1961's "The Curse of the Crying Woman" (La Maldicion de la Llorona) was simply one of the best Mexican imports from K. Gordon Murray, more a triumph for Abel Salazar the producer rather than Salazar the actor, back in heroic mode after his outlandish villainy of "The Brainiac," from a screenplay concocted by Fernando Galiana and director Rafael Baledon. The legend of La Llorona aka 'The Crying Woman,' also referred to here as 'The Wailing Witch,' is unique to Mexico and indeed Central America and dates back to the 1500s, the story of a distraught mother who drowned her children in a fit of rage over a faithless husband and is forever destined to haunt bodies of water to bemoan her tragedy, dire misfortune befalling those who hear her cries. This is no origin story but set during a later period, a forbidding castle known to belong to witch Selma (Rita Macedo) and her clubfooted, disfigured servant Fred (Carlos Lopez Moctezuma), awaiting the return of pretty young niece Emily (top billed Rosita Arenas, back from her Aztec Mummy adventures), whose 23rd birthday coincides with the time that their blood drinking ancestor Marian Lane, 'The Wailing Witch,' is ready for her revival. A strong opening finds three fearful coach passengers meeting their doom in the fog shrouded forest near the castle, Selma standing with black holes in place of eyes, a trio of Great Danes ready to pounce while the knife wielding Fred dispatches the driver before cruelly forcing the horses over the screaming body of the sole female victim (Macedo's real life daughter Julissa), each corpse completely drained of blood. Emily soon arrives with new spouse Herbert (Abel Salazar) in tow, an unexpected surprise for her aunt but not one that will deter her from a lifelong desire for power so great that her supposedly dead husband Daniel (Enrique Lucero) is alive though decidedly unwell, a hirsute and insane captive in the bell tower. One cannot help but feel empathy for poor Daniel, especially the moment when he sees his own handsome portrait on the staircase wall, driven to destroy it in a fit of despair while his sexy wife bewitches her niece's husband under hypnotic suggestion. Marian's desiccated remains are still chained in the cobwebbed crypt, the fatal lance still piercing her heart, until the stroke of midnight when only the last born Emily will be able to pull it out. All this exposition is dispatched by the midway mark, time growing short as Emily tries to resist a thirst for blood, plenty of surprises forthcoming, Rita Macedo and daughter Julissa here reunited following Benito Alazraki's "Spiritism," while Rosita Arenas was coming off a starring role in Chano Urueta's "The Witch's Mirror." Carlos Lopez Moctezuma, as the disfigured manservant rescued from the gallows, had previously appeared in a different story on the same subject, Rene Cardona's 1960 "La Llorona," though the earliest screen treatment dated back to 1933.