Artivels
Undescribable Perfection
Pacionsbo
Absolutely Fantastic
Portia Hilton
Blistering performances.
HumanoidOfFlesh
"Blacker than the Night" by Carlos Enrique Taboada tells the story of an aspiring young actress named Ofelia who inherits her great aunt's house and moves in with three female friends.Deceased Aunt Susan has a little creepy black cat named Bequer.When Bequer kills the canary of librarian Aurora cosmopolitan friends of Ofelia are angry.The cat mysteriously vanishes and is later found dead in the cellar.Soon Ofelia and her three friends start experiencing ghostly apparitions of dressed in black Aunt.Slow-moving but suspenseful mystery horror with plenty of atmosphere of subtle dread.The characters of three Ofelia's friends are selfish and arrogant,so it's nice to see them being haunted and killed.8 black cats out of 10.
christopher-underwood
I really enjoyed this. It is paced a little leisurely and is not full of startling action but it is colourful and engaging with a gentle but relentless move towards the inevitable bad ending. A fairly simple, 'Old Dark House' tale featuring four good looking young women who go to live in the aforementioned mansion. They are disrespectful from the start of the building and its 'junk' contents and the elderly Sofia, the housekeeper, magnificently played with complete eeriness by Alicia Palacios, and the film makers seem to wreak their own revenge to some extent by allowing the girls to make such asses of themselves. Also, deliberate or not the many and varied 70s outfits they sport seem to get progressively worse as the film continues. One or two moments of half baked 'soapy' melodrama, usually featuring preposterous plump and mustachioed 'boyfriends but for the most part a creepy fully focused and unusual horror that is well worth a watch. I must also mention the cat. Featuring heavily in the great opening credits, this black cat does not put a paw wrong and is caught on camera looking as mysterious and fearsome as is possible. He also features in the fine original poster.
Witchfinder General 666
I cannot yet claim to be an expert on Mexican Horror films, but I'm becoming more and more of a fan of the country's Horror output with every movie I see. Personally I'm a fan of the classic Mexican Gothic Horror tales such as the masterpieces MISTERIOS DE ULTRATUMBA (aka. THE BLACK PIT OF DR. M, 1959) or LA MALDICION DE LA LLORANA (CURSE OF THE CRYING WOMAN, 1963), as well as the weird Exploitation flicks of the 70s such as Juan Lopez Moctezuma's bizarre cult flick ALUCARDA, LA HIJA DE LAS TIENEBLAS (1978).Carlos Enrique Tabadoa's Haunted House flick MAS NEGRO QUE LA NOCHE (BLACKER THAN THE NIGHT) of 1975 is yet a completely different style of Mexican Horror film. As opposed to any of the aforementioned representative films, this film is rather slow-paced, and furthermore very sleaze- and gore-less for a mid-70s Horror film. This is not to say that MAS NEGRO QUE LA NOCHE is not recommended, however: the beautifully shot movie oozes creepy atmosphere from the beginning to the end, continually getting eerier and more tense.After a mysterious old lady has passed away, her niece inherits her eerie mansion and moves in with a bunch of other young women. They disregard the aunt's will that the house belongs to her true heir, her black cat, and strange things begin to happen. When the cat gets killed, hell breaks loose...MAS NEGRO QUE LA NOCHE is a classic Haunted House flick in which many of the Horror remains unseen. In her essay ON THE SUPERNATURAL IN POETRY, the famous English Gothic writer Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823) once distinguished between the terms Terror and Horror in that Terror is the obscure, the anticipation of something horrible that is about to happen, whereas Horror is the actual experience of the horrible. MAS NEGRO QUE LA NOCHE is doubtlessly a film that mainly (though not merely) lives off the Terror according to Radcliffe's definition. The events in the film are not surprising, but somewhat predictable (in a positive sense), the tension being built up through their anticipation. The film's strongest point is the thick, truly creepy atmosphere, a lot of which is built up by the super-eerie mansion setting and creepy set-pieces, great camera work and a fantastic usage of different colors of darkness. Set pieces such as the portrait of the old lady alone build up an incredibly gloomy mood.Even though it is very slow-paced in the beginning MAS NEGRO QUE LA NOCHE is highly recommendable film. Fans of rather suggestive Haunted House flicks such as THE HAUNTING (1963) should love this one.
irosas
My favorite of the Taboada trilogy of horror...I don't think Veneno Para las Hadas counts as a horror movie. The soundtrack is really good for a horror movie- harpsichord, varied themes and styles. With a low budget, Taboada managed to convey fright, something that is hard to do. It has a classic vibe to it, a la "The Haunting" (the original one...no the hot mess from the late 90s). I have to admit, it's rather cheesy, but as a child, it captivated me. What I loved also, now that I'm an adult and have read my share of books, is the nod to Edgar Alla Poe's "The Black Cat." Film-making wise, I think Taboada was an unappreciated genius. I hope Guillermo del Toro honors him by remaking one of the three.
