Weirdhouse Cinema: Hunchback of the Morgue

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and we are once more returning to the Nashi verse. This will be our fourth Paul Nashi film on Weird House Cinema. Paul Nashy, of course an icon of Spanish horror and just in general like nineteen seventies grimy horror cinema. We've previously talked about. Yeah,

And then had like off brand versions of all the universal monsters that were being recruited by alien spies to attack Earth.

Yes, but I have to say some really fun monster combat in that one. I had that one on Blu Ray donated it to Future Shock Video in New Orleans, so you can rent it there.

Yeah. I recall that one was interesting for how they sketched out the moral character of the different monsters, like, of course, because it was Paul Nashi playing Waldebarn Doninsky as the werewolf. The werewolf was the more sympathetic monster. It's just got a you know, a romantic role. Paul Nashi as this were wolf character, which occurred in many films, often played a kind of tragic romantic role. But the

Yeah, that was interesting. And then we talked about nineteen eighty one's Night of the Werewolf, a full blown of Valdemar Doninski film in which the legendary werewolf does battle with Lady Bathrie played by Julius Sally. All three of these were written by Nashi as well, and he directed Nine of the Werewolf.

I think did he often write these under I was gonna say a pen name, but I think it was actually his real name, right, yesinto Molina.

Yes, yeah, generally that they would be credited to his real name Paul Nashy is his performance name.

Now, in case we're interested in running up the score on recent Nashi viewings. Just the other night, my wife and I finished watching another nineteen seventy one Paul Nashi movie. We watched The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman, which I acquired this past December. It has some really good gopher style vampire fangs. You know, there are different ways you

We discussed the full count in our episode on Night of the Werewolf, but it's yeah, it's a whole slew of them.

Yeah, so Werewolf versus the Vampire Woman was a lot of fun. It's mostly goofball stuff. It has a quite wooden love story. The chemistry between Nashi and his romantic interest is not really there, but it does have a handful of genuinely unnerving and artful sequences. It's kind of interesting. I don't know what it comes at. So like, it's mostly a B movie, but every now and then there's a shot that could be like, oh, that's actually quite scary, that that could be in a in a much better film.

Yeah. I mean, that's one of the wonderful things about films of this caliber B cinema in general, is that you know there's gonna be some stuff that, you know, where the either abilities or a budget wasn't quite there. But then there'll be areas where it really shines, you know, and it's finding those diamonds in the rough. That's that's always the joy.

Rachel had questions about what the audience was supposed to understand about the romantic appeal of Paul Nashi because he's sort of part Peter Loriie and part Clark Gable. You know, it's it's a mix.

Yeah, it is often hard in in a way, it's interesting because it kind of makes him a bit of a chameleon, because he can play a werewolf, he can play he can play Dracula, you know, he can play an action hero, and as we're going to discuss today, he can also play a hunchback like he you know, he as we've mentioned before, like he was a former weightlifter, so you know, you know, he's the muscular guy and not you know, and I think you know, you can say Paul Nashi was a handsome fella as well, but

Yeah, I think he can be understood as attractive in a way, but it's more the byronic hero who's maybe not necessarily the most classically handsome, but he has a kind of dark, strong, brooding, complicated, dangerous appeal which goes with his werewolf roles.

Yeah, I agree, because I've watched one or two of the films where he plays like irresistible action Paul Nashy without any supernatural motifs added on, and you know it's a little harder to get behind.

Yeah, but to the extent that he has Peter Laurie energy, it's like buff Peter Lourie.

Yeah. So yeah, in today's film Hunchback of the Morgue, we get to experience Nashy is a different horror movie staple, the Hunchback. This trope, of course, has deep roots in Gothic horror, going back to the eighteen thirty one Victor Hugo novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with film adaptations of that work going back to nineteen oh five. The nineteen twenty three silent film adaptation starring Lon Cheney stands out, as well as the nineteen thirty nine talkie starring Charles

Now, I think the Hunchback of Notre Dame character has been brought to screen with a number of different takes, but usually the core of the character is that he is someone who is rejected and outcast by others because of his appearance, but has a good soul.

Right And there's generally like one fe male character at least who sees him for who he really is, who recognizes this pure heart within him. So yeah, a lot of great actors have played this role over the years. Some of these I've never seen and wasn't familiar with, Like Anthony Quinn played Quasimoto in fifty six. Anthony Hopkins played him in eighty two alongside Derek Jacobi, who I believe played the villain in that one. Mandy Patinkin played

That would have been something. Don't even know if I can imagine it, but sorry, I just had to go over and look at the I had to look up the story because I remember the name of the villain from the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the archdeacon, the church official. But that was Archdeacon Frolo or Frollo. I don't know

That's a great point. Yeah, Now, given Paul Nashy's love for universal monsters and classic gothic horror, yeah, it was only a matter of time, I guess, until he did a Quasimoto like character. Though it is important to stress here this is not another retelling of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Instead, we have a largely original story involving grave robbing, doomed love, mad science, and just a splash of lovecrafty and horror.

Set in the modern world at the time of the film. Or is it questions about that this one was temporally confusing.

Yes. Now you had a great note as well about the likely inspiration for this. I mentioned Nashi was, of course a big fan of the universal horror movies, all the classics that he grew up on, and you brought up the character of Fritz.

Oh yeah, well, because this movie to me seemed you could definitely interpret it as Franken's not so much to the novel, but the first James Whyale movie, the first universal Frankenstein from Fritz's perspective.

That's a great point. Yeah, Fritz, of course, being the hunchback esque sidekick to the doctor.

In the first film, played by Dwight Fry.

Yeah, so yeah, I could see there's some Fritz. DNA did this as well, for sure, and maybe a little I Gore in there as well, though I Gore, of course pure villain.

So I guess a real question about this movie is how sympathetic are we supposed to think Paul Nashy's character is, because it's clear he's being portrayed, at least in the beginning, as mostly sympathetic. I mean, the story is basically told from Paul Nashy's character's perspective, and we see all of his loves and disappointments and humiliations we identify emotionally with his struggles. We see and other characters repeatedly tell him that despite the fact that he is outcast, he has

Yeah.

