A superior Spanish shocker, which charts the life of a hunchback as he is abused by some and falls in love with others. However, being an X-rated horror flick, heavy lashings of gore and general grisliness are added into the mix, to create unforgettable moments and alleviate from the otherwise routine story. The film's strength lies in the evocative and moving musical score, which really helped to set the scene for me, and the atmospheric location of the underground cavern which is brimming with Gothic dread and foreboding. Paul Naschy takes the lead role and brings life and sympathy to his anti-hero, a villain who is drawn into his acts either as a last resort or as a result of someone else's evil.
What could have been just another brutal monster turns out to be a pathetic but deeply just and noble person; moments of Naschy kissing the feet of those he appreciates are at odds to shots of him brutally murdering numerous victims, and in the end Naschy's strong acting means that you can't help but like him, even if he is a multiple murderer and sadist! The strong Spanish supporting cast includes Alberto Dalbes' fine performance as a deranged and evil scientist, genre regular Maria Perschy as a doctor and Rosanna Yanni as a genuinely beautiful love interest - yes, even a hunchback can love!
Once again, this Naschy film's strength is in the numerous plot strands and ideas that it throws into the mix to keep it going nicely. As well as the character study of Gotho, the film includes romance and sex and themes of power and its abuse. The horror elements are also varied and interesting. The film begins with a scene of a corpse being bloodily cut up with a knife and doesn't get any easier to take from there! Corpses have their faces eaten apart by rats, there's a string of gore murders, hijinks involving a severed head, grave-robbing, and a mad scientist, and a convenient acid bath into which many characters fall and are lovingly dissolved in detail. One of my favourite aspects is the monster in the cellar which screams and cries with terrible noises, really building up the unseen terror. When it finally escapes to go on a rampage, the slimy humanoid creature doesn't disappoint in special effects either.
The gore is over-the-top and extremely explicit, even for a Naschy movie. Characters are decapitated and eviscerated (guts everywhere), strangled, dissolved, spiked in iron maidens, have their faces destroyed with acid, and mutilated. However, the film's most unpleasantly memorable scene doesn't involve any special effects whatsoever - yes, it's an unfaked scene of animal violence! This mondo madness occurs when Gotho discovers rats eating his girlfriend and attacks them with a torch (Naschy himself was famously bitten during this ordeal). Cue lots of shots of scampering, squealing, and burning rats; for a rodent lover such as myself, these scenes are really quite hard to take and unnecessarily long with it! Thankfully this is the only example of mondo violence in the film - and in Naschy's long career also.
Otherwise, the action/fight scenes are well-staged and exciting, the acting pretty good all things considered, the effects good, and the atmosphere and suspense strong. Worth checking out for all genre fans and a must-see film for Naschy followers in particular, this more than stands up against the best of his Waldemar Daninsky - werewolf output. Highly recommended.
What could have been just another brutal monster turns out to be a pathetic but deeply just and noble person; moments of Naschy kissing the feet of those he appreciates are at odds to shots of him brutally murdering numerous victims, and in the end Naschy's strong acting means that you can't help but like him, even if he is a multiple murderer and sadist! The strong Spanish supporting cast includes Alberto Dalbes' fine performance as a deranged and evil scientist, genre regular Maria Perschy as a doctor and Rosanna Yanni as a genuinely beautiful love interest - yes, even a hunchback can love!
Once again, this Naschy film's strength is in the numerous plot strands and ideas that it throws into the mix to keep it going nicely. As well as the character study of Gotho, the film includes romance and sex and themes of power and its abuse. The horror elements are also varied and interesting. The film begins with a scene of a corpse being bloodily cut up with a knife and doesn't get any easier to take from there! Corpses have their faces eaten apart by rats, there's a string of gore murders, hijinks involving a severed head, grave-robbing, and a mad scientist, and a convenient acid bath into which many characters fall and are lovingly dissolved in detail. One of my favourite aspects is the monster in the cellar which screams and cries with terrible noises, really building up the unseen terror. When it finally escapes to go on a rampage, the slimy humanoid creature doesn't disappoint in special effects either.
The gore is over-the-top and extremely explicit, even for a Naschy movie. Characters are decapitated and eviscerated (guts everywhere), strangled, dissolved, spiked in iron maidens, have their faces destroyed with acid, and mutilated. However, the film's most unpleasantly memorable scene doesn't involve any special effects whatsoever - yes, it's an unfaked scene of animal violence! This mondo madness occurs when Gotho discovers rats eating his girlfriend and attacks them with a torch (Naschy himself was famously bitten during this ordeal). Cue lots of shots of scampering, squealing, and burning rats; for a rodent lover such as myself, these scenes are really quite hard to take and unnecessarily long with it! Thankfully this is the only example of mondo violence in the film - and in Naschy's long career also.
Otherwise, the action/fight scenes are well-staged and exciting, the acting pretty good all things considered, the effects good, and the atmosphere and suspense strong. Worth checking out for all genre fans and a must-see film for Naschy followers in particular, this more than stands up against the best of his Waldemar Daninsky - werewolf output. Highly recommended.