El Hombre de los Hongos Reviews

An elderly Mexican plantation owner finds a young black boy in the jungle and raises him as one of his own children. Though his two older children dislike the boy, the younger daughter grows close to him, and, as they mature, the two fall in love. They also take to a black panther chained in the courtyard that their mother hates. She tries to have an affair with her adopted son. But he repels her, and she runs off only to be killed by the panther which has mysteriously gotten loose. The father decides he wants no interracial love affairs in his household and relegates the boy to a position of mushroom taster. If the boy eats a poisoned mushroom he will die and the pickers will know which batch to stay away from. But the boy escapes and makes love with the sister. She goes off by herself to the waterfall where the boy originally was found and sees the family panther. She tries to let it know she cares about it, but the great cat kills her. The black boy, now a man, returns back to the jungle he came from, knowing his civilized life is through. The film has a refreshing sense of innocence to it, with good direction that faintly recalls a sense of the old Hollywood romanticism. Though the black panther is a little overdone for symbolism, this is an interesting, intriguing feature, well played throughout.