Yeah, And in a sense, it's the murders have the sort of standard trajectory of any kind of at least initially sympathetic killer in a film, because the initial victims will all be dirt bags, and then later on you're like, oh, well, they're not really that much of he's straight over in the less dirt bag territory. But this film doesn't really

I don't know, if he's got some responsibility in there, he knows what he's doing.

Yeah, So yeah, we'll discuss as we proceed here. But as far as the elevator pitches go, I would say my elevator pitch would be I would do anything for love, up to and including murder and grave.

Robbing, including after my love is long dead.

Yes, all right, Uh, let's let's hear a little bit of the trailer audio. I'm not sure we're going to be busting out some English trailer audio or Spanish trailer audio, but either one will give you a taste you every one.

You got three colors, no wish, no, no, no.

Never before as a motion picture told such a story in which love and horror race hand in hand so their final consequences. Never has love been so terrifying, Never has horror been more romantic. Close your eyes tightly if you're unable to look at the terrifying scenes of this motion picture interpreted by Paul Nashy, Rosana Yanni, Vic Winnard, Alberto Delbiz, and Maria Pushy.

All right, rob Speaking of the English and Spanish dubs, I have to report that I had a slightly chaotic viewing experience with this movie because the streaming version that I found to watch. I don't know if I should call out the platform it was the one that's on the shout Factory streaming collection only had one. Maybe this is my fault. Maybe I just didn't figure out how

Yeah, that can always be confusing. If you've never, of course, played around with this, you might easily make the mistake of thinking, well, the dub and the subtitles are going to be identical, right, No, very often they are not. If they're even if they're just a little off it, you can feel your your brain hemispheres becoming like moving away from each other, you know, your brain splitting in half.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's like creating the dial tone noise. Yeah. But so I was watching it with both of the audios playing simultaneously, and then looking at the English subtitles. So the amusing. When I reference lines in the film, I'm referring to the English subtitles.

Mostly I watched this one in Spanish with the English subs I checked out the English dub at first, because it's important to note, especially filmed films from this era Spanish cinema, they're almost always dubbed, even in Spanish. It was just sort of the standard. It wasn't until later that there was more of an emphasis on getting Spanish actors to use their.

Own voices, in the sense that a lot of times the movie would not have live sound from the set, even in the language it was shot in. They would do they would record their lines later.

Yeah, and I think maybe part of it too, is like, yeah, you're bring in a voice actor. They're like, they're better anyway, bring them in. But I listened to a little bit of the English dub and I'm like, no, this Gotho doesn't sound right. So I just switched to the Spanish version, but I watched it on the screen. Factory released Paul Nashi Collection Volume two, which is a pretty great Blu

From what I could detect the uncensored version, there was only really one scene of brief mild nudity that was on a completely different film quality than the rest of the movie.

That stands out. That's the main scene that stands out. Is being added on.

This feels like it was from somewhere else.

All right. Well, let's get into the people involved here. The director of this picture, and they also have a screenplay credit, so I think they had some influence on the screenplay. It's Javier Aguiri, who lived nineteen thirty five through twenty nineteen, Spanish film director whose films include a trio of seventy three horror pictures. Hunchback of the Morgue. Of course, another Paul Nashy film, Dracula's Great Love and the Killer, is one of thirteen. He worked in multiple

The Killer is one of thirteen. Don't know anything about that one, but it sounds by the title like a Jallo.

I looked into it briefly when it was like a Friday the Thirteenth episode publication, and I was like, we should do something with thirteen in the title. So I was looking into it. It looks it looks it looks like it might be good, but I haven't seen it.

If the name of the movie is a complete sentence, there's a good chance it's a jallo.

Yeah. Or if it has something cryptic about like the moth with the sapphire plumage or whatever. You know, there are a number of those that sound like like your auto generated jallo title.

Twenty seven Daggers for the Owl Queens, Yes.

All right. There's also a screenplay credit for Alberto S. And Sua dates unknown who also worked on tract It was Great Love and the Killers one of thirteen, but the main screenplay credit goes to Paul Nashi, who of course also plays our hunchback Wolfgang Gotho. So yeah, Paul Nashi, the legend himself. We've of course talked about Paul Nashey on the show before. Real name Jacinto Molina Alvarez, he was an aspiring architect turned bodybuilder turned horror writer, actor,

Yeah. There are even scenes that communicate essentially that idea in the movie. Yeah, but it seems over and over again across his career. Nashi liked to play characters whose love was more powerful than anything in the universe and who in the end are destroyed by their love.

Yes. Yeah, so it's always.

Like in the werewolf role, he's always got to get stabbed in the heart with the silver cross by the one woman who truly loves him.

Yes, there's a great quote from Nashie that I read in the last Nashi film we covered Knight of the Werewolf, where he's talking about Night of the Werewolf in some of the plot elements, and he says, the claustrophobic castle the gothic tombs, the ill fated love affair, the menace of the undead, the ostracism of someone who is despised for being different, in the albravating shadow of death. All of these elements go to make up my personality and my.

Work sounds about right.

And yeah, these characters, these films like these were the soul of Paul Nashy. So yeah, he in this film, I say, I think he gives a great performance at once sympathetic and menacing or altering between the two depending on the scene. And his physicality works really really well. Here he's playing a hunchback, which is you know, he's hunched over, he's shambling as he moves from scene to scene, and I just have to say, this must have just

Yeah. I would say you can even see the strain on him in certain scenes. Yeah.

All right, well let's get into the love interest for old Gotho here. First of all, we have Ilsa. This is Gotho's initial doomed crush, played by Maria Elena Apron born nineteen forty eight, Spanish actress whose other credits include sixty nine Is the House That Screamed, Armando Dios Aarrio's first Blind Dead movie, seventy two's Tombs of the Blind Dead, and nineteen to seventy four's The Fish with the Eyes of Gold. Now there's a job title for you.

Yeah, yep.

She was also in the seventy three Western Tequila exclamation Point, and she was only active during the late sixties early seventies. But she's good. I mean, it's as far as roles where someone mostly plays a corpse, this was pretty physically demanding.

