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Category: Pablo Pérez

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Plot: disabled morgue worker will stop at nothing to resurrect his lost love.

The Spanish Lon Chaney, Paul Naschy, is rightly associated with horror and the macabre as that was his genre of choice. Through out his long career he played most, if not all, of the Universal Classic Monsters. His most famous and enduring is, of course, El Hombre Lobo (the Wolf Man) but he also played Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and the Mummy. At earliest this happened in the second El Hombre Lobo episode Assignment Terror (1969). While that was unarguably his bread and butter Naschy frequently utilized the conventions and trappings of the genre as vehicles for other, more ambitious ideas. El jorobado de la Morgue (or The Hunchback Of the Morgue) was one such vehicles and probably the earliest one at that. It put a macabre spin on a beloved fairytale and did so much with so very little. In other words, never underestimate the little guy. For one reason or another The Hunchback Of the Morgue is often mistakingly overlooked in favor of his popular El Hombre Lobo series.

Besides his El Hombre Lobo Naschy played an array of different roles, either historical or fictional, Paul Naschy had a penchant for recognizing which trend or was worth capitalizing upon. Whether it was history, superstition, religion, or a certain cinematic innovation catching his eye Naschy always had a screenplay ready to be filmed. As such he assembled a respectable host of worthwhile secondary features and lesser known memorable characters. These include, among others, his Gilles de Rais (1404-1440) inspired nobleman/alchemist Alaric de Marnac from Horror Rises From the Tomb (1973) and Panic Beats (1983) as well as the similarly inspired Barón Gilles de Lancré from The Devil's Possessed (1974), and the The Mummy (1932) inspired The Mummy's Revenge (1973). During the giallo boom he contributed The Killer Is One of Thirteen (1973) and Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974). Then there are The Exorcist (1973) ripoff Exorcism (1974), the Liane, Jungle Goddess (1956) imitation The Jungle Goddess (1974), the Witchfinder General (1968) and Mark Of the Devil (1970) knockoff Inquisition (1977), the Biblical parable The Traveller (1979) (or his liberal reworking of the Old Testament theodicy scripture of the Book of Job) and his own deranged take on Andrzej Żuławski's The Devil (1972), or the late peplum The Cantabrians (1980) that chronicled the Cantabrian Wars. As things tends to go, these secondary features didn’t always generate the same kind of interest or debate.

In the banner year for erotic gothic horror that was 1973 Count Dracula’s Great Love was his response not to the psychotronic-pop art excesses of Jesús Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos (1971) but the Karnstein trilogy from Britain’s house of Hammer. He envisioned it as a bodice-ripping, bosom baring period horror and a celebration of the (preferably disrobed) female form with a selection of the hottest starlets of the day. However, nothing is ever simple and production was anything but smooth sailing. French New Wave star Haydée Politoff (briefly a muse for Éric Rohmer) suffered a head injury when she was involved in an accident on a winding mountain road and crew sustained injuries when sets collapsed on them. To make matters worse Ingrid Garbo and Mirta Miller fell seriously ill when a chemical compound used for the special effects turned out to be toxic and had an adverse effect on both. Faced with no other option but to temporarily halt principal photography so that Politoff could properly recover Paul Naschy proposed to producer Francisco Lara Polop and director Javier Aguirre that they retain director of photography Raúl Pérez Cubero and special effects man Pablo Pérez and the cast and crew they had in place and film The Hunchback Of the Morgue instead. It only required minimal location shooting in Feldkirch in Vorarlberg, Austria for some exteriors and the rest could be filmed back at home in Madrid. The ruins of Monasterio de Santa Maria la Real de Valdeiglesias - or the monastery that had featured prominently in Amando de Ossorio’s Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972) - was a key location. With the main cast and crew at the ready, all Naschy had to do was invite some marketable guest stars. As fate would have it, by the time cameras stopped rolling Politoff, Garbo, and Miller all were recuperated and filming on Count Dracula’s Great Love could resume. In the end, everything worked out.

In Feldkirch, Austria on the border with Switzerland and Liechtenstein med students Udo (Fernando Sotuela), Hans Burgher (Kino Pueyo, as Joaquin Rodriguez 'Kinito') and his friend (Antonio Mayans) are engaged in a drinking contest and the boys are enjoying the beer as much as their female company Eva (Sofía Casares, as Sofia Casares) and her friend (Iris André, as Iris Andre). Everything seems well until one of the waitresses (Susana Latour, as Susana Latur) scares herself half to death when she lays eyes upon an ominous stranger. Drunkenly Udo staggers outside dropping a photograph. Kindhearted Wolfgang Gotho (Jacinto Molina Álvarez, as Paul Naschy) tries to help the drunken student but is scolded for his charity. You see, Gotho was born a hunchback and his deformity has him ostracized, scorned, and shunned by pretty much all townspeople. When Udo collapses from acute alcohol poisoning his body is brought to the morgue of the municipal hospital. Gotho takes great pleasure in dismantling the boy’s body for the way he treated him when he was alive. Saturated in dejection the only ray of light in his lovelorn miserable existence is Ilse (María Elena Arpón, as Maria Elena Arpon – not using her international market alias, Helen Harp) who stays at the hospital. Alleviating his suffering is Ilse’s genuine kindness and attention. However, their romance is irrevocably doomed as Ilse is stricken with tubercolosis and terminally ill. One day on the streets he’s ridiculed and pelted with rocks by children because of his birth defect. When medical intern Elke (Rosanna Yanni, as Rossana Yanny) sees this she takes Gotho to her home and tends to his wounds. In awe of such humanity in gratitude he lowly kisses her feet.

