{ "id": "ep4128tkee", "slug": "the-curse-of-the-crying-woman", "title": "The Curse of the Crying Woman", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.horror", "label": "Horror films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.horror" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.horror.gothic-horror-films", "label": "Gothic horror films", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.horror.gothic-horror-films" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.latam.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Latin America and the Caribbean · 1946 to 2000: Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "path": [ { "id": "geo.latam", "label": "Latin America and the Caribbean", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam" }, { "id": "geo.latam.t1946", "label": "Latin America and the Caribbean · 1946 to 2000", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t1946" }, { "id": "geo.latam.t1946.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t1946.culture" }, { "id": "geo.latam.t1946.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t1946.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.latam.t1946.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t1946.culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "geo.latam.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.latam.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" } ] } ], "excerpt": "The Curse of the Crying Woman (La maldición de la Llorona) is a 1961 Mexican black-and-white gothic horror film directed by Rafael Baledón, starring Rosita Arenas, Abel Salazar, and Rita Macedo, about a niece drawn into her aunt's plot to resurrect the folkloric Llorona.", "snippet": "The Curse of the Crying Woman (La maldición de la Llorona) is a 1961 Mexican black-and-white gothic horror film directed by Rafael Baledón, starring Rosita Arenas, Abel Salazar, and Rita Macedo, about a niece drawn into her aunt's plot to resurrect the folkloric Llorona.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.horror.gothic-horror-films", "markdown": "# The Curse of the Crying Woman\n\n**The Curse of the Crying Woman** (Spanish: *La maldición de la Llorona*, also released in Spain as *La casa embrujada*) is a 1961 Mexican black-and-white gothic horror film directed by Rafael Baledón, in which a young bride visiting her aunt's haunted hacienda discovers she is the descendant of the Llorona, the weeping woman of Mexican folklore, and is intended as the instrument of that specter's resurrection.[1](https://alamedafilms.com/llorona.html) • [2](https://www.hermenaute.com/articles_judex.php?id_article=1852)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Original title | *La maldición de la Llorona*; shown in Spain as *La casa embrujada*[1](https://alamedafilms.com/llorona.html) • [2](https://www.hermenaute.com/articles_judex.php?id_article=1852) |\n| Year | 1961 per producer Alameda Films; Spanish release date 15 August 1963 per SensaCine[1](https://alamedafilms.com/llorona.html) • [3](https://www.sensacine.com.mx/peliculas/pelicula-124046/) |\n| Director and writer | Rafael Baledón; script by Fernando Galiana[1](https://alamedafilms.com/llorona.html) |\n| Production | Cinematográfica ABSA, produced by Abel Salazar; 35 mm black and white[1](https://alamedafilms.com/llorona.html) |\n| Cast | Rosita Arenas (Amelia), Abel Salazar (Jaime), Rita Macedo (Selma), Carlos López Moctezuma (Juan), Enrique Lucero (Dr. Daniel Jaramillo)[1](https://alamedafilms.com/llorona.html) |\n| Runtime | 80 minutes per Alameda Films and the BBFC; 1h 14m on Rotten Tomatoes and 1h 20m on IMDb[1](https://alamedafilms.com/llorona.html) • [4](https://www.bbfc.co.uk/release/the-curse-of-the-crying-woman-q29sbgvjdglvbjpwwc0xmdexnjq2) • [5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/curse_of_the_crying_woman) • [6](https://www.imdb.com/es/title/tt0055128/) |\n| US exposure | Imported and dubbed by K. Gordon Murray, shown on American television in 1965 with a theatrical release a few years later[7](https://www.notcoming.com/reviews/cursecryingwoman) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot\n\nThe story is set in the nineteenth century. The newly married Amelia arrives with her husband Jaime at the cursed mansion of her aunt Selma, widow of the doctor Daniel, who lives there with the deformed servant Juan. Looking into a mirror, Amelia sees the face of the Llorona and then a skull. Selma declares herself devoted to acquiring the Llorona's power, proves that her own image casts no reflection, and leads her niece through a hidden passage behind one of the mirrors.