Dust on Rust
The Witch's Mirror (1965)
directed by Chano Urueta
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
The Witch's Mirror is beautifully filmed, or maybe the transfer is exceptional and I took it for granted. Chano Urueta was a Mexican director who has over one hundred movies to his credit, but no biography to speak of on either IMDb or Wikipedia. Urueta acted in both The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia; he's a guy with a face you remember.
His obscurity and his association with Peckinpah seem relevant to The Witch's Mirror, a decidedly average but still agreeable movie. The plot is mundane enough: a prominent doctor kills his wife in order to marry someone new. The witch is the woman who works as his housekeeper and who, unable to protect wife #1, takes it upon herself to ruin the doctor and wife #2. It begins as an "old dark house" sort of picture, with drafty rooms and odd, even creepy sightings. Phantoms in sheets stick to strange corners of the wall; ghosts rise from foggy tombs.
The doctor endures this with a persistent, vaguely pained expression on his face. Finally the witch burns the new bride in a fire, at which point the course of the movie veers into face transplant/grave robbery territory. The doctor is intent on restoring the usurper, but it goes wrong the same it went wrong for Peter Lorre in Mad Love.
Amid the telenovelas that I no doubt incorrectly assume a Mexican child sees on every channel throughout childhood, The Witch's Mirror would be a nice surprise. Tame by the emotional standards of Latin America soap operas, the movie has a kid's delight for player pianos and bumps in the dark. The great scene takes place when the ghost of the doctor's former wife physically sheds her hands upon the operating table, where they will soon replace the burned extremities of the woman who replaced her.
For us adults, it's a little silly. But there are worse things to be, and the lesson that emerges - once the doctor is stopped and brought down by the law - is to root on behalf of the witch, not against her. She goes unpunished for her act of revenge, an unlikely and entirely satisfactory conclusion.
directed by Chano Urueta
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
The Witch's Mirror is beautifully filmed, or maybe the transfer is exceptional and I took it for granted. Chano Urueta was a Mexican director who has over one hundred movies to his credit, but no biography to speak of on either IMDb or Wikipedia. Urueta acted in both The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia; he's a guy with a face you remember.
His obscurity and his association with Peckinpah seem relevant to The Witch's Mirror, a decidedly average but still agreeable movie. The plot is mundane enough: a prominent doctor kills his wife in order to marry someone new. The witch is the woman who works as his housekeeper and who, unable to protect wife #1, takes it upon herself to ruin the doctor and wife #2. It begins as an "old dark house" sort of picture, with drafty rooms and odd, even creepy sightings. Phantoms in sheets stick to strange corners of the wall; ghosts rise from foggy tombs.
The doctor endures this with a persistent, vaguely pained expression on his face. Finally the witch burns the new bride in a fire, at which point the course of the movie veers into face transplant/grave robbery territory. The doctor is intent on restoring the usurper, but it goes wrong the same it went wrong for Peter Lorre in Mad Love.
Amid the telenovelas that I no doubt incorrectly assume a Mexican child sees on every channel throughout childhood, The Witch's Mirror would be a nice surprise. Tame by the emotional standards of Latin America soap operas, the movie has a kid's delight for player pianos and bumps in the dark. The great scene takes place when the ghost of the doctor's former wife physically sheds her hands upon the operating table, where they will soon replace the burned extremities of the woman who replaced her.
For us adults, it's a little silly. But there are worse things to be, and the lesson that emerges - once the doctor is stopped and brought down by the law - is to root on behalf of the witch, not against her. She goes unpunished for her act of revenge, an unlikely and entirely satisfactory conclusion.
posted by NPK at 12:01 AM
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