Wolfgang enjoys nothing more than bringing Ilse a bouquet of flowers every day and pushing her around on the hospital grounds in her wheelchair. One afternoon their relaxing stroll is interrupted when the four med students from the pub insult and accost her. He takes to defending her honor but the opposition poses too great. Dr. Frederick Tauchner (Víctor Barrera, as Vic Winner) and dean of the hospital Dr. Maria Meyer (Maria Perschy, as Maria Pershy) are friendly to his plight and chastise the students. They help Gotho and as soon as he’s able he rushes to see Ilse again. Unfortunately the assault aggravated her already dire condition and she dies before he can get to her. Dismayed at the passing of his only friend Gotho is enraged when the doctors see her as a vessel for organ harvest. When two morgue workers (José Luis Chinchilla and Ingrid Rabel) try to steal Ilse’s golden necklace he kills them both with a hatchet in a fit of blind rage. He absconds with her body and takes it to his catacomb lair. Dr. Orla (Alberto Dalbés, as Alberto Dalbes) has lost his tenure, funding, and reputation as he was ousted from the medical community over ethical violations and the dubious nature of his research. When he learns of Gotho’s homicidal proclivities he promises to revive his beloved Ilse if he brings him the bodies he requires. Meanwhile, Elke the ginger intern has taken something of a shine to the generous and virtuous hunchback. As the bodies start to mount the commissioner (Ángel Menéndez, as Angel Menendez) dispatches two police inspectors (Manuel de Blas and Antonio Pica) to investigate the sudden spate of violent homicides in the area. Is Dr. Orla really trying to help Gotho or is he just exploiting his desperation for his own selfish interests?

While this might not look like much upon closer inspection Naschy’s script (that he co-wrote with Javier Aguirre, and Alberto S. Insúa) reveals quite some hidden depth. It places the iconic character of Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in the plot of Robert Wise’s The Body Snatcher (1945) (produced by Val Lewton and based upon the 1884 Robert Louis Stevenson short story of the same name) that starred both Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. The Stevenson story was inspired by the 1828 Burke and Hare murders in 19th-century Edinburgh, Scotland and there are faint echoes of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein. Much less prevalent, but present all the same, are light shades of the classic fairytale Beauty and the Beast. At heart The Hunchback Of the Morgue is a romance, albeit it a very morbid one. Whereas Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973) was filled to the brim with beautiful girls in period costumes and a dizzying amount of heaving bosoms The Hunchback Of the Morgue is a contemporary gothic romance with splashes of blood and gore. The opening scene at the alm could have come from a German sex comedy (Tiroler or otherwise) if the deeply-cut dirndls and large pints of beer are anything to go by. The scenes at the hospital feel more like a women in prison flick than anything else. They’re never exactly as sleazy as the Brazilian examples of the genre but it’s the idea that counts. For one reason or another Naschy had something of a predilection towards playing tragic heroes in doomed romances around this time. Dracula (and his human alter ego Dr. Wendell Marlow), Wolfgang Gotho, and Waldemar Daninsky are all but slight variations of the same character that Naschy played in all these things. Italy got to cannibalism with Man From Deep River (1972) and Spain got there a year later with Amando de Ossorio’s jungle safari adventure Night of the Sorcerers (1973). In a break from convention Spain got to necrophilia earlier with this as Riccardo Freda’s The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962) (with Barbara Steele) was a gothic horror and Joe D’Amato would only delve into the subject with Beyond the Darkness (1979) some six years later.

And once again Naschy was able to assemble a cast of domestic monuments, some of the hottest starlets of the day, and notable supporting actors. First there’s Ángel Menéndez from The Loreleys Grasp (1974), Rosanna Yanni from The Mark Of the Wolfman (1968) (that also starred Menéndez), Malenka, the Vampire’s Niece (1969), and the soccer comedy Las Ibéricas F.C. (1971). Then there are María Elena Arpón from Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972) and Maria Perschy from the third (and last) Blind Dead episode The Ghost Galleon (1974), Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974), Exorcism (1975), and The People Who Own the Dark (1976). Also present are Alberto Dalbés and Víctor Barrera from Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973), Horror Rises From the Tomb (1973), and Vengeance of the Zombies (1973) as well as José Luis Chinchilla from The Devil's Possessed (1974), The Werewolf and the Yeti (1975), and Return Of the Wolfman (1980). In a supporting role there’s Antonio Mayans from Nightmare City (1980) and Vampyres (2015) as well as a whole lot of Jesús Franco and Eurociné bilge including, but not limited to, Night of the