The occasionally moody b/w cinematography places Curse of the Crying Woman (La maldicion de la llorona, 1963) a peg or two above the worst Mexican horror films, but that's still not saying a great deal.

The vampire FX are laughably amateur. The acting seems barely competent if you watch it in Spanish with English subtitles, & totally incompetent if watched with the dub track in English.

A witch-vampire-reanimated-corpse-hag (Rita Macedo) wants to resurrect a mummy she addresses as Lady of Darkness & gain from her great power, which will require her to sacrifice her gentle niece Amelia (Rosa Arenas) & Amelia's fiance Jaime (Abel Salazar). She also keeps her psycho deformed husband (Enrique Lucero) in the attic.

None of it ever rises above the level of the absurd. It gives us some vampirism, playfully vicious Great Danes, close-ups of staring eyes (plus the famously eyeless eyes), a voodoo doll that assists in mind-control, whips & chains torture of Jaime, an extended fist-fight between ugly henchman Juan & presumedly handsome Jaime, & nice little ratties wandering about happily in a gothiuc mansion the model for which will crumble for the climax, killing the bad people while sparing the good people.

It did very little for me. But films that have earned praise for their shlockiness are a matter of highly individualistic tastes. The shlock I find superb may be different from the shlock you find superb. To me Crying Woman is a dried out turd, but I'm not surprised that some fans praise its bouquet.

Continue to the next vampire film:
Dead Men Walk (1943)

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