The plot is very simple but very effective to provoke some chills; a young woman inherits a mansion from her deceased aunt with the condition that she has to take care of her black cat. The young woman is in the necessity of a home mainly because of financial situations so she accepts and invites her friends to live with her. When they arrive to the house they start to hear strange things and also feel like there's a negative vibe. Also, in the house lives the old maid who took care of the deceased aunt. She advertises the young women that the cat is the owner of the house and that they had to take special care on him. They ignore the warning and even remove him from his bedroom. The cat gets on the nerves of everyone and things start to get bad when they decide that the cat shouldn't have that many benefits.
One day, the cat is found dead for no apparent reason. He's found in the cellar. After that tragic event, hell breaks loose on the house. One by one these girls are getting murdered by an unseen figure and the negative vibe grows strongly on the house. Who could be behind the murders? Could it be that the aunt is back from the grave to avenge the death of her beloved cat?
Join these girls in a terrific tale of secrets, ghosts, and mysteries.
**SPOILERS** I love this movie because it goes directly to the point. It tells you the events in such a manner that truly grabs your attention and makes you wonder in fear what will happen next. The plot is simple but it gets more interesting when it's explained that the cat was actually "murdered" by three of the girls. When that is explained, you are in front of a ghost revenge flick that will send shivers up to your funny bone. It's a classical ghost story but it's managed in a way that it's interesting and scary. The direction is perfect. Taboada knows perfectly how to create a creepy atmosphere (indoors and outdoors the house) and how to create tension before something "strong" is about to happen. The cinematography is also excellent. The combination of dark and light is great! and works perfect for the big, old house. The score works and is genuinely chilling. The acting is also great! Islas delivers a solid performance. The same goes for the rest of the cast. The house keeper also delivers a creepy but solid performance. Excellent cast. The death scenes are great. There is tension among them and there is even gore! Violence is minimal but still good. The movie relies part of it's creepiness on some freeze frame scenes where something is discovered (like Dosamante's dead body hanging on the school's library). Also, Mendez death is something to remember.
My favorite moment is when the aunt makes presence. The scenes are genuinely scary and well done.
Please, watch this movie because it is surely scary and very well done. I strongly recommend you to watch it if you're in the mood to get scared. This is how Mexican Horrors movies should be made nowadays!
My respect for you, Mr. Toboada. You really know how to create a scary movie.
Something that has great importance for me is that the women in the movie are extremely hot! I'm sorry but I have to comment on it. Claudia Islas, Helena Rojo, Susana Dosamantes, and the super sexy Lucia Mendez are the hottest cast in ANY Mexican movie I've seen. Claudia is the mature, beautiful, but strong lead. Helena is the sensual but reserved women. Susana is the classy and hard to get woman. Her beauty is elegant, supreme. But Lucia Mendez steals the show. She was freakin' hot in the movie! She was very young and she knew that she had to show her delicious attributes. Thank you Lucia for wearing those steamy short skirts through all the movie. Also, your beautiful face shined through the movie. She's totally worth the watch.
Plot summary
When four women move into an old house left by one woman's aunt, strange things begin to happen. Bizarre voices, visions of ghosts, and mysterious noises lead them to discover the darkest powers of evil and a horror and agony beyond terror.—Ørnås
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Chilling ghost story. Mexicans really know how to create a creepy atmosphere.
I must also mention the cat.
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.
Slow-Paced But Very Atmospheric and Eerie Mexican Haunted House Flick
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.