Mysteries of Black Magic

By the end of 1958 for two consecutive days, two filmmakers made "serious" contributions to the then-ebullient Mexican horror cinema: Miguel M. Delgado and German emigrant Alfredo B. Crevenna. The first release was this drama by Cantinflas' favorite director, who guided the comedian in some 30 undifferentiated movies, far from the subversive subtexts in the films of Tin Tan. Delgado was no stranger to horror then and late in his career would make movies about wrestlers and monsters. However, the real rarity was the screenwriter, Ulises Petit de Murat. He had written several classics of the Argentinean cinema, including Mario Soffici's films, as "El extraño caso del hombre y la bestia", a screen adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Here, working in Mexico, Petit wrote this morbid tale of witchcraft and the living dead that, perhaps because of Delgado's lack of expertise in the genre, did not reach the level of "grand guignol" that the story potentially had. Nevertheless, it is not a film that went unnoticed and even today, in spite of the absence of restored copies, it has its admirers. Alfredo Crevenna released the next day "El hombre que logró ser invisible".