[1](https://alamedafilms.com/llorona.html)\n\nIn a gloomy cellar, Selma shows Amelia the Llorona, mummified on a torture rack. According to Selma, the mummy can be revived by Amelia, her youngest descendant, at twelve o'clock at night, when the bell of the tower rings for the first time since the Llorona's death and Amelia turns 25. Daniel, transformed into a monster, attacks Jaime, and Selma uses a doll to turn Jaime into an automaton. Jaime sees with horror that his wife no longer appears in mirrors either; Selma drops him through a trapdoor. Juan whips Daniel, but Daniel defeats the servant, frees himself, and destroys a portrait of himself from when he was normal. Warned by a carter, an army captain and an aide arrive, only to be torn apart by a pack of hounds that Juan releases.[1](https://alamedafilms.com/llorona.html)\n\nAt midnight Amelia pulls the stake driven into the Llorona's body, but Jaime's pleas, while he is bound, stop her from finishing. The Llorona dies forever and the house collapses. Freed by Amelia, Jaime defeats Juan and escapes with his wife. Daniel kills Selma, but he and Juan die crushed in the ruin.[1](https://alamedafilms.com/llorona.html)\n\n## The Llorona legend and the film's use of it\n\nThe Llorona is one of the most widespread legends of [Hispanic America](https://www.edgepedia.org/hispanic-america): a woman who loses her children and, become a sorrowing soul or vengeful ghost, searches for them in vain amid terrible weeping and cries of agony, with versions differing from country to country.[2](https://www.hermenaute.com/articles_judex.php?id_article=1852) In the most popular Mexican version, an indigenous woman has a romance with a Spanish gentleman, bears three children, and, when he marries a noblewoman instead, drowns the children in a river and then kills herself in grief and guilt.[2](https://www.hermenaute.com/articles_judex.php?id_article=1852)\n\nThe film takes little more from this legend than the wailing figure and her omen of death. Reviewers have noted that it is more a witch story than a faithful telling of the myth: it omits the body of water and the colonial story of the real woman, and centers instead on an inherited curse passed down the female line and an aunt obsessed with resurrecting an ancient ancestor.[8](https://bloody-disgusting.com/podcast-news/3901754/curse-of-the-crying-woman-bad-la-llorona-adaptation-but-a-great-time-murder-made-fiction-podcast/) • [9](https://letterboxd.com/collier_white/film/the-curse-of-the-crying-woman/) A UNAM thesis on the origins of Mexican horror cinema treats *La maldición de la Llorona* as the last film of the twentieth century to incorporate the legend into the national horror filmography, closing a period that opened with Ramón Peón's *La Llorona* of 1933.[10](https://tesiunamdocumentos.dgb.unam.mx/ptd2021/junio/0812444/0812444.pdf)\n\n## Style and influences\n\nThe film is a work of the period later called the golden age of Mexican horror, produced by the actor and producer Abel Salazar following the success of René Cardona's 1960 film of the same legend.[2](https://www.hermenaute.com/articles_judex.php?id_article=1852) Its opening sequence, a brutal stagecoach massacre with a woman in black amid swirling fog holding hounds on leashes, closely approximates the first appearance of [Barbara Steele](https://www.edgepedia.org/barbara-steele) in [Mario Bava](https://www.edgepedia.org/mario-bava)'s *Black Sunday* (*La maschera del demonio*, 1960), and critics have described the film as Baledón's homage to Bava.[7](https://www.notcoming.com/reviews/cursecryingwoman) • [5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/curse_of_the_crying_woman) It draws on 1930s Universal horror and on the darker, more violent tone of [Roger Corman](https://www.edgepedia.org/roger-corman)'s Poe adaptations of the same years.[2](https://www.hermenaute.com/articles_judex.php?id_article=1852)\n\nThe film assembles the standard gothic equipment: an inherited curse, a decaying old castle, mirroring and doubling, a persecuted ingénue, a crippled manservant, and a madman in the attic, along with miniatures, trick shots, superimpositions, shock zooms, rubber bats, and fog.[7](https://www.notcoming.com/reviews/cursecryingwoman) Selma's transformation into the Llorona at night, with her eyeballs vanishing into sightless sockets, is singled out as an effective makeup effect, and the film engages Mexico's colonial past through the petrified corpse of Madame Marina kept in the cellar of the crumbling hacienda.[11](https://www.thefilmagazine.com/mendez-baledon-urueta-mexican-horror-cinema/)\n\n## Reception and restoration\n\nMexican film critic Emilio García Riera judged it \"una película mal tramada, demasiado corta y realizada con evidentes pruritos de ahorro\" (a badly plotted film, too short, and made with evident impulses of economy), while crediting certain scenes based on Carmen Toscano's play *La Llorona* as its one distinction.