A young couple meets princess Tara on an island (filmed on Gran Canaria) after she previously appeared in their dreams already, accompanied by a bird-like demonic creature. The princess says she ruled in the name of the god Macumba for 300 years already. This is obviously a quasi-remake of "El Signo del Vampiro" where the heiress of Dracula provided a similar personification of obsession beyond death. "Macumba", 11 years later, even goes a step further in stylistic obsession and must be counted among Jess Franco's best movies, even though Ajita Wilson is no match for Soledad Miranda. Franco quotes Kubrick's "The Shining" here when the name of the princess is typed again and again on the machine, and seems to refer to Herzog's "Nosferatu" when the timeless ship sails without wind (and we never see the faces of a crew, either). Besides making an unbelievable lot of movies, Franco certainly watches even more which explains how he can reinvent his own style over the decades, never running out of ideas.
"She is the mirror of evil and of death", the hotel manager says once about the princess, and the word "mirror" is the key here. No matter how normal the young couple appears to be, they have a dark side in them which is mirrored (and set free) by Tara. Tara never enters the city - everyone who want to meet her must travel through the desert on the back of a camel! The voyage is a ritual of cleansing, purifying, though in the opposite sense of purgatory, because it opens the traveler's mind up for evil. Certainly a movie about sin, not virtue.