Hunchback Of The Morgue
Fancied something a bit crass tonight, with the exception of rewatching Just Before Dawn last night most of the stuff I’ve been watching recently has been far too tasteful. I can only keep that up for so long.
I have sort of watched this once before, it ended up on Amazon a couple of years back for a short while and I gave it a shot but it was sort of at a point where I couldn’t concentrate on much and it’s not the fastest moving film ever so, you know, I fell asleep.
Managed it this time though! I get there in the end.
It is completely ridiculous. Like, even by the standards of any film starring Paul Naschy, it’s ridiculous. It’s also really a way better looking film than it needs to be, skirting the sort of Hammer gothic aesthetic but with a side order of exploitation trash just to be a little on the different side. It’s kind of a Frankenstein film by the side door as Naschy’s lovelost Igor stand in helps out in the creation of a new form of life, via the medium of doing murders obviously! Not that you’d guess it was ever heading in that direction from the start, that would be both too normal and way too obvious for this film.
I found the first half hour a bit of a chore. It’s flirting a bit with a kind of gothic romance but it’s the seventies so there’s no way that’s happening without things being a bit, well, off. Once we’re into murders proper and an entire head being dropped into a bubbling vat filled with pulsating organs, things pick up a fair bit. The ending itself feels a bit rushed as it crams a lot into a short space of time, nothing complicated just … a lot … it’s definitely a lot! But we finally get to see the creature that was built from this throbbing organ soup and it’s worth waiting for, there’s more murders and stuff and yes, like I say, it’s a lot.
Wildly, wildly inconsistent but overall, I enjoyed it a great deal once I’d gotten through the first bit. Naschy is as naff as ever but a creature made from organ soup is rarely going to go wrong is it?