Dr. Pablo Morales (Arturo de Cordova) is a taxidermist. From time to time he also prepares skeletons for his friend from the local medical school, The Professor (Guillermo Orea). Pablo is a fun-loving man who enjoys life and has lots of friends. He has been married for fifteen years to Gloria (Amparo Rivelles).
Gloria suffers from a leg deformity that manifests in one leg being shorter than the other. Mrs. Morales is a very unhappy woman. She uses her deformity as a way of garnering sympathy from others and as a weapon against intimacy with her husband. Gloria is also not happy with her husband being happy all the time. She is also disgusted by his profession and tells him he stinks of dead animals and gags when she sees him eat meat.
Gloria is very religious and confides in the local pastor, Father Artemio Familiar (Antonio Bravo). She spins tales that she is being abused by Pablo. She then steals money that Pablo had been saving for a new camera and gives it to the church. When Pablo finds out that his money is gone, he knows where it went. He confronts the pastor and gets his funds back but Gloria has convinced everyone that Pablo is an abusive drunkard. Pablo gets his camera but Gloria breaks it pretending it was an accident.
Pablo decides that enough is enough. He poisons Gloria. He tells the priest and Gloria’s sister, Clara (Angelines Fernandez) that Gloria left him. Clara doesn’t buy it. Soon there is another skeleton on display at Pablo’s establishment. When Father Artemio sees that it has a deformed leg he believes that it is Gloria’s skeleton and calls the police. Pablo is arrested and put on trial. The investigation proves to be not what everyone expected.
“The Skeleton of Mrs. Morales” AKA “El Esqueleto de la senora Morales” was released in 1960 and was directed by Rogelio A. Gonzalez. It is a Mexican black comedy horror film. The movie was based on the 1927 short story “The Islington Mystery” by Arthur Machen. The film was remade in 1994 and titled Siete mil días juntos” or “7000 Days Together”.
Writer Arthur Machen’s original story itself was based on a true life murder. In 1910 Cora Henrietta Crippen, was killed by her husband, Harvey Crippen. Dr. Crippen was actually a homeopath. Cora was his second wife. Crippen was an American living in London. After he killed his wife he told everyone that she returned to America but he was eventually caught, tried and executed based on remains found in the basement of the Crippen home. Decades later DNA determined that the body parts in the cellar were not those of Cora Crippen but belonged to a male. Cora’s body was never found. Questions remain as to whether or not Crippen did kill his wife or not.
I really enjoyed this movie. Everything was spot on, the acting as well as the directing and the story was fun. A twist at the end added a nice touch and finished the movie satisfactorily. The film was named as one of the 100 best movies in Mexican cinema. It’s one of those movies where you root for the killer.
I highly recommend it.