not to mention DVD for old school occultists).
Where to find it: Streaming | DVD/Blu-ray