I'm going to be real lazy here and just copy the plot summary from IMDb - "Cuba, 1850. On a sugar-cane plantation, the master and his wife are happy : they're expecting a child, their slaves are quiet. But tonight, as the full moon rises, the sound of the drums are in the air. Yambao, the grand-daughter of a sorceress killed 15 years ago, has come back.. With her grand-mother's spirit." Much better and more succinct that I could ever have put it.Overall, I'll call Yambao a disappointment. From what little I'd read in the past about the movie, it is neither as good or as scandalous as I'd been led to believe. I'd call it a fairly lame, predictable melodrama with way too much dancing, drumming, and chanting. Star Ninón Sevilla is the one bright spot. I'm not familiar with her other work, but here, she really gives it her all. Sevilla shines in every scene. She's a naturally sensuous woman and conveys that sensuality in her every move. The script here, however, lets her down. Co-star Ramon Gay is too bland to give her much to work with. A real disappointment.

Steamy passions and evil brew on a Cuban sugar plantation in 1850 Cuba. Fifteen years after the execution of an evil black witch, her daughter, (who has been trained in the black arts and subjugated to her crippled grandmother's hatred and plot for revenge) becomes severely conflicted when ordered to kill man she loves, the married Spanish master who freed her. The evil forces unleashed when thwarted finally redound with disaster upon they're perpetrators. A colorful and interesting period piece which is more credible than a mere horror film. Recommended for an unusual story line and the stirring setting with the many Afro-Cuban ethnic sequences portraying slave life in the region of that time and place.

This is a really cool voodoo/possession film that you really need to see in a good color wide-screen version. It was filmed in Cuba and Mexico. Like most Mexican films that deal with the possessed, the subject is treated as a reality -- not fantasy. "Chucky," for example, was a major hit with Latinos, because it was considered realistic. But the best part of this thriller is the Cuban Ninon Sevilla. She started out as a dancer, and later became a big star. Her dancing in this feature is about as sexy and alluring as you'll ever see in the 1950's movie. The movie moves along and is all-around entertaining. But that dancing -- fasten your seat belts!

Yambao is a charming sorceress, under influence of her grandmother's spirit, greeding for revenge. She leads us thru this story of unusual passion and possession. But the film doesn't stand the pace.. long scenes of chanting slaves, althought sometimes (unvolontary ?) very funny, break the tempo and make us regret what this genre movie could have been