Getting near the end of the IMDb Horror board's 2012 "Horror Challenge",I began to think about what films I would like to end the challenge on.Taking a look at some titles the a friend had kindly sent me,I was thrilled to discover,that I had been sent an uncut version of an exciting sounding Mexican Horror,that I had originally heard about in connection to a horribly cut "Elvira" DVD version of the film.Being thrilled about seeing the movie the way the it had originally intended to be seen,I decided that it was time to open the book of stone.The plot:Arriving to her employer's isolated,enclosed villa,Julia Septiem is greeted by her new boss Eugenio Ruvalcaba.Deciding to get any uncomfortable matters out of the way,Ruvalcaba decides to double check that Julia knows what her job could involve,due to Eugenio having recently decided not to send his daughter Silvia to school,thanks to her recently having shown some strange behaviour.Catching him by surprise,Septiem tells Ruvalcaba that she is all set to handle any trouble that comes her way.Looking around the villa's huge garden,Jullia quickly finds Silvia,who tells her that she is currently playing games with an imaginary friend called Hugo.Initially thinking that Silvia has created Hugo,due to her dad having recently got re- married to a woman called Marianna,Septiem quickly finds out that Silvia's "imaginary" friend Hugo,is not actually imaginary at all,but is in fact a statue,that has over looked the villa with a chilling smile for the last few hundred years.View on the filmConfiding 90% of the film's running time to the closed in,isolated mansion,writer/director Carlos Enrique Taboada uses the fleeting moments that the movie gets away from its "restricted" zone,to brilliantly punish any of the character's who leave his haunting,Gothic villa behind,and attempt to enter the "modern world".Keeping a divide between the Gothic and the "Modern" world,Taboada uses the character's attempts to break the villa's enclosed atmosphere,by pulling the Hugo statue out of their world,as a way to deliver a deliciously sharp,scorpion tail twist ending,that can proudly sit side by side with the best,most bleak twist endings of Rod Sterling's The Twilight Zone.Smarting using Julia Septiem's (played by the wonderful Marga Lopez) arrival to Ruvalcaba (played by a stern Joaquin Cordero) and Marianna's (played by a gorgeous Norma Lazareno) villa as an intelligent way to display Julia's chilling discoveries around the villa to be from the same point of view as the audience.Bravely staying away from taking the easy route out of making the film be a Haunted House movie,Taboada instead slowly builds up an unsettling,misty atmosphere to the film,with Catlos fantastic directing initially making Silvia's (perfectly played by Lucy Buj) friendship with "imaginearey friend" Hugo ,to be one on the outside view of Septiem and the audience , that originally looks like it is putting a smile on the lonely face of Silvia,but as Taboada delicately peels the shine off ,to revel the decayed root buried deep in the villa's foundation,that terrifyingly transform's Silvia's smile from one that's displays pure,Innocent joy,to be a smile that's cracking apart from the menacing smirk,hiding underneath.

Growing up in Milwaukee in the early 80s meant one Spanish channels for my parents and every Friday night was our family night. Unlike your typical family night our idea of family night meant making popcorn and jumping into bed with mom to watch "Noche de pelicula". During Halloween they showed many scary movies and this one along with "Hasta el viento tiene miedo" are engraved in my mind like GEMS in a pile of dirt. This movie is a MUST SEE! I would put this and the before named movie up their with "The Exorcist" and "The Amityville Horror" just for its raw FEAR. Many new horror movies are based on visual effects to produce fear where these classics use plain atmosphere to create a natural fear.

After years of looking for this film that is recognized as a forgotten gem of mexican oldstyle horror cinema i found it in a place where i least expected it, now it´s part of my vast collection of hard to find horror and cult films.This classic film tells the story about a little girl Silvya (Lucy Buj) that because of her behaviour is required to be nursed by a special teacher Julia (Marga López) at home,This teacher is experienced in the field and starts looking after the child´s behavior and her friendship with Hugo,a statue of a little boy with a book that dates 10,000 years old and supposedly talks to her and make her do things, Her wealthy father Eugenio Rubalcaba (Joaquin Cordero) is very disturbed about his daughters way´s and his new wife Mariana (Norma Lazareno) is trying to cope with her step daugters ideas but fears of the statue.All this characters play their parts well and the atmosphere in this movie is so thick that you can cut it with a knife, locations are well used and the fright factor is there all the time, This is a timeless piece of art that should be taken seriously now a days for next wave horror movie creators. It´s a must see.

I saw this movie when I was 9 years old. To this day I don't understand how they allowed children into the movie theatre in Mexico to watch this type of movie. I still remember bits and pieces of it and they all come together to recreate the nightmares I had after watching this movie. Without giving away the ending, the movie is about a rich man who moves into a huge old mansion in the middle of the country with his new young wife and the daughter he had with his first wife. Along with them comes a woman who plays the role of nanny and governess for the young girl. In the enormous backyard, which is mostly covered with weeds and bordered by the woods, the young girls discovers a grave guarded over by the statue of an angel that holds open a huge stone book in his arms. Sometime in the first part of the movie, the young girls confesses to her nanny that she has found a secret playmate, a young boy, but nobody pays attention to her until very mysterious things start to happen and tragedy strikes the new household. I only wish that someday the Mexican Institute of Film would help recover and releases to the general public this and other gems of the Mexican cinema.