Yeah, I know, I already said there are several things that are temporally confusing about the setting of the film. We'll keep coming back to that, especially throughout the plot. This is set in the modern times, it's set in the nineteen seventies, but this character feels like something out of a Victorian novel. She very much just has a story based disease. That's kind of Oh I die now. I don't even know which story in particular I'm thinking of, but she feels like a Victorian character.

I love that your sample cough there was clearly the cough from Black Sabbath. Sweetly.

You know, my daughter heard that song for the first time the other day and she proclaimed, it's heavy.

That is quite heavy.

She didn't originate that terminology. I had instructed her what heavy means awesome.

All right. So this is the doom the initial doomed crush of Gotho. But then Gotho is going to get a new love interest, and that is the character Elki, played by Rosanna Yanni born nineteen thirty eight, Argentinian born actress active from the early sixties to the early two thousands. She was in Count Dracula with Great Love same year. She was also in sixty eight's Frankenstein's Bloody Terror. That's

Oh, Okay, that's funny because I can just see her. I'm not saying she was in one, but I could see her in a James Bond movie. She looks like she would fit right in and a I don't know, in a blackjack scene in a casino.

She's really tall and of course gorgeous, and I feel like her height really helps in this picture opposite Gotho, because again it's Paul Nashew, I think, is already shorter than her, and then he's stumped. He's stooped over as well, so I don't know, like her very vertical alignment like makes him even more hunchbacky.

She's good in the role. She plays a doctor, so she has a very very caring and therapeutic kind of presence her kindness, however, just not in her performance, but the way the character is written, her kindness and level of understand goes to such lengths that it becomes a kind of hilarious naivete. At the end of you know, there's like murder after murder, and she's like, he's really very good.

Yes, yeah, yeah. There are a lot of characters who see the good in Gotho to the point where they're clearly overlooking a lot of crimes.

Yeah, all right.

We mentioned that this has a mad scientist in it, and that is the character to doctor or La, who's a real treat played by Alberto Dalbis who lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen eighty three. Yeah, he's our chief antagonist are mad scientist Argentine film and television actor who worked a lot in horror, Jallo, crime and westerns. Something of a Spanish horror icon himself, and yet this is the only role that he ever had in a Nashi film.

Rights, satanic rights of Dracula.

Yeah.

Yeah, But he also appeared in the sci fi action sci fi action films like sixty seven's Danger to Exclamation Points, Death Ray and the seventy two Telesavahas film Pancho Villa, which we've talked about on the show before.

He is an interesting and different kind of mad scientist if you follow me here. So, I don't know, I feel like the mad scientists we see in movies are more often of either the Colin Clive kind of coming apart of the seems nervous energy variety, or they might be more like Doctor Septimus pretorious and Bride of Frankenstein and be a kind of oh, I don't know, beyond good and evil libertine, of weird obsessions and all that. This guy instead has more of a kind of academic,

Yeah. I think that's a good read on the character, and it does make him stand out, Like he has some great villain monologues, but they're not about ruling the universe or anything like that. It's largely about like, yeah, some real scientific advancements you are going to come out of this work. So yeah, I thought Doctor Orla was a lot of fun here.

Yeah, I like him too. I don't know exactly how I got here. He doesn't look a whole lot like this guy. But the comparison I kept coming to in my mind is he reminded me of the American actor Richard Thomas, who played John Boy on The Waltons, And it's a bunch of other roles since then. He was in the adult half of the nineteen ninety eight, and he had a role in The Americans, which is a

He has a great, smoldering, hateful glare that put me in the mind of Powers Booth and Michael Shannon.

M Okay, I can see that too, all right.

So we have our love interests set in place here, we have our sympathetic monster, and we have our mad scientists. We have a few other parts here to round out the cast. I mentioned that there would be traditional handsome in this picture, and the traditional handsomeness is provided by Victor Barrera credited as Vic Winner or Vic Wiener as I think it depends on which trader you watched exactly how it is pronounced, But he plays doctor Frederick Togner.

He is is he a mad scientist? And not really? But he I don't know. I think he, on one hand, is kind of a nice guy who means well, but he also comes across like a he just keeps getting talked into doing bad stuff by Orla.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's here for the applications of this study, and it seems willing to turn a blind eye to some of the horrors. That being said, I feel like his character is really the only decent male character in the film. The vast majority of the men we meet in the picture are belligerent, drunken, hateful bullies. One character is a mad scientist, then there's Gotho, a tragic figure who murders everyone else. Even the children are just the absolute worst.

Yeah, I guess the only really truly good and pure characters are Ilsa and then Elkie, and then I guess you could argue about Tauchner here and then also about doctor Meyer his fiance.

That's right. Yeah, all the women are fine, but of the men, only Fred Here is decent. Now Barrera or Winner. He worked in a few different Nashi pictures. We talked about him, I think briefly before because he pops up in Horror Rises from the Tomb. He's also in Count Dracula's Great Love. So yeah, pretty standard stuff here, but you know he plays his part well, yeah, all right,

Yes, you know, I'm not primarily a gorehound by nature. It's not the first thing I'm looking for in a movie, but I but I do appreciate better gore, and this is better gore than much.

Yeah, some good disembodied heads in this picture. For example. The special effects credit goes to one Pablo Perez, Spanish effects artists who also worked on such films as seventy two's Horror Express, which we previously talked about and had some very fun effects in its Yeah. Yeah, Count Dracula was great. Love Luccio Fulciese nineteen seventy three White Fang adaptation.

Yeah, and it looks good.

Yeah yeah, I mean I think she's really carrying him here.

Yeah, I mean they've they've posed him just right, showing off the thighs and all that.

Yeah. Yeah. And then finally, the music here is by Carmelo A Berniola, who lived nineteen twenty nine through two thousand and two. Highly influential Spanish composer who also worked in film and TV scores. He won some Spanish Film Awards for a few different pictures, including seventy four's Tormento.

Yeah, I would agree with that, though I will say it's not that the music is bad, especially early in the film. There is a lot of use of music that is really not my favorite style. Yeah, but it's not the music's fault. It's just not there's a lot of like, I don't know, marches with heavy horns and Octoberfest style music that's I don't know, I get that that's that's some people's thing.

They they lean heavily on the score right as the movie opens to let you know that this is Germany, it's Germanic, or it's Austria. It's somewhere. It's somewhere that has Octoberfest. And later on in some things we see like Octoberfest posters on the walls and so forth. Yeah.

