Crew
Director – Marina Sargenti, Screenplay – Annette Cascone & Gina Cascone, Co-Writers – Marina Sargenti & Yuri Zeltser, Producer/Music – Jimmy Lifton, Photography – Robert Brinkmann, Music – Jimmy Lifton, Special Effects – Flash Effects (Supervisor – Jimmy Lifton), Makeup Effects – Chris Biggs, Production Design – Stuart Blatt. Production Company – Orphan Eyes Productions/Limited Partnership 1.
Cast
Rainbow Harvest (Megan Gordon), Karen Black (Susan Gordon), Kristin Dattilo (Nikki Chandler), Yvonne De Carlo (Emelin), Ricky Paull Goldin (Ron), Charlie [Spradling] (Charleen Kane), William Sanderson (Bill Veze), Tom Breznahan (Jeff), Dorit Sauer (Kim), Ann Hearn (Mrs. Perfili), Stephen Tobolowsky (Mr. Anderson)
Plot
Following the death of her husband, Susan Gordon buys a new home and moves in with her teenage daughter Megan. At school, the Goth Megan is regarded as weird and picked on, although is befriended by Nikki Chandler. Megan discovers an ornate old mirror in her room at the new house. She then finds that the things she wishes in front of the mirror start to come true. Using the mirror’s power, she enacts a comeuppance against her tormentors and bullies. However, the mirror’s evil influence begins to corrupt and take Megan over.
Mirror Mirror is a very typical 1980s/90s VHS horror. It comes with a plot borrowed from Carrie (1976) of the bullied underdog who finds a means to gain supernatural comeuppance against her tormenters. There are a number of similarities to Evilspeak (1981), which had Clint Howard as a downtrodden military cadet who was able to use a computer to unleash Satanic forces from occult books (as opposed to a mirror) and take revenge against his tormentors. Mirror Mirror could in effect be a film where Carrie, rather than develops psychic powers, becomes to all intents and purposes a witch.
From there, director Marina Sargenti, with the aid of makeup effects artist Chris Biggs, proceeds to serve up a series of assorted bloody novelty despatches for the supporting cast at regular intervals. These include scenes where Dorit Bauer gets a nosebleed in the school cafeteria; a pair of claws appear out of the mirror to grab Tom Breznahan and reduce him to a bloody mess; Charlie Spradling is fatally scalded in the school shower; Yvonne de Carlo has a shard of mirror impaled through the breast; Ricky Paull Goldin is drowned in the bath and has his lip bitten off by Rainbow Harvest; and Karen Black is made to shove her hand into the garbage masher. None of these are particularly imaginative or standout.
Lead actress Rainbow Harvest is an unknown who only appeared in ten other roles, almost all in tv, and since disappeared from screens. Rainbow’s character has been conceived for the most part as a direct copy of Winona Ryder’s shy nerdy Goth in Beetlejuice (1988), while the latter half of the story has her turn this around to become a supernaturally empowered version of Carrie, wreaking vengeance and justice on her tormentors (or often just whoever is in the way). Rainbow does okay when it comes to playing both extremes of the character.
The film’s most well-known face is the top-lined Karen Black, playing Rainbow Harvest’s mother. It is Black in one of the gives-no-fucks performances she spent filling out the last two decades of her career, which includes a generous number of appearances in B movie and genre roles. You get the impression that Black played the entire role here at least two cocktails past her limit.
There were three sequels – Mirror Mirror 2: Raven Dance (1994), Mirror Mirror 3: The Voyeur (1995) and Mirror Mirror 4: Reflections (2000), featuring different people being affected by the mirror. Mirror Mirror should not be confused with the subsequent Snow White adaptation Mirror Mirror (2012).
The film was directed by Marina Sargenti, one of the few woman directors working in this era. Sargenti went on to make on other horror films with Child of Darkness, Child of Light (1991) and a handful of tv episodes before disappearing from screens.
Trailer here