[12](https://www.cch.unam.mx/comunicacion/sites/www.cch.unam.mx.comunicacion/files/gacetas/2007/04/1134230407.pdf) Later English-language criticism has been warmer: Matt Bailey of *Not Coming to a Theater Near You* wrote that although nothing in it is original, its tight construction and consistently strange experience make it \"a minor classic of its genre,\" and Rotten Tomatoes' critics' consensus quotes the same judgment.[7](https://www.notcoming.com/reviews/cursecryingwoman) • [5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/curse_of_the_crying_woman) On IMDb the film holds a rating of 6.5 out of 10 from 926 votes.[6](https://www.imdb.com/es/title/tt0055128/)\n\nFor decades the film circulated in poor television prints and public domain copies from the K. [Gordon Murray](https://www.edgepedia.org/gordon-murray) era. It later received a restored, uncut DVD from CasaNegra, and in 2023 Powerhouse Films released an uncut Indicator Blu-ray, classified by the [British Board of Film Classification](https://www.edgepedia.org/british-board-of-film-classification) on 24 April 2023 at 80 minutes, with both the Spanish and English-dubbed versions, a commentary by the Latin American horror specialist Valeria Villegas Lindvall, and interviews with Rita Macedo's daughters Julissa de Llano Macedo and Cecilia Fuentes Macedo.[7](https://www.notcoming.com/reviews/cursecryingwoman) • [13](https://www.mondo-digital.net/mexicanmacabre.html) • [4](https://www.bbfc.co.uk/release/the-curse-of-the-crying-woman-q29sbgvjdglvbjpwwc0xmdexnjq2)\n\n## References\n\n1. [La maldición de la Llorona, Alameda Films](https://alamedafilms.com/llorona.html)\n2. [La maldición de la Llorona, Judexfanzine, Hermenaute (2012)](https://www.hermenaute.com/articles_judex.php?id_article=1852)\n3. [La Maldición de la Llorona, SensaCine México](https://www.sensacine.com.mx/peliculas/pelicula-124046/)\n4. [The Curse of the Crying Woman, British Board of Film Classification](https://www.bbfc.co.uk/release/the-curse-of-the-crying-woman-q29sbgvjdglvbjpwwc0xmdexnjq2)\n5. [The Curse of the Crying Woman, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/curse_of_the_crying_woman)\n6. [La maldición de la Llorona (1963), IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/es/title/tt0055128/)\n7. [The Curse of the Crying Woman, review by Matt Bailey, Not Coming to a Theater Near You (2006)](https://www.notcoming.com/reviews/cursecryingwoman)\n8. [\"Curse of the Crying Woman\" – Bad La Llorona Adaptation, But a Great Time, Bloody Disgusting (2025)](https://bloody-disgusting.com/podcast-news/3901754/curse-of-the-crying-woman-bad-la-llorona-adaptation-but-a-great-time-murder-made-fiction-podcast/)\n9. [The Curse of the Crying Woman, review by Collier White, Letterboxd](https://letterboxd.com/collier_white/film/the-curse-of-the-crying-woman/)\n10. [Introducción, tesis sobre los orígenes del cine de horror mexicano, UNAM (2021)](https://tesiunamdocumentos.dgb.unam.mx/ptd2021/junio/0812444/0812444.pdf)\n11. [Mendez, Baledon, Urueta: The Golden Age of Mexican Horror Cinema, The Film Magazine (2020)](https://www.thefilmagazine.com/mendez-baledon-urueta-mexican-horror-cinema/)\n12. [Gaceta CCH 1,134, UNAM (23 April 2007)](https://www.cch.unam.mx/comunicacion/sites/www.cch.unam.mx.comunicacion/files/gacetas/2007/04/1134230407.pdf)\n13. [Mexico Macabre: Four Sinister Tales from the Alameda Films Vault, 1959–1963, Mondo Digital (2023)](https://www.mondo-digital.net/mexicanmacabre.html)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Horror films (individual works) › Gothic horror films*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-curse-of-the-crying-woman", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-curse-of-the-crying-woman.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"The Curse of the Crying Woman\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-curse-of-the-crying-woman. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[The Curse of the Crying Woman](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-curse-of-the-crying-woman)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/the-curse-of-the-crying-woman](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-curse-of-the-crying-woman). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"The Curse of the Crying Woman\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-curse-of-the-crying-woman. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "The Curse of the Crying Woman is a 1961 Mexican black-and-white gothic horror film directed by Rafael Baledón, starring Rosita Arenas, Abel Salazar, and Rita Macedo, about a niece drawn into her aunt's plot to resurrect the folkloric Llorona." }