May 161935
 
two reels
mysterypale

Forceful and obsessed Doctor Forti (Carlos Villarías ) carries out strange medical experiments in his home, aided by his weak-willed son, Pablo (Joaquín Busquets). Pablo wanted only to play the violin and marry Forti’s beautiful ward Angélica (Beatriz Ramos) but instead does what Forti commands. Both Pablo’s Aunt Doña Engracia (Natalia Ortiz) and the butler know that there’s something wrong with Forti, but they have no power to stop him. Forti summons Doctor Montes (Miguel Arenas), who brings along his son Luis (René Cardona), who is both a friend of Pablo’s and in love with Angélica, announcing that Pablo’s wedding will be delayed as the two are going to the mysterious Land of Pale Faces, deep in the jungle, to continue his research, and Pablo meekly agrees. Eight years pass, and Angélica has finally given up on Pablo, and agreed to marry Luis when she hears Pablo’s violin music and sees a masked face at her window. The next day they find that Forti has returned with a fanatically loyal servant (Abraham Galán), and are informed that Pablo is dead. Forti pressures Angélica to move back in with him, and he has strange plans for her involving marrying the dead, while Doña, the butler, Montes, and Luis fight to save her.

This is the pinnacle of horror filmmaking in 1930s Mexico. Writer-director Juan Bustillo Oro, who’d written El fantasma del convento (1934) and directed the horror-adjacent drama Dos monjes (1934), gets right what others could not. El misterio del rostro pálido looks great, with some reasonable camera work, but mostly because of the set design, which merges expressionism with Art Deco. It’s beautiful and conveys a mood of strange otherworldliness. The music reminds me of Universal’s monster films, and the costuming also hits the right notes with the masked pale man having everything necessary to be an icon. The plot is nothing special but workable, and an eerie feeling hangs over it all. And Bustillo manages to tone down Villarías’s (best know for Drácula) tendencies to play to the back rows such that I hardly recognized him.

But damn, is it slow. So slow. We never get to know any of these folks, or care about them, be we do get to hear them talk. Forti is a mad doctor, but he’s even more of a chatty one. Everything is discussed, talked around, and then brought up yet again. I wanted to put the whole thing on 2x speed. The problem is integrated into every part of the picture, but I’ll lay it on editing. There was a very good horror movie here, but it died in post-production.

The ending is disappointing, both anticlimactic and unsatisfying, as two characters do complete personality shifts in under three minutes, but I could only get so annoyed as I was too bored to get emotional.

El misterio del rostro pálido was released with no premier, little publicity, and to little notice. Bustillo’s later successes in more mainstream fare are all that kept this film in anyone’s mind. It should, and so easily could, have been much better, but just as people did in 1935, it’s fine to ignore it. If you are curious, come for the Art Deco-expressionism, and leave when you’ve gotten your fill of architecture.