Yeah, so well, speaking of that, should we jump right into the plot.

Yeah, let's let's hit the poke music.

So, yeah, this is the music we're getting while we see the credits play. It's not exactly it's not polka music. I think this might technically be a march of some kind. I don't know the music term, but it's Yeah, it's a lot of horns. It's like blasting. It's really loud on the soundtrack, like going into the red and you know, yeah, the Octoberfest zone. But this is playing while the camera pans over the beautiful landscape of wherever this is. I

Yeah. Yeah, most of this film was filmed in Spain, but there are some shots from Austria, and I think some of these zoom in on the town shots are definitely Austrian.

Oh yeah, maybe it's supposed to be Austria, but it feels like one of those feels like Germany or Austria or something. Anyway, we zoom in on one sleepy town somewhere in these hills now here. I want to come back to the issue of how someone could easily be confused about when this movie is supposed to take place, because some of the sets and plot elements really imply this is supposed to take place in the nineteenth century

Yeah, I mean, some of it probably has to do with the locations and the sets, where on one hand you'll have mad science equipment, but then on the other hand you'll have these tremendous ruins and stone hallways with straw strewn on the ground. So yeah, some temporal confusion does ensue.

Yeah, So in this town we see an empty street. It is empty except for Paul Nashy who's wandering along the cobblestones in his hunchback costume. And this is our protagonist, Gotho. I'm going to call him Gotho because that's how it's spelled. I think when I was hearing the characters say it, this might have been more in the Spanish stub they were calling him more like go Toe, but I think Gotho is easier for me to remember to say. So Gotho makes his way toward I think this place would

These beers are so huge, the glasses are so huge, and the quantity of beer is so huge that like you almost feel like the humans are shrinking, or that you're in some sort of a surreal sequence, Like, surely beer is not served in quantities this vast.

It's when they go to the pub and and Lord of the Rings, Yeah, it comes in pints.

Yeah, it's like if you're a hobbit and you're drinking a human sized beer. I mean, I guess this is legit. I have no reason to believe that they they faked this. I just and I'm not a beer drinker. So it just seems like, wouldn't it just become so warm by the time you get to the bottom of that glass.

Well not if you drink it like Udo in this other guy, because they just chug it all at once. So they have a drinking contest. Udo goes toe to toe with one of the students, a tall guy with Sideburns, And I would say this bar scene is good to watch if you want to convince yourself to quit drinking alcohol. It makes alcohol look absolutely revolting. These two guys. So they're drinking the giant beer as they're drooling everywhere, they're

Yeah, just sweaty, toxically masculine beer guzzling. It seems to eventually, it seems to destroy both their sex drives and their internal organs. Yes, because after you're done drinking at this place, you're just like, I have to leave now and fall in the street.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. So Udo wins the drinking contest because kids sideburns here falls unconscious and then smashes his beer, steining on the floor, Udo mocks him and then announces, soaking wet, that it's time he has to go home. The ladies dressed up like the Saint poly girl or they're like, no, Udo, don't go. I think the implication is that Udo is the life of the party. He's very handsome and charismatic, and they want him to stay and party. But you know, how's he going to stay

Yeah.

I was confused about this, but I don't know. We can check in on this in a minute, but first we have to say. We go to a second location that we're told in a subtitle is Feldkirch Hospital or feldkirk It's about feld k Rch Hospital, and so it's a clinic situated up on a slope overlooking the town. It's surrounded by elegant, well kept gardens and a fountain courtyard, and tonight the rain is pouring. We see the rain pouring into the fountain outside. But suddenly we are in

I think, I assume yeah, I mean, because he's in the morgue. My understanding is he just straight up like died of alcohol poisoning in the street.

He drank so much beer that he died in the middle of the street.

Yeah.

Anyway, Gotho, after this, he takes his little cart, presumably full of Udo's organs, like his head and his hands and stuff, and he wheels it out of the morgue, going past a couple of doctors who work in the morgue. And these guys stink as Gotho's coming in there in the middle of some misogynous knee slapper, and they stop Gotho to insult him and yell at him. They call him a gorilla. They tell him he's not welcome in

Yeah. Yeah, So, on one hand, it is always a little jarring where you're like he doesn't look that on that ugly guys. He just looks like Paul Nashy. But on the other hand, I guess it's it's kind of nice that it makes the performance pure Nashy, you know, like there's no potentially distracting makeup getting between you and the performance.

Yeah. So, anyway, Gotho goes about his business. I don't know what he's doing with this with the Udo Organs, but he At one point he stops in a hallway to gaze longingly at the photograph of Ilsa that Udo dropped, And it's obvious that Gotho is in love with Ilsa. Whoever she is.

She's single, now, Yeah.

That's true. So we're about to meet her. You see, Ilsa is actually a patient at this hospital where Gotho works, and they have a relationship, not a romantic one, but a friendship. Ilsa is here with a very Victorian movie disease. It causes her to appear pale and go into fits

I feel like they're barely out of your shot when they say that. Yeah.

Yeah, So Gotho comes into the room to visit Ilsa and brings her flowers that he picked from the gardens outside, and Ilsa is obviously glad to see him. She thanks him for the flowers and they talk about a number of things. They talk about the death of her boyfriend Udo. Gotho tells her not to cry because Udo died dreaming of her. I mean, this does raise questions, like, does it make sense to you that Ilsa and Udo or

Yeah yeah, I agree that the only read I have on it that makes sense as well, we only got to see Udo at his absolute worst, Like maybe he's just drinking really heavily right now because he knows that his girlfriend is dying, and so, yeah, we caught him at his worst, being drunk and belligerent and hateful in the street. And maybe he has other qualities. We're just not privy too.

Yeah, I don't know. I guess they do say he's very handsome. That's the one redeeming quality we know about. So Gotho promises to bring Ilsea flowers every day. She tells him that he's the only one who visits her, the only one who cares. It seems ILSA's family have all died and she has no one else, so Gotho's her only friend. She asks Gotho to describe the countryside while she closes her eyes. She wants to sort of, you know, do some mental travel with Gotho narrating for her.

