A doctor is working on a revolutionary anti-aging serum. When he refuses to share it with his colleagues, they send some burglars to his home to retrieve it. The burglars kill his daughter in the process, which drives the good doctor over the edge. He then enlists the help of a tragically ugly woman to exact revenge on the men who murdered his daughter. The doc uses his serum to make her beautiful and she in turn helps lure the killers to their death. Complications ensue when she falls in love with one of her potential victims.
The Witch is an odd blend of genres and inspirations that never quite mesh. It’s one part mad scientist movie, one part Freaks rip-off (the doctor has a band of amputees that do his bidding), one part Les Misérables (the underground network of poor and unfortunates who aid the doctor), and one part My Fair Lady. In fact, there are some stretches of the movie that play like Pretty Woman, but with lap dissolve transformation scenes.
While it’s semi-amusing to see where the wacky plot will go next, it ultimately comes up short. That said, I’m a sucker for these old school black and white Mexican horror movies. They always feel like they are stuck in some kind of time warp. Even though it was made in the mid-‘50s, it often feels like an American horror flick from a Poverty Row studio from the early ‘40s. Director Chano Urueta (who would later go on to direct the classic Mexican horror shocker, The Brainiac) does deliver on the atmosphere, even if the plot kind of goes around in circles.
Overall, The Witch is still kind of fun as far as these things go. The version I saw didn’t have subtitles, but I still had an easy time figuring out what was going on, which is also a testament to Urueta’s direction. It’s just that it has one or two subplots too many to make for a crackling horror flick.
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