In short: Un silencio de tumba (1972/6)

Movie star Annette Lamark (Glenda Allen) and her entourage go for a weekend trip to a rather pretty island she must have bought quite some time ago. Annette’s sister Valerie (Montserrat Prous) is living there all year round with some rather weird domestics, taking care of Annette’s little son and nurturing quite the hatred for Annette in long, dramatic internal monologues.

Among Annette’s usual group of lickspittles is the detective Juan (Alberto Dalbés), apparently a total hottie, though you might not notice when looking at him.

Soon enough, the kid is napped by someone who demands quite a sum of money. Tempers run even higher and more hysterical now, of course, and things don’t get any calmer once someone sabotages the boat connecting the island to the mainland and starts killing some of these arseholes and fools.

I generally prefer the weirder side of great director Jess Franco, and often tend to find his more conventional movies a bit boring. This very Agatha Christie (though based on a novel by Spanish writer Enrique Jarnes) mystery is actually one of the better among the more mainstream Franco movies, building quite a bit of tension out of the melodramatic clichés, certainly helped by a fantastic bit of overacting by Prous (bizarrely cast as the ugly duckling of the sisters) who really works all of those close-ups of her eyes Franco goes for to maximum melodramatic effect. This is also one of Franco’s genuinely pretty efforts, with many picture postcard shot of the island that makes an effective contrast to the nastiness going on between the characters.

The island setting – and the film’s general lack of porniness – do hamper some of Franco’s stylistic fixations. There’s little room for nightclub sequences (though Jess manages to squeeze a bar and some soft, melancholic guitar playing in), and certainly none for zooming through any woman’s nether regions. If that’s a disappointment or a feature, a viewer probably needs to decide for themselves.

Past Misdeeds: Hunchback of the Morgue (1973)

Original title: El jorobado de la morgue

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.


The picturesque Bavarian mountain town of Feldkirch has everything a movie town needs: a surprisingly big hospital, a system of catacombs that has been used by the Templars and the Inquisition, and a reform school for young women. It would probably be a fantastic place to live in, watching shower scenes and listening to Wagner all day, if not for the fact that basically everyone in town is a mean, mad bastard in one way or another.

Hard-working, not particularly clever, hunchbacked, ugly (at least that's what everyone says: Naschy isn't wearing any "ugly" make-up, looking just like he does in other movies where he's supposed to be a handsome lady killer) morgue assistant Gotho (Paul Naschy) is the favourite victim of everyone in town. His daily routine seems to consist of being insulted, slapped around, and made fun of, his only recourse being a mad expression when he cuts corpses into little pieces  - which is something you do in this particular hospital morgue. The only one treating Gotho like an actual human being is Ilse (María Elena Arpón), but the girl is on her death bed suffering from a lung disease (must be consumption), and all the flowers the really rather sweet Gotho can bring her won't keep her alive.

When Ilse dies, Gotho cracks. The mild-mannered man turns a bit murderous, first killing two other morgue assistants who are trying to rob his dead sweetheart with a conveniently placed hatchet, then dragging Ilse's corpse down into the catacombs hoping she'll awaken one day. Afterwards, it's off to another revenge murder.

And that's how things could continue for Gotho, if not for the resident mad scientist, a certain Dr. Orla (Alberto Dalbés). With the help of his assistant Dr. Tauchner (Victor Alcázar), and Tauchner's girlfriend the reform school headmistress (I think) Dr. Meyer (Maria Perschy) Orla is trying to create artificial life. Orla's total lack of scruples and his need for fresh body parts cost him the co-operation of the hospital, however.

So it's pretty much like Christmas and his birthday falling on the same day for Orla once he realizes where Gotho is hiding. The catacombs will make a fine laboratory for the secret continuation of his experiments, and Gotho is easily swayed to help with acquiring body parts once Orla has promised him to revive Ilse. Soon enough, Gotho's new duties will involve grave robbery, murder and the kidnapping of fresh girls from the reform school (for Orla's experiment turns from a mass of cells into a hungry monster); the only hobby they leave room for is kissing the feet of reform school co-head Elke (Rossanna Yanni) and getting romanced by her in return.

Of course, things can't stay this paradisiac forever, and Gotho will have a violent discussion with Orla's monster (which just happens to look like the Oily Maniac) soon enough.

Even for something taking place on Planet Naschy (the great man of Spanish horror cinema is of course co-responsible for the film's script as well as playing the male lead), where the bizarre is actually the quotidian, El Jorobado is a pretty wild concoction. Where else, after all, would a story about a mistreated hunchback with certain necrophiliac tendencies taking vengeance on his tormentors be just too normal not to need an infusion of a gorier variation of the classic mad scientist story at about the half-way mark? I am, of course, not complaining about this broadening of the narrative (such as it is) for it's exactly things like this that give most of Naschy's films their charm and their weird energy.

That energy comes especially to the fore here, in a film that eschews the usually languid pacing of many of Naschy's scripts for something much snappier. Which isn't to say the script doesn't have many of the usual flaws in a Naschy film, namely, that most characters act like complete idiots (would you believe it's a bad idea to tell the mad scientist your plan to out him to the police?), and that some of the connective tissue one is used to from a professionally written movie is missing, so it's always a possibility the film's not going to show an important development at all but prefer to just talk through it later on; possibly for budgetary reasons, possibly because Naschy hated proper transitions. If one wants to enjoy El Jorobado - or most of Naschy's other movies - one has to accept that things don't work in quite the same ways on Planet Naschy as they do in our world or in the movies of our world.