This is, of course, the first scene in which we see Gotho entering a room with flowers, and there's I love every sequence that he has is because there's generally this just look of complete optimism as walking into a terrible situation he somehow thinks everything is going to be okay, And yeah, I love it. I want to make Valentine cards this year with images of Gotho holding flowers.

He makes a very very adorable face. It's almost I made you a cookie, but I ate it.

It levels Yeah.

So after this, there's a scene where Gotho is wandering the streets of the town melancholy, I think because of ILSA's health, and there are school children who appear to taunt him. They call him a dirty monkey, and he shakes his fist at them, and then the kids pelt him with rocks, like hitting him in the head and causing him to bleed, and then they all run away. Evil children.

Yeah, Like they basically stone him in the streets. And yeah, this reminded me. There's a scene in seventy three's Return of the Blind Dead same year, in which children pelt Murdo, the outcast character in that film, with rocks.

I don't know, Brave Dirigger.

Yeah, yes, I don't know if these films were both riffing on the same reference point, but at any rate, there's a lot of kids throwing rocks at outcasts in nineteen seventy three.

Well, anyway. Immediately after this, Gotho is helped to his feet by a woman who seems to appear out of nowhere, a tall, elegant woman. She's blotting his wounds with a handkerchief. This woman tells Gotho to come with her for treatment because she is a doctor, and we will learn that this is Elkie. So they go on a walk to Elkie's house and she and Gotho get to know each other. She hears the story of Gotho's history with Ilsa. They were friends as children. She played with him, even though

Yeah, I think Gotho has no sense of proportion.

But also I just wanted to linger here for a second because Rob I had to take a photo of the screen. Did you stop to get a good look at this room in Elkie's house? What is going on here? There's a random handrailing in the middle of the room, not apparently attached to any darrs or anything. There's a green treasure chest, very busy floral print upholstery on the furniture, a golden, highly decorated almost Buddhist temple style archway over the exit from the living room. There are animal pelts

Yeah, I did not notice these hands in either of my viewings, So maybe these are supposed to be anatomical models.

Why are they bloody then? Why do they have bloody stumps?

I don't know. My other read is that maybe this was Nashi's home or apartment at the time, Like that would make more sense with the pelt and the crossbow.

Oh, I mean it was shot there because I think this is supposed to be Elkie's home.

It is supposed to be Elkie's home. But I'm just wondering, like, was, yeah, did they build this, did they put all these odd things together? Or it is just just this is just like a snapshot of someone's home. Maybe Paul nash Shey's home. I don't know.

I could believe this was Paul Nashi's home in real life. But yeah, why the severed hands. I mean, she is a doctor, But would it be normal for doctors to have severed hands in their houses?

Yeah, mean at least keep those in the fridge, right.

So, next scene, Gotho is taking Ilsa for a walk around the pleasant little gardens outside the hospital. She's in a wheelchair. He's pushing her, and she's talking about how she knows her life is fading, but Ilsa says she likes to look at the roses in the garden. So these visits where Gotho pushes her around to look at the flowers, they're really helping her feel better. And then when she says this, Gotho cuts one of the roses from the garden and brings it to her, and she says,

Yeah, he says, it's okay. Everything is forbidden from me, and yeah, obviously it speaks to Gothos outside status, but it also helps us understand why Gotho does the other things that he does, i e. The murders and the dismemberments and the grave robbing. He's been pushed outside of society and therefore its rules no longer apply to him. So he still has this, deep down a heart of gold, but he has already been pushed over the line in terms of society's laws and norms.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. So Ilsa says, these roses are my last happiness. If only I could have a bouquet every day, And then Gotho said, promises her he says, you'll have them, and then from this sweet scene, the sweet sad scene, we cut straight to something else. Now we're told we're in the Feldkirch Women's Reformatory, so it seems this is some kind of mental hospital for women.

Yeah, just spankings all around here in a scene that really feels like it was just here to spice up a grindhouse trailer, yeah, or lead to more exploitive content regarding these two characters. But it really doesn't. It's just we get this one moment.

Yeah, really doesn't go. We don't see any more of this. We do see these characters later in the movie when when there's a creature that needs to eat human flesh, but that's it.

Yeah, they show up later as victims, but that's about it.

Yeah. Anyway, so this is going on, and suddenly Elkie comes in the door and she's like, what is the meaning of this and takes the strap out of the patient's hand and she's like, Okay, we're going to you know, you know what this means, We're gonna have to separate you too. And I'm telling doctor Meyer. So apparently Elkie is a doctor here, but I think not the head doctor. I think she's working for doctor Meyer. So we cut

Yeah, we lost in translation there.

I guess, Well, whatever it means, it's clearly supposed to be insulting to her and him. And this sends Gotho over the edge and he attacks. He's like choking the med student and the fight turns into a four on one against Gotho and he gets badly beaten. They kick him on the ground until Tauchner and another doctor arrive to stop.

It, but Gotho puts up a good fight, and there's absolutely there's an absolutely beautiful moment in this fight where Gotho pushes one of the hooligans into a bush and the hooligan bounces off of said bush like it's a wrestling ring rope, right back into a kind of back body drop from Gotho, and I was like, oh, man, that's inspired.

The next scene Gotho, I guess he goes straight from here to ILSA's room, but uh oh, Ilsa is dying. She's talking to the nurse here about Gotho bringing her beautiful flowers and then she dies. And then Gotho gets there right after she dies, and the nurse tells him. She's like, oh, she died, too bad, you were outside getting wailed on, or you would have been here for it. Yeah.

So these heartbreaking scenes of Gotho arriving too late for Ilsa and it'll happen again. These are too much and also just morbidly hilarious again entering the room with those flowers, all the optimism in the world and only to be greeted with like worse and worse news.

Yeah. So Gotho is left alone with ILSA's body here, and he is first overwhelmed with grief, and then you can see with rage. I think he's angry at the students who were attacking him because they robbed him of this moment with Ilsa. So from here we go to the next scene, which is that later that night, Gotho is waiting alone in the morgue and the two dissection specialists wheel Ilsa in on a cart and they're like, hey, Gotho,

Yeah, this sequence is just amazing, just an absolute blood bath of a scene, and the gore effects hit all the right nineteen seventies hard notes. You know what I'm saying, Like, there's just a certain way the blood looks, the way the bodies come apart here absolutely perfect.

