Mirrors Beneath Drapes
The Curse of the Crying Woman (1963)
directed by Rafael Baledón
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Unlike this guy who loves "the whole haunted house scene," I have never once wanted to attend or participate in San Antonio's "Nightmare on Grayson" or the equivalent attraction in any other place I've lived. For one thing, I hate jump scares, both because they're cheap gimmicks and because they always work (on me). But I also have no desire to break into abandoned homes or buildings with reputations for ghosts. I'm a lightweight in the fear department.
Scary movies give me something to think about without running me ragged. But the atmosphere I'm always after sometimes leads to quandaries like The Curse of the Crying Woman. On the one hand, fog machines and sound stage forests of rotting trees are everything I want in a horror film. On the other hand, there is so much silliness in front of the camera that I want to push actors and script aside and take my bag lunch and sit with the bats on strings awhile.
I don't want to live on a set in Mexico, exactly, but to look out the window of my apartment (Mexico would be great for that!) and see an unearthly fog around the telephone polls. But until I'm up for an expatriate's joie de vivre, I'll take what I can get, which is a blind woman with three mastiffs and her disfigured, taciturn henchman who stops carriages on country roads and kills passengers and drivers in all manner of grisly ways.
These crimes occur on the Camino Real, a nice reminder of home. It's easy to see the ribs on the dogs and the horses, which lends the scene an unintentional but appropriate cruelty. The "curse" and its murderous demands can't match old-fashioned animal abuse, nor can the niece or her sop of a husband be excused for resisting evil's temptations so blandly and so well.
The witch who runs the show keeps a mummified corpse pinned to the wall with a lance and promises to free the immortal but weakened La Llorona through a ceremony when the belfry sounds midnight. From time to time a face appears inside the desiccated body, and eyes sometimes peer from the hollow sockets in hunger. Such eyes! When the niece walks out in moonlight, the sky is filled with eyes projected against the stars. Stars are so cold on their own!
directed by Rafael Baledón
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Unlike this guy who loves "the whole haunted house scene," I have never once wanted to attend or participate in San Antonio's "Nightmare on Grayson" or the equivalent attraction in any other place I've lived. For one thing, I hate jump scares, both because they're cheap gimmicks and because they always work (on me). But I also have no desire to break into abandoned homes or buildings with reputations for ghosts. I'm a lightweight in the fear department.
Scary movies give me something to think about without running me ragged. But the atmosphere I'm always after sometimes leads to quandaries like The Curse of the Crying Woman. On the one hand, fog machines and sound stage forests of rotting trees are everything I want in a horror film. On the other hand, there is so much silliness in front of the camera that I want to push actors and script aside and take my bag lunch and sit with the bats on strings awhile.
I don't want to live on a set in Mexico, exactly, but to look out the window of my apartment (Mexico would be great for that!) and see an unearthly fog around the telephone polls. But until I'm up for an expatriate's joie de vivre, I'll take what I can get, which is a blind woman with three mastiffs and her disfigured, taciturn henchman who stops carriages on country roads and kills passengers and drivers in all manner of grisly ways.
These crimes occur on the Camino Real, a nice reminder of home. It's easy to see the ribs on the dogs and the horses, which lends the scene an unintentional but appropriate cruelty. The "curse" and its murderous demands can't match old-fashioned animal abuse, nor can the niece or her sop of a husband be excused for resisting evil's temptations so blandly and so well.
The witch who runs the show keeps a mummified corpse pinned to the wall with a lance and promises to free the immortal but weakened La Llorona through a ceremony when the belfry sounds midnight. From time to time a face appears inside the desiccated body, and eyes sometimes peer from the hollow sockets in hunger. Such eyes! When the niece walks out in moonlight, the sky is filled with eyes projected against the stars. Stars are so cold on their own!
posted by NPK at 6:50 AM
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