British boutique Blu Ray company Indicator has really appeared on my radar recently. This is mostly because they’ve started to release American (i.e., Region 1) editions of their wares. Recently I invested in their slick box set of the first two El Santos movies. Then there was Mexican Macabre, a collection of some of the finest Mexican Gothic horror films of the ‘60s (The Brainiac, The Witch’s Mirror, the marvelously atmospheric The Curse of the Crying Woman and the truly fantastic The Black Pit of Dr. M). Each collection is stuffed to the gills with new supplementary content and even books. I’ve yet to dig into them, but even as artifacts they are beautiful and worth owing.
Additionally, Indicator has now released two very early Mexican horrors. These (are you sitting down?) I have also purchased. One is 1934’s The Phantom of the Monastery. However, the first one I watched was 1933’s La Llorona. I can’t say I was knocked out by the latter, as you’ll see. Still, I am always glad to notch another early horror film on my belt.
It should be noted that Indicator has already sold out their own copies of both discs, limited to 2000 copies each. For those interested, they are still presently listed at Amazon, although that might not hold true for long. They are heavily discounted, a sign that Amazon might be trying to clear their remaining copies off the shelf.
The legend of La Llorona (aka The Weeping or Crying Woman) is venerable Mexican folklore. She has inspired at least a dozen films south of the border, including the previously mentioned The Curse of the Crying Woman. Indeed, Criterion has released a Blu Ray of a more recent version.
As with many folklore characters, the origins and particulars of La Lorna tend to according to the times or even location. In most iterations, the character was a mother who loses her children, often having murdered them herself in a fit of madness. No matter the particulars of that exact telling, the mother then kills herself in grief and despair. Her spirit thereafter roams the land, misidentifying any children she came across as her own and dealing them a similar face.
Billed as Mexico’s first sound horror movie, La Llorona is, frankly, a bit of a slog. Or maybe it seemed that way to me, because there is not much horror content for the majority of the film’s running time. It opens promisingly on a murder (although of a man, not a kid), whose death by—I guess—fright is presaged by a somewhat annoying screeching cry.
Sadly, this is the last mayhem we’ll have for a while. The following scene is about about 10 minutes of ersatz Our Gang hijinx at a birthday party. I’m not exaggerating, this was clearly made by people who closely studied the Hal Roach shorts before filming this. This is then followed by a good 40 minutes of a pair of flashbacks to ye olde times, only intermittently returning to the present to start some Old Dark House antics.
The first of these historical flashbacks involves a nobleman who won’t declare parentage of his and his lover’s son. This tale goes on at some length, encompassing a romantic triangle, some awkward swordplay sequences—Errol Flynn they ain’t—and pretty much nil horror content right up until the very end. I have the feeling that opening sequence with the man’s death was added late in the game to establish some sort of initial horror mood.
I will say that, impatient as I was to get back to, you know, the horror stuff the film supposedly was offering, that the sequence is undeniably lavish. I don’t know if they actually had the myriad, highly ornate costumes made for this film or just borrowed them, but they definitely add a certain scale to the proceedings. The problem being that I didn’t sign up for a history epic, I was expected a horror picture.
In the end, we get two discrete origins for our titular ghostie. I believe they are suggesting that La Llorona is less the spirit of one deranged mother but instead the sum of many such women. Thus the first flashback (finally) offers us a woman who murders her son and then herself in an act or vengeance.
Meanwhile, the second introduces as Aztec woman driven insane after her son is taken from her by the Spanish. It is she that in her madness begins to mistake every young boy she sees as her own son. Upon her death, presumably, her spirit—which we see leave her body—presumably merges with the former woman’s to form the core of our spectral menace.
The merged histories also established an animus against one family in particular, which is the modern day (of 1933) is represented by a doctor scornful of superstition, his wife, and their young son, the birthday boy whose party we witnessed earlier.
Here we finally return to the present day of 1933 and go full old dark house horror for the last like 20 minutes. We get a cowled killer in a hooded monk’s robe, right out of The Castle of Otranto, coming and going through the inevitable myriad of secret panels. The killer is after the kid, the parents and eventually the assembled police attempt to thwart the seemingly corporeal killer. I’ll say this, it’s hard to see an American horror film of the period revolving around a spirit (?) that murders children.
By this point I was expecting a Scooby Doo-style “the killer was Old Man Rodriguiz all along!” I’ll leave it to you to discover the truth if you ever see the film for yourself. There is a nifty Aztec alter hidden in the family’s basement, though. I realize the father has a lot on his plate with his endangered son and everything, but when he finds it I thought it funny that he doesn’t even spare it a glance. You’d think it would merit at least a brief, “Huh, would you look at that.”
The meandering film often bored me, but in an oddly amiable way. I wasn’t angry or annoyed by it. Although it had stretches during the first flashback where I wasn’t much entertained, it was still fun to check it off my list of such films (even if I had never known it existed until I bought the Blu Ray). It was sort of boredom at a remove. It certainly didn’t inspire the animosity or profound disappointment I felt, for example, when I sat through the silent version of The Hands of Orlac for the first time.
I imagine this is because the film is only 70 minutes long. It does feel longer than that, though (or at least it did to me), given the previously cited pacing issues. I doubt I’ll rewatch La Llorona much, but it was worth seeing. The last 20 minutes, when we finally enter full Old Dark House mode, are pretty good. And it’s possible, I guess, that others might enjoy the historical pageantry more than I did.
The direction and camerawork are often quite fluid for the time period, and even innovative in brief flashes. This is especially true as, as is established in the various bonus materials, Mexico didn’t really have a silent film industry. Sound made it harder for American product to be exported, and Mexican filmmakers took full advantage of that. However, 1933 was quite early days for this. As for the film itself, it look fine. Taken from a lone surviving 16mm print, the presentation is hardly immaculate, but it gets the job done.
One amusing note is that because the central family is associated with four leaf clovers, these are featured as a design element throughout. They subtly appear embroidered on hilariously gaudy Spanish doublets in the olde time sequences (which I didn’t catch until my friend Jeff pointed it out), and also inspiring the shape of the large table the kids all eat their four leaf clover-shaped birthday cake at. (!!) The furniture maker gets a special credit for his work.
Although lacking quite the cavalcade of extras Indicator’s more robust box set are known for, it’s still got some nifty special features. Viviana Garcia Besne, the producer’s great granddaughter, provides an unusual but quite interesting 17 minute documentary. This provides production history on the film itself, but also some family history. It also features her two elderly great aunts, who as children appeared in the birthday party sequences, rewatching the film for the first time. It’s pretty good stuff, suffused with old newspaper stories and images of that bygone era.
Abraham Castillo Flores, head programmer of Mexico’s Morbido Film Fest (that sounds fun!), also provides a short talking about the movie and, more to the point, the folklore behind it. I will say I wish companies like Indicator would start providing subtitles for their extras. Especially for us old folk and even more so when the presenters speak with an accent, as does Castillo Flores here and the two English gentlemen who do the commentary. A small beer complaint, but there you go.
The big gun, though, is that commentary. This is by two of the best, Stephen Jones and horror novelist Kim Newmen. Frankly, that’s what sold me on buying the disc to start with. I’m a sucker for extras like that. As with all their commentaries, they sound like two old friends who are hardcore movie buffs engaging in exactly the sort of conversations we all do, although with a bit more research first. The two are funny and personable and the commentary is as entertaining as it is educational.
The Blu Ray case also contains a 30-odd page slick booklet, containing several essays on the film and the folklore, and which is, as they say, profusely illustrated.
You can see an uncleaned up copy of the film for free on YouTube by searching The Crying Woman 1933.
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