So Gotho grabs his flower bouquet and he quickly wheels Ilsa out of the morgue. He's going to take her to his secret hideaway. So what is this place. It's a place we have not seen in the movie yet. It is some kind of dungeon or passageways. I think maybe better to call it catacombs. It's just like lots of these passageways and rooms underneath the hospital grounds, which Gotho accesses by way of a hatch under a garden path.

Yeah.

I think he puts out fresh straw on the ground and he lights all these torches. Yeah.

So Gotho tells Ilsa that she must rest now and he will find a way to take care of her. But first, he says he has some business to take care of. He says, I have to deliver a bouquet of roses to one who doubted your beauty.

I love Gotho's outfit here as well. It's kind of like a black poncho, but also like it's kind of like, I guess, like a morgue's a mortician smock or something.

Yeah. Yeah, so we're going to go back to the disgusting beer hall. I don't think I mentioned this the first time. Another unpleasant thing about this place is the lighting. This is a bar with off white walls that is extremely well lit inside. Just imagine that for a second for a bar environment. It's the ambiance is bad.

Yeah, Like, every sticky surface is gleaming. Most likely you can see every dead insect in this place. It's cross.

So all of the med students who beat Gotho up earlier here they're getting beard up up there, being loud and rude to servers. And then we do see one server here who I think was one of the bar maids who was partying with Udo the you know in the earlier scene. She's in the middle of bringing beer to these creeps when she looks out the window and sees Paul Nashi, and she just starts shrieking at seeing paul Nashi's face again. It's just Paul Nashi with the scar,

It's this murder is less impressive, but it's you know, the gimmick is nice. He kills them with the flowers that he was bringing to also, so fair enough.

Now we're going to check in with some police investigators who I think ultimately don't play that big of a role in the plot. But there's a mustache guy and then a guy who looks like he could be a bishop of some kind, but he's just a police inspector in a suit, and they're talking about the crime scene in the morgue. One of them says, you couldn't imagine it.

Yeah, no clue. Maybe that one got kind of like swept under the rug, you.

Know, Yeah, maybe I don't know. But then the inspectors discuss how ILSA's body has also disappeared, and they say, once again, their inquiry has revealed that Gotho was in love with Ilsa. Where are they getting all this information? Also, this is literally supposed to be the same night. This is all the same night, so the murder has must have just happened within the past few hours and they're here talking about it, and they already know all this stuff about Gotho enough to rule him out.

And do they know about Hans yet?

Oh, they're just about to find out. So the cops find out about a second crime, this is the murder of Hans with the sideburns rip, and then they find out oh wait, no, they are you know this also? So they've got all this information, they're like, oh, this guy was fighting with Gotho earlier today, so it's got to be Gotho. We got to put out an APB even though we rolled them out. Okay, finally enough evidence

Yeah, it's unfortunate, but this film does entail scenes of live rats on fire, capping off what sounds like a series of bad production decisions. They apparently set fire to some of the actual sewer rats that were captured for use in these scenes, including the scenes where they attack Nashi, who had to get a bunch of shots beforehand to keep from getting sewer rat diseases. However, I've read that the rats we see on the corpse here of Ilsa

Now, if not for knowing about the animal cruelty, there would be some pretty funny things about this scene because it has rats like leaping at Gotho from the floor, like as if they're just jumping right off the ground onto his neck to attack him. Obviously there's people throwing either rats or fake rats. But plot wise, Gotho is like, wow, I guess I shouldn't have left her in the rat room. So he relocates her to another room, which is now which the second room is full of torture equipment. It's

Now.

Now, from here we get more of the police investigators. They go to visit a new character who will become a major character, Professor Orla, who has a nice, expensive home. He's got a proper butler. So Orla is an authority figure here, and he admits the police to his comfortable study. He greets them confidently, and we can already see in this kind of cozy environment that Orla radiates a sort of intimidating power and sense of authority. He can he's the kind of person who can talk people out of

Why.

It's to create artificial life. Of course, what else would it be. Now Orla and Tauchener are debating what to do next, and Orla reveals that he has Gotho working for him. Tauschener is like, wait, you know he's accused of three murders, right, and Orla is I probably didn't do it. Tauchener then says, this is an actual quote I took down. Dealing with a killer is not only repugnant, it might also causes complications.

Well, yeah, you'd have to list those in the complications section of your peer reviewed study. Yeah, you know, at the bottom it's like potential complications. We did work with a murderer.

Yeah, yeah, he's an evil stain on humanity. Also, he might throw sand in the gears.

Now.

In the end, Orla puts pressure on Tauchner and persuades him to keep working with him on the Artificial Life project for the time being, and they head out for a tour of the dungeon. There's some quite beautiful location shots here as they go into the nearby abbey that's

Yeah, I mean, they might have. It also reminds me of some of the ruins from the Blind Dead movies, so likely they use the same Spanish locations here. But then, on the other hand, like this part of the world, there are a lot of castles, a lot of ruins. I looked around briefly, wasn't able to find a good answer, but I did find evidence of In twenty seventeen, there is a tour company called ECS Tours and they did something called Classic Spanish Horror Film Location Tour, a Paul

So Tauschener gets read in on the whole operation, including Orlo's promises to go Tho that he will cause Ilsa to wake up. This does not sit well with Tauchner for multiple reasons. He says, you know, it's not fair to lie to Gotho and manipulate him like this. Also, he could kill again. And Orla argues, you know, but science must sometimes use dubious methods because the ends will justify the means, and he says success is waiting. So there's more Dark Knight of the Soul with Tauchener. Here,

Yeah, that's always a red flag.

Yeah, So we get a look after they've been working on setting up the lab in the dungeon. We get a look at it. So there's a lot of beeps and boops kind of equipment, beakers full of pink liquid that's burbling, and then a giant sulfuric acid pit in the floor.

Yes, yes, much like the one from nineteen seventy Scream and Scream again, which we previously talked about on the show. It looks wonderful.

Also, it appears that Gotho or somebody has hired movers to get all of the equipment. And now there are just other people involved in the like three other guys involved in this. Is this really a top secret laboratory? There's more and more people coming in.

