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I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that no one would benefit much from knowing in advance the exact date and time of their death. The Witch’s Mirror (1962), an inventive, to-the-point Gothic horror movie that packs quite a lot into a barely 75-minute running time, provides fodder for that line of thinking. As the film opens, a young woman named Elena (Dina de Marco) finds out with assistance from her adoptive mother, Sara (Isabela Corona) — who also is, in addition to being the housekeeper of the sprawling mansion Elena and her scientist husband, Eduardo (Armando Calvo), live in, a bonafide witch — that Eduardo is plotting to kill her. He wants to run away with Deborah (Rosita Arenas), his longtime mistress.

Sara consults with the spirit world — an easy call to make, in The Witch’s Mirror’s claustrophobic purview — to see if anything can be done to prevent Elena’s murder. But there’s no point in trying. The universe has it fated that she’ll die at the hands of her husband whether now or in the near term. After much hesitation, tragic Elena drinks up the certainly poisoned glass of milk Eduardo is suspiciously adamant she have one evening. Suspicions prove correct; Sara seethes in the shadows.

Though Sara might have been forbidden from meddling the way she’d have liked, the spirit world doesn’t have the same strict rules about using supernatural help when it comes to revenge. It’s around here that The Witch’s Mirror — which has barely even gotten started in the first place — makes the first of several narrative pivots that will work together to make it feel like you’re watching several movies packed into one. First it’s a revenge drama where Elena’s ghost comes back to haunt the illicit couple whose extramarital love led to her premature end. Then it’s an Eyes Without a Face (1960)-style body-horror drama where Eduardo, a classic mad-scientist type played with a few too many extra decibels by a progressively hammier Calvo, becomes obsessed with fixing through ghoulish skin grafting the severe burns Deborah receives thanks to some Elena-based terror. There is some additional “hands with minds of their own” stuff evoking movies like Mad Love (1935) and The Beast with Five Fingers (1945), too. 

All this in such a short movie can make it sometimes feel choppily episodic — like a serial desperate to sustain a narrative by any means necessary, indifferent to whether something segues smoothly into the next thing. But what could ungenerously be likened to throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks ends up largely sticking, thanks to stylish, visually moody direction from Chano Urueta (which may invite comparisons to the Gothic splendor of Mario Bava’s Black Sunday, from 1960) and its motley of endearingly committed performances. Corona is the standout; she’s the finest bunned, black-frocked menace-in-a-mansion type since Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (1940).