The Curse of the Crying Woman (1963)
Directed by Rafael Baledon
Starring Rosita Arenas, Abel Salazar, Rita Macedo, Carlos Lopez Moctezuma, Enrique Lucero, Mario Sevilla

Back in my early days of being a horror fan, I had a friend that asked me if I had seen any of the Mexican horror films from the late ’50s/early ’60s. At the time, not only had I not seen any of them, I wasn’t really even aware of them. When he offered to send me a couple of them, I told him not to, because I really didn’t want to get into yet another sub-genre of the horror genre! Silly me. Of course, this didn’t stop my friend and he sent me a couple of titles anyway. They were The Bloody Vampire aka El vampiro sangriento (1962), and The Curse of the Crying Woman aka La maldición de la Llorona (1963). After watching them, I was hooked. Growing up on the Universal classics, I had always loved the glorious black and white films, where the atmosphere is thick and heavy and I found that same style in these from South of the boarder!

I’ve seen many of the films from that era since then, but The Curse of the Crying Woman still remains as my favorite. Maybe because it was the first one that I watched way back then, or maybe it’s just that good. The film is loosely based on one a famous Mexican ghost story, the legend of La Llorona, the Crying Woman, so it was taking its roots in its own folklore and creating a new movie monster around it. In this film, it starts out with a stagecoach moving through the foggy woods. All the trees are black and twisted, covered in a thick mist. The coach is stopped by a man on the road, who promptly kills the driver. When the passengers try to escape, they meet a grisly end. There is strange woman watching this attack, while holding back three large dogs. She releases them to take care of one of the passengers who is fleeing. But what is even stranger about the woman is her eyes…or the lack there of. Instead we see two black sockets where her eyes should be. All the while, we have this eerie moaning music playing throughout the attack. And this is just the start of it!

As the story continues on, we meet a young woman and her husband, played by Rosita Arenas and Abel Salazar, who are returning to see her aunt, who she hasn’t seen in several years. She is amazed to see that her aunt hasn’t seemed to age over the long years. She is even more amazed when she discovers the real reason her aunt has called for her to return.

Abel Salazar was an important figure in the Mexican horror films of that time. Not only was he an actor, but he also produced quite a few of them as well. You can see him in  El Vampiro (1957) and the sequel El ataúd del Vampiro (1958), as well as playing the title character in The Brainiac (1962). Rosita Arenas also appeared in a few horror titles such as The Witch’s Mirror (1962) as well as the infamous 1958 picture The Aztec Mummy Against the Humanoid Robot (better known to MST3K fans as The Robot vs the Aztec Mummy), the third title in the Aztec Mummy series.

Sure, some of the acting here may be either a little cheesy and played for laughs, or a little stiff. But if you can look beyond that, you’ll see a classic black and white filled with so much atmosphere and style that you’ll forget any of those little negative things you were thinking. The sets, the mood, and the crazy story they come up will immediately grab your attention. Not to mention that some of the effects are very memorable, including the eyeless sockets of the title creature.

If you do love the old Universal classics, and don’t mind reading subtitles (please go with the original dialogue with subs…the dubbed versions take away much of the seriousness of the performances), I couldn’t recommend this title enough. And if this title wets your taste, then keep looking because there is a whole slew of these titles from that era that are amazing, such as El Vampiro (1957) and The Black Pit of Dr. M (1959).