Well, it's gonna be as we find out. With this crew of labor as they brought in.

That's right. So Orla tries to promise Gotho that he will be famous for his contribution to this very important science project. But Gotho just wants to know when Orla's gonna wake Ilsa up for him, and he's like, oh, real soon, Gotho, Real soon. So we follow Gotho as he goes out still every day to pick flowers for Ilsa in the abbey ruins. So it's still very sad. We follow him and we see his pain that he's you know, he's hoping, he's hoping against hope that she

Tank because clearly that will smell better.

Yes, So of course Gotho walks in while they're doing this, he sees it happen, and then he flips it once again. He's here too late. He flips out and starts attacking the dudes. Two of them get different kinds of deaths by acid. One guy he throws straight into the sulfuric acid tank alive. The other guy gets smashed in the face with a beaker of acid. And then the third guy, Gotho, slams inside an iron maiden.

Yeikes, nice, Yeah, this is a great kill. All these were great kills, but the iron Maiden that was the real topping on the cake.

So right after this, here comes Maria wandering into the catacombs. She's checking up on the project. So again this place is really not as secret as it first seemed, and she sees some rats and screams and runs away. But also we see Orla and Tauchiner here around the same time.

Yeah, it maintained secrecy.

But Maria is still running around in the catacombs here, and she encounters a zombie like creature with a burned face. So I was confused about what happened here. But I think this is supposed to be the guy that Gotho hit with the acid beaker. He's either reanimated or somehow sort of zombified, and he just wanders past Maria. But then Gotho arrives and is like, oh, hey, you know you know me?

Yeah, So I think it's the taller of the acid burn guys with one of the other acid burn guys strapped to his back. Yeah, And it's unclear whether the guy on his back is alive or dead at this point. Clearly the zombified guy is barely alive in a very bad state of mind, but it's uncertain whether like tall guy is trying to escape and bring his buddy with him.

You know, I noticed this about the werewolf versus the Vampire Woman as well. A lot of Nashy movies have a random zombie type figure with gross face makeup that appears only for one or two scenes and is not explained. It all exactly the same in this other movie. There's like a zombie and the Abbey Ruins in that movie, and we never learn what he is or why.

Yeah, you gotta go a little little bit undead in there, part of his soul.

Yeah. So anyway, here, Maria joins Orla and Tauchiner in the lab and they talk more about the progress of the artificial life that they are incubating, and Orla says, you know, they're right on the cusp. It will be assuming a definite form any day now. But Meyer points out something. She says, you don't know what form the life will take, which means it could be a human form or a monstrous mutation. And Orla tells her off.

Yeah. So we begin to see lots of shots of bits of meat and gore, like pulsing and throbbing inside of the vat. Yeah, it's great.

It looks like a glass stock pot stuffed with blood clots and huge throbbing oysters. Yeah.

And you got to throw some stuff in there, like frogs, live frogs.

Yes. So obviously Gotho is really down and out. Now he goes to talk to Orla and he's like, well, Ilsa has been disintegrated, so now I have no hope. I can't work this job anymore. So I'm going to go turn myself into the police. And Orla tells him, no, no, no, no, don't do that. I need you and let's see, I'll create a new Ilsa for you.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right, a whole new one. And somehow Gotho goes for this. He's overjoyed. He's like, you do that for me, professor, and Orla says, yes, yes, yes, I will do that, but I need you first to go to the morgue and swipe some fresh body parts for me. I need a head. You've got to get me a human head. So Gotho says, all right, and he goes to the morgue and he saws off a human head and it looks pretty realistic.

Yeah yeah, Now I've read that the filmmakers had the chance to use a real corpse here, but nobody ended up having the stomach to go through with the shoot. I'm unsure person if this is true or if this is more sort of movie myth making. So you be the judge, But at any rate, this is a fake head. This is an effect. But it looks amazing like it has the big old Man ears on it and all very well done.

So Gotho gets chased with the head by some kind of night watchmen or police who were wearing I don't know, they're wearing sort of those straw hats, like like Harold Hill the music man, and he escapes by climbing onto rooftops and running over the rooftops through the town, eventually making his way I don't know if this was intentional or by accident, but he makes his way into the window of Elki's apartment, and she's here in her night gown reading a book. I was trying to see what

They're hitting it off.

They're hitting it off, so some more mad science stuff going on into the lab. He goes back, and Orla throws the human head into the vat full of oysters and organs. He just drops it right into the tank.

I love how he's like, I should really take the brain out first, but I'm just so excited to carry on with the project, and d goes in.

That's right, so Orla quickly sets Gotho to some more grave robbing. They go out digging up graves. While Aurla's standing there making speeches at him, Gotho's digging. They end up killing a security guard at the cemetery, and Gotho is horrified at what he has done, like he hits him with a shovel, kills the guys like, oh no, But Orla says, oh, you know, sweet bonus bodies. They

And who's going to supply those live humans or at least very fresh humans. Well, you know, it's got to.

Be Gotho, that's right. So oh and at some point, kind of without much fanfare, the new creature is suddenly born. Like Orla and Gotho are in the lab and they quickly lock the tank behind a heavy wooden door to one of the cells in the dungeon because Orla he detects that it's about to transform. But we don't get

Yeah, they describe a little bit. They're like, oh, it broke the tray, it broke the table, and so forth. And we hear the sounds, which is great because it builds up in our imagination of what this might be, especially when we have sort of conflicting ideas about what it's going to be. It sounds like a monster, but Orla is eventually going to talk about it in terms of some primordial goddess that is being reborn in this artificial biological state.

That's right. So we get more scenes of discussing the ethics of the projects between Tauchener and Meyer. Meyer is again the voice of reason here. She's like, there's just something wrong about the way that you are ignoring the impact on people's lives, especially the abuse of Gotho. It's wrong. Meyer says, all the crimes of the Hunchback are really the crimes of Orla. He's the one responsible, which to some extent is true. Maybe not all of the crimes, but some of the crimes.

Yeah, I mean Gotho still he has agency. Yeah, you can't pin all of the son Orla.

