"El Espejo de la Bruja" is a both visually great looking and .... yeah, you guessed it .... atmospheric,
it's a wild and gothic crazy doctor and black magic horror directed by the veteran Chano Urueta.
After an intro scene with someone narrating about witchcraft and with pictures of Francisco de
Goya we get to see the great Isabel Corona as the housemaid Sara looking at her Witch's Mirror,
where she sees her beloved goddaughter Elena Ramos (Dina de Marco) being murdered by her
husband, the crazed Dr. Eduardo Ramos (Amando Calvo). Sara is a bruja, a witch, and she can
conjure up visions in the mirror and she promises to revenge her goddaughters death.
Sara uses black magic and prays to dark demons that Eduardo and his new wife Deborah (Rosita
Arenas) may be punished for the death of Elena.

Strange things start to happen in the house around Eduardo and Deborah and when Deborah
have had her face destroyed by fire Dr. Eduardo (yes, he's a surgeon) decides to steal female dead
bodies from the Morgue to experiment on for trying to transplant skin grafts to his Deborah.
Yes, Urueta clearly has been inspired by Georges Franju's 1959 "Les Yeux sans visage" The
Mother of all crazy doctor skin transplant movies, a film that very much inspired spaniard Jesús
Franco to make his 1961 "Gritos en la noche" AKA "The Awful Dr. Orloff" and his own re-make
the 1988 "Faceless". There are some rare early mild gore effects i "El espejo de la bruja".

Rosita Arenas can besides this film also be seen in genre classics as all the 3 Aztec Mummy
1957 movies and in the 1961-1963 "La maldicíon de la Llorona".
This film is a mix of different influences, as: "Suspicion", "The Bodysnatchers" "The Hands of
Orloc", "Mad Love" and the above mentioned "Eyes without a face" and the effects are well
made. Director Urueta was a master in using back-projection and optical effects and there are
some cool camera movement too. The set decor looked great and the bandages on Deborah's
face were creepy. I loved the beautiful owl in Eduardo's lab too

The Indikator Blu-ray presents the film in 4:3 fullscreen ratio, in black & white, and with spanish
or english audio with english subtitles, region all.
Extras: Audio commentary by David Wilt, Rosita Arenas at a screening 7th october 2022 of "El
espejo de la bruja" interview (13 minutes in spanish with english speaking moderator (she must
have been almost 90 years old here!), Mondo Macabro: Méxican horror movies (24 minutes
documentary), Theatrical trailer and an Image gallery

Three years ago when re-visiting The Witch's Mirror i wrote this: ".... these companies sadly
all kicked the bucket 10-15 years ago. There will probably never be any Blu-ray releases of
these old black & white méxican horror classics, maybe in latin editions without english
subtitles ? But maybe, as US Vinegar Syndrome autumn 2020 has released a couple of
Méxican 1980's slashers by Ruben Galindo Jr. on bluray, so maybe ...."
AND voilá ! Here we have the beautiful people at Indicator doing the God's Work releasing
stuff as this. Thanks Indicator, and also VCI Entertainment releases a lot of méxican films too.

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Back in 2006 or about so, there were some beautiful and very ambitious DVD edition releases
of méxican horror genre films from US Panik House Casa Negra. As i wrote then: A dream for all
"westerners" that had longed for to be able to watch these gems, these horror gems from the
golden horror era of méxican film. To be able to see them in crisp restored quality and WITH
english subtitles for all of us with bad spanish speaking skills. This great film company gave
us the opportunity to finally get to see these exciting films in high quality .... but, as with other
fine film/DVD companies releasing niche films, too few of us bought these releases and they
closed down. Maybe people downloaded the films on the net, or maybe old méxican movies
in black & white are a too esoteric subject to be a commercial success, but thanks to you,
Casa Negra and other similar companies for your love of films.

The old Casa Negra DVD release had the same specs and as extras: an audio commentary by
Frank Coleman, biographies, a text about director Chano Urueta, a collector card