Le Bossu de la morgue

Paul Naschy is great in this gory and old-fashioned horror flick. He plays the soft-spoken and (initially) gentle morgue attendant who is in love with a terminally ill patient in the hospital. She is the only person in the hospital who is nice to him, and he brings her flowers every day until she inevitably dies, and ends up in the morgue. Naschy loses it, and takes her corpse into a hidden cave. Once a mad doctor discovers Naschy's secret, he blackmails him into supplying bodies for his ghoulish experiments. This film is imaginative and fun. In one scene, Naschy is attacked by lots of (real) rats. There's plenty of gore too, and the ending is outrageous.

This was a great little flick. Paul Naschy (Spanish answer to Lon Chaney) puts in a very convincing role as a hunchbacked morgue attendant. The story was nice and strong with relatively believable acting, to a small degree.

The violence also was'nt that bad either. All you gore mongers should take note of this small fact.

The only real downer was that damn stock music! It just churned out, over, and over... I was just about ready to scream after hearing the same piece for the 50th time

Paul Naschy plays Wolfgang Gotho,a hunchback who supplies corpses to a doctor in his hidden underground morgue.The Doctor then feeds the rotted flesh to his creation of a living head attached to a tank full of guts.Gotho supplies corpses to the doctor in exchange for the promise that the doctor will restore life to the cadaver of his dead lover.This is surely Paul Naschy's best character role which won him awards at the Paris fantastic cinema convention in 1973."The Hunchback of the Morgue" is an extremely gory and atmospheric horror film that should please fans of Eurohorror.The evisceration of the doctor in the morgue,the beheading of the other doctor and the dismembering of the student from the inn are only a few of its gory moments.The locations sets(the catacombs)provide plenty of Gothic atmosphere and the acting is great.Still the scene where Gotho burns the rats feasting on Ilsa's body is pretty disturbing,because apparently real animals were killed during it.Overall,"El Jorobado de la Morgue" is definitely not for everybody.The film is quite explicit in its gore,but if you like Spanish exploitation flicks give this one a look.8 out of 10.

A surprisingly jaunty theme tune introduces what proves to be one of Paul Naschy's more exploitative and downbeat movies, a gory Gothic tragedy in which the Spanish horror star plays Gotho, a hunchbacked morgue attendant in love with a terminally ill girl named Ilse (María Elena Arpón). When Ilse finally pops her clogs, a grief stricken Gotho steals her body (after brutally killing the doctors who try to half-inch her necklace), and takes her to a subterranean hideaway where he assists a trio of slightly mad scientists to construct a laboratory (in record time) with which they can create life, a process that requires a continuous supply of fresh body parts...

Taking its cues from the classic horror novels of Victor Hugo and Mary Shelley, The Hunchback of the Morgue is full of irresistibly silly horror clichés—a sympathetic 'monster', a dusty Spanish Inquisition torture chamber, grave-robbing by moonlight, a sulphuric acid pit—and also benefits from some delightfully tacky special effects: a gory decapitation, a gutsy evisceration, assorted dismemberment, Ilse's corpse being devoured by rats (which, in a shocking moment of genuine animal cruelty, are set on fire by Gotho), and a delightfully daft man-made creature that consumes everything from live frogs to human heads, and ends up looking like a giant walking turd.

It all adds up to a whole lot of demented fun, easily the most entertaining Naschy film I've seen so far.

Paul Naschy plays a hunchback with below average intelligence who works at the morgue. He is in love with a sickly girl who happens to be the only person who is kind to him.

Naschy, who also wrote the script, seems to be inspired by a number of sources. Some have said the central inspiration is "Beauty and the Beast", given the romance between a deformed man and a beautiful young woman. But more obvious sources seem to be "Hunchback of Notre Dame" (with Quasimodo and Esmeralda) and "Frankenstein", though this time the story o told from the point of view of the mad scientist's assistant.

Director Javier Aguirre at this point in his career was known for experimental work, but had also worked with Paul Naschy on the slightly better-known "Count Dracula's Great Love" (1973) earlier the same year. In fact, "Hunchback" came about in part because of a delay on "Great Love" due to a car accident. I hope that over the longer run, the better-known film becomes "Hunchback", because there are some crazy scenes in here.

We start with a crafted miniature model of a Bavarian town, which you have to give them credit for. (The non-model village shots are in Vielha e Mijaran, Catalonia.) And then the makeup. Sure, it does not take much to make a hunch. But some of the other nastiness, especially the mad scientist's creation, are in many ways way ahead of their time.

The realism goes above and beyond what we typically see in films of this type. For one thing, the corpses are allegedly real and Naschy was allowed to cut into them and use them as they pleased. Exactly how that permission was granted seems like a story in itself. But also the rat sequences. There exists a story that some of the rats are really guinea pigs colored to look like rats, but that seems hard to believe -- the two are very distinct looking to anyone familiar with both rodents. Regardless, having so many rodents crawl on multiple actors in abundance had to be a challenge. Even tame, friendly rats would make most people uncomfortable in such huge numbers.

For his role as Gotho, Naschy won the Georges Meliés Best Actor Award for his portrayal from the International Festival of Fantastic and Science-Fiction Cinema of Paris in 1973. According to Mirek Lipinski, Naschy at one point shared the stage with both Peter Cushing and Terence Fisher. If only a photo existed of this powerful trio!

The Scream! Factory Blu-ray (2017) has everything we could want really. The film in both Spanish and English, audio commentary from Naschy experts, and a booklet of valuable information to complement the commentary.