On the other hand, it's difficult to imagine a more "normally" structured film having the time for all the small digressions and suggestions of various kinks El Jorobado has - some torture, a random whipping, the quite clearly suggested necrophilia, the fem dom whiff of Gotho's feet kissing or just the suspicion that Elke falls in love with Gotho because she's into men with physical disabilities for the disabilities' sake and not the men's, or else really has a thing for guys who kiss her feet for little reason; it'd probably make for an awesome porno.

It being a horror movie instead of pornography, though, the film is much more interested in crude yet entertaining gore effects, most of which ooze a classic carnival charm I found myself unable to resist. The only problematic scene in this regard is when Naschy fights some rats who are nibbling on Ilse's corpse. At first, they "jump" (that is, are thrown at him with great force) our hero - the sort of thing that's always good for a laugh, but then, we're attacked by pictures of actual rats being burned alive with a torch. Like all real animal violence in the movies, that's just completely out of ethical bounds for me, and makes it difficult to still call the film's fake violence "good-natured" and "silly" as I else would have had.

Nearly a thousand words in, I still haven't mentioned El Jorobado's director Javier Aguirre. That's because there really isn't much to his direction. Despite the moody assistance of an awesome mountain village, a spooky ruin, and some fine catacombs, Aguirre's direction just doesn't do anything memorable at all, certainly nothing even vaguely comparable to the weirdness of the script. On the other hand, Aguirre is also not doing anything that's actively bad, so it's difficult to criticize him for anything but being not as crazy as the script he's working with and shooting it like a straight little horror movie.


If you're willing to ignore the fate of those poor rats, El Jorobado De La Morgue is a perfectly entertaining piece of Naschy craziness, containing everything I love and hate about the man's work, plus (at least in the Spanish language version) a small nod towards the Necronomicon that will make all co-Lovecraftians happy, too.

On WTF: Assignment Naschy: El Jorobado De La Morgue (1973)

aka Hunchback of the Morgue

Continuing my frightening adventures with the works of Spain's auteur of the insane Paul Naschy, I explore a film that finally reveals the truth about what goes on in those Bavarian mountain towns.

Necrophilia! Bestiality! Foot Fetishes! All that and a mad scientist await you in my column on WTF-Film. Paul Naschy loved us.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: spanish movies,reviews,horror,paul naschy,alberto dalbes,maria perschy,rossana yanni,javier aguirre,other places

Night of the Skull (1976)

"Louisiana" (Louisiana, Spain, I suppose) around the turn of the 19th Century into the 20th. A man in a skull latex mask murders Lord Archibald Marian (Antonio Mayans) in a rather cruel fashion.

Police Inspector Bore (Vicente Roca) is confronted with more suspects than anyone could reasonably cope with. There's the Lord's extra-marital daughter Rita (Lina Romay), living in his house as a punching bag for her father and his wife (Evelyne Scott), the rather mad servant Rufus (Luis Barboo) and so on and so on.

At the reading of the man's will it turns out Marian must have had some inkling of his coming death. At least there's no good reason anyone could think of why he should have made two testaments - one in case of a natural death and a different one in case he is murdered. The latter makes Rita his sole heir. This rather happy endy proposition is cut short by Bore, who'll have to check some things first before he lets the business proceed. To nobody's surprise, the murders continue, and the help of Scotland Yard's best man Major Brooks (Alberto Dalbes), the appearance of another, older testament with completely different contents (and no, I don't see why that should matter, but in the world of this film, it does), and the arrival of even more suspects/potential heirs/potential murder victims for the reading of the older/new/whatever will do nothing to make matters less complicated. Bore also beautifully follows the tradition of the Old Dark House school of mystery in his insistence of putting everyone together in the same place, so they are easier to find for the killer, um, because it's safer.

I have made my love for the lifework of Jess Franco clear enough in earlier write-ups, I think, but even I (someone who adores Oasis of the Zombies) can't bring myself to recommend Night of the Skull. The film's main problem is its genre, or rather the fact that the mystery genre is less than ideal for Franco's directorial strengths and deadly for its weaknesses. Even an Old Dark House Mystery needs a certain amount of internal logic; people just getting information without any explanation of where it comes from, or when and how it was acquired, as happens here repeatedly is to be avoided at all costs. There is also the problem of tension - Franco is always at his best when he can play loose with plot, action etc, while a mystery like this needs a certain amount of tightness and a sort of tension Franco is not used to provide.

The film is not all bad, though. It looks at times delightful. It also has some moments of typical Franco hypnotism and it is always a pleasure to watch an ensemble of favorite Franco actors doing their thing. The problem is just that Franco is never at his best when he is trying to be conventional. (And, I have to ask, what's with the lack of nightclub sequences and sleaze?)

Oh, this is also the only film I know of that is based on "Edgar Allen Poe's The Cat And The Canary", probably the best book never written.

 

Technorati-Tags: spanish movies,jess franco,lina romay,antonio mayans,alberto dalbes,reviews,mystery