Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Aspen Orson There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Michael Ledo Eduardo is a wealthy doctor. He is bored with his wife Elena and wants to marry Deborah. Fortunately he lives in a country where poisoning your wife is legal. Fate has decided Elena must die, unable to be saved by her satanic witch godmother and her ancient magic Persian mirror. However, once dead, her spirit can raise havoc in the newlyweds life.The restoration quality was phenomenally good. Indeed it must have looked better than originally shown. I liked the plot as the film swung to a grave robbing mad scientist genre. The motions of the actors were from the silent era and the soundtrack sounded like it was from the forties. The Satanic witchcraft in the film was similar to what my Santanya worshiping Hispanic grandmother would use. Note the correct use of the six sided star as opposed to the typical five pointed star.Okay, who keeps an owl in their operating room/lab?

Johan Louwet I thought this was great. It's about a doctor Eduardo who kills his wife Elena by poisoning her because he loves another woman. His housekeeper Sara is not pleased as she was the godmother of Elena. As a witch she has the powers to call the help of demons mainly thanks to a figure length mirror present in Elena's room. In this way she decides to torment Eduardo and his new fiancée Deborah. Things go so badly that Deborah gets burnt badly on hands and face. Eduardo doesn't want to give up and wants to heal Deborah's damaged skin, going as far as stealing bodies from recently deceased beautiful young women so he can transplant their skins onto Deborah. It did have a certain "The Eyes without a Face" feeling at that point even though the 2 movies are pretty different, and I enjoyed The Witch's Mirror much more. Sara also continues to torment the couple even being able to communicate with Elena's spirit. It happens in psychological as well as really creepy ways with for its time some pretty amazing effects. The cool thing is that it happens without need for any real monsters to pop up, more subtle which was very effective. That the ending was quite predictable didn't take away any enjoyment for me, certainly if it eventually pays of in terms of the one I was rooting for.

Lee Eisenberg Back in the days when the United States film industry was making a number of horror movies starring Vincent Price, Mexico made several similar movies. "El espejo de la bruja" (called "The Witch's Mirror" in English) is one of the coolest examples. It portrays a woman seeing her own death in a mirror and dying shortly thereafter. When her husband remarries, her godmother communicates with her through the grave, and they both come up with a plan to get revenge on the husband...even if bad things have to happen to his new wife.Yeah, it sounds pretty outlandish. But these sorts of movies don't pretend to be anything else! The point is to have fun, and I'm sure that you will. If you aren't totally familiar with Mexico's horror genre, Portland's video/DVD store Movie Madness has a whole section devoted to that genre.All in all, this witch will almost certainly have you in its spell.

MARIO GAUCI This is another Mexican horror classic being given a new lease of life via Casanegra's superb SE DVD.The plot is a mishmash of various well-proved elements (with even a nod to Poe) - a young wife is forced to live in the shadow of her husband's former bride (largely through the machinations of the latter's devoted housekeeper) as in REBECCA (1940); when the wife is horribly scarred in a fire, her doctor husband resorts to body snatching for skin graft experiments as in EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1959); the hands he gives her (unbeknownst to him, they belong to the revenge-seeking first wife he poisoned!) take on a life of their own as in MAD LOVE (1935), etc. - but which works reasonably well in the context of its essential "witchcraft vs. mad science" theme (to quote the DVD sleeve notes).The first half is a bit slow, but the cheaply-realized yet often poetic visuals - borrowed from Cocteau and Dreyer! - keep one riveted; the latter stages are more frenetic, with several of the characters resorting to histrionics and a fair splattering of gore (leading up to a particularly busy and highly satisfying climax). The acting from all the major players is above-average for this type of film but, best of all perhaps, is Isabela Corona as the outwardly reserved but sinister and powerful witch; the two younger women also make an impression - Dina De Marco as the murdered wife who keeps turning up as a ghost to haunt her husband and her rival; Rosita Arenas as the innocent young bride who becomes the unfortunate victim in both the doctor and the witch's scheme of things (particularly effective when essaying the pathetic qualities of the bandaged-up, desperate and lonesome woman).As was the case with THE BLACK PIT OF DR. M (1958), the Gothic/supernatural atmosphere deployed with the barest of resources through camera-work, lighting, sets and props is truly incredible...though the special effects (which get quite a heavy workout here), ultimately, leave a lot to be desired! I've purposely refrained from describing individual sequences (as I often tend to do) so as not to deny first-time viewers - as I was myself - the pleasure of discovering its considerable felicities on their own! The supplements are similar to those of BLACK PIT: the Audio Commentary (by the same Frank Coleman) is just as interesting, but he seems to be enjoying himself a good deal here as he approaches the film with tongue-in-cheek - while retaining a justified reverence for his subject. One disappointing aspect of these DVD editions, however, is that the English-dubbed version of the films aren't included as they were released back in the day (for instance, in the Commentary it's mentioned that the narrated prologue accompanied by sketches in the Mexican original was dropped for the export version - but the DVD includes it, presumably with the 'new' lines recently looped in!).