Yeah. Orla clearly shares a lot of the blame, but she breaks through to Tauchner and convinces him to abandon the project. However, whoops. Tauchner goes to Orla and he's like, I'm done, can't do this anymore. And this leads to a fight where Orla gets Gotho to knock Tauchner unconscious and lock him in a cell in the dungeon. Orla tells Gotho that he will have need of Tauchner for

Yeah, because also Gotho believes that any day now he's going to get that new Ilsa and she can approve in person.

Oh yeah, that's right. And obviously Elk is super into Gotho. I think Gotho is like, yes, I like Elki too, So yeah, they start kissing and there's like a full Gotho Elkie love scene. I don't know if I should say full there's a brief Gotho Elkie love scene.

Yeah, and this is the scene that is a noticeably different film quality. I've read that the original I've read two different stories about the original Newde footage here. One was that it was destroyed by Spanish censors and also at now she had a naked hump effect on his back that ended up not looking all that great and

Yeah, but there's no ambiguity. Now, it's not just a crush like they're having a full on love affair. Yeah.

Is it doomed love?

Well?

Yes?

Probably probably. Yeah. Now there's another scene where doctor Meyer comes down to the dungeon. I think she's looking for her fiance who has been locked in a cell, and she confronts Orela and finds out, uh oh, that we've been feeding ladies from the hospital to this creature. She looks through the peepole and the cell door to see

Like a rampaging ogre on the Muppet Show, sort of a sound yeah.

Yeah, and they just are constant. Elkie. She looks out the hospital window at one point and just sees Gotho taking kidnapped women to the dungeon. So she just like directly witnesses it, and it's like, oh, that's not good. So she climbs down follow him. So I think we're building up to a final showdown, aren't we.

Yeah. Yeah, Now we do get a nice villain monologue, one of many villain monologues from Orla, but I really like this one where he's talking about the creature that is growing. He says, quote from the subtitles, the creature is a primordial one of the beings that inhabited Earth before the human race. Her race is the oldest books like the Necronomicon and the old treaties of magic and

What does the citation on that look like, Well.

What's his name? Alhazard reference Alhazzard. And I guess I'm hoping that Gotho would also get an author credit on this. I mean, he's putting in the work.

Yeah, but guess what Orla thinks the creature needs more of to reach its final form, needs more food, needs some more living flesh. So oh, and here comes Elki following Gothot into the catacombs. So what's it going to be. He's like, go get me, Elkie. We're going to feed her to the creature. Gotho does bring her to the lab, but when Orla commands him to put her inside the cell, Gotho refuses. He's He's like, no, not her. She was kind to me. I have to protect her. So this

Absolutely, that monster is going to get loose. It's going to rampage, and we're here for it.

Yeah. So well, actually, first there's an interlude in this fight in the lab where Gotho lets Meyer and Tauchner out of their cells. And she asks them to take Elki to safety. So the three basically good people run away. They get to you escape and be all right. But this is right before the primordial escapes itsel and it attacks Orla and there's this whole fight here. I think it's a pretty awesome looking monster. Kind of a muddy, melted candle slash oily maniac design.

Yeah, like a green, brown sludge monster that looks especially great in this setting with this film quality. And it also benefits us that we don't see much of it. We've just been leading up to this moment, and so that we don't see enough of it to where we really begin to see the seams or anything. Yeah, it's scary. It's a great design. I love it.

Yeah, I think it's really good. It kills Orla, and then in the final the tragic ending that we probably knew was coming, Gotho and the Primordial sort of lock arms and they fall into the sulfuric acid pit together. Bubble bubble the end.

Yeah.

In fact, the words the end appear over the site of blood colored sulphuric acid bubbling in the acid vat. I wonder how much we're supposed to read into this this kind of here we have like the tragic masculine figure of Gotho and this perhaps monstrous feminine, pre human deity type figure, if you believe everything Oil has been saying, also falling into the acid with him. I'm probably reading too much into the scenario.

Oh yeah, what does that mean? The oily maniac goddess and Gotho meet their fates together.

Yeah, I mean it's but Gotho. To be clear, redeems himself fully here. He has saved all of humanity and we are in his debt. There can be no argument over that.

He did nothing wrong. He's fine, now.

Yeah, well he did several things quite wrong, but he saved us all in the end. He came through in the end, and that's what matters.

That's right, because who knows what the primordial could have done. If it truly was kind of a Goser type figure, a lost god from ancient times, it could have swept over the earth and ruled us all.

Yeah. I don't get the sense that this thing was really interested in sharing ancient civilization secrets like Orla was talking about, Like, it's not gonna I can't imagine having a conversation with it with it where you're like, so, what's up with the Egyptian neck rests? How did they use that those when they slept? And it would be like, well, let me tell you all about it. No, no, no, this thing wants to eat and grow and do god knows what else.

It would just eat us all. Yeah, yeah, all right, Well that was Hunchback in the Morgue.

Yeah, yeah, you know, rats aside. I think a real strong picture in the Nashi verse filmography here. You know, it's got all the all the elements you want out of a Nashy picture, you know, some great effects, some ridiculous moments, you know, has it all?

I would be interested to collect the examples of Nashi's filmography, I guess, especially the movies that he had a hand in writing or directing that don't have an element of doomed love in them, doomed tragic love, like, because it seems like he's almost always doing that. So like, what what were his other main interests? You know, what are what are the characters' emotional motivations when it's not.

That well there definitely seemed to be a number of pictures I've seen a few of them recently. Watch Panic Beats, which brings the Warlock all Iraq back in an altered form, but is largely a picture about like how awful people are.

Yeah.

Yeah, so at some point in the future, well, maybe we'll have to come back and do a Nashy picture where he's sort of playing against type a bit. But then on the other hand, the ones where he's playing a true Nashy you know, tragic, doomed character, those are so good it's hard to resist though, So it would be very hard to pass up one of his monster roles in favor of one of these other pictures.

I'm just imagining a Paul Nashi themed Valentine card that's like, will you stab me in the heart with a silver cross.

There's something you could do a whole series of them. I'd love to see it. Someone may have done it. I mean that Nashi's a big enough horror icon at this point, somebody may have created those already. If so, please someone send me a link and in general right into us with your thoughts on a Hunchback of the Morgue, other Nashi pictures, or you know, favorite Spanish horror films,

House, Huge Things. As always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

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