MEXICAN HALLOWEEN PART 7

For the seventh day of this week of thrills and excitement we have two more fine films from the Churubusco-Azteca studios especially for the ladies:

Espiritismo (1962) is a domestic melodrama with a devilish twist.  Mom and Dad are just celebrating their big anniversary and are extra happy because the mortgage on the house is finally  paid off, and they feel they can ignore the dire warnings they got at that Ouija board party they went to the week before.  Along comes junior who needs eight grand to start a crop dusting business and if they loved him they would mortgage the house again.  Things don't seem to be working out after that and they are going to lose the house unless drastic actions are taken, so it seems like the natural thing to do is join a spiritualist cult and call upon the dark forces for aid.  This takes the form of an emissary from the devil bringing Pandora's Box which, as you recall, contains a Crawling Hand that grants you your desires. Mom runs the show here, always puffing on a cig and ranting, and poor Dad can only tag along and watch the world fall apart. How it all turns out isn't too surprising.  This is kind of slow and talky and is intended to appeal primarily to the housewife of those days, but it keeps a steady pace of mysterious events leading up to the inescapable conclusion that she shouldn'ta done that thing.

That's Pandora's box on the table between them but the cool thing is the shadow of the lamp on the wall behind her.  I have this thing about seeing the shadow of something that should actually be emitting light.  It's crazy, I know.  I'm just nuts about lighting.  Look how they hit that chair in the background to establish that the space goes all the way back there.

I found it interesting from a sociological standpoint; the attitudes expressed by the characters regarding their social standing and economic security, with The House being the big thing in their lives which keeping or losing meant their happiness and survival.  Which may not be the way you want your horror movie to come across.  This was a K. Gordon Murray release, dubbed in Florida by Floridians for the edification of the English speaking world, and it is the first time I have ever heard the narrator of a movie or anyone else use the word "quelch."  Apparently the aim of this movie is to quelch our desire to get involved with Ouija boards and summoning the spirits of the dead.  WELL IT DIDN'T WORK.

El maldicion de la Llorona (1963) a.k.a. Curse of the Crying Woman, is a real rip-snorter.  You never know what is going to happen next.  It's a multigenerational family curse story, the curse of an ancestor who made a deal with the devil to gain youth and power, with the catch being that to keep her youth and power she had to keep committing the most terrible crimes she could.  This didn't go down well with the community.  Most families don't keep the spear-transfixed skeleton of their most evil ancestor in the basement awaiting the day the youngest member of the clan turns 25 and pulls out the spear to bring her back to life, but this one does.  And guess what.  Home comes the young niece of the family who is exactly 24 and 364/365ths years old.  All kinds of crazy stuff happens then.  The aunt comes flying into the basement like a hideous skeleton and gets these empty eye sockets sometimes, and she's got no reflection and the niece loses her reflection the closer it gets to the fatal hour and the uncle they said was dead is actually a half human beast chained up in the bell tower but he GETS OUT when the club-footed scar-faced lackey goes up there to give him a GOOD BEATING, the dogs are let out to KILL POLICEMEN, and MIDNIGHT IS FAST APPROACHING.  It's one nutty thing after another, and it all takes place in one night of terror.

You can see they light the hell out of everything and it all looks really great and spooky.  They don't spare the horrors and rats and cobwebs and groping hands and sudden shocks.  What's funny is that when they do the flashback explanation of the origin of the family curse they show it all in negative and a bunch of the scenes they use are a nonsensical jumble of shots from El mundo de los vampiros.  I thought it was funny anyway.  Oh yeah, the niece has a husband too but the great thing is he spends most of the movie in peril and really only gets useful when it comes to the climactic scenes when someone is needed to brawl with the club-footed scar-faced lackey.  It's all about the ladies here and it's great.  Rita Macedo as Aunt Selma is creepy as hell, always seeming weirdly elated over her evil power and not hesitating to do whatever she needs to do to achieve her wicked goals.

This concludes our week of holiday cheer and I wish you and yours all the joys of this wonderful Halloween season.  Just be careful who wears the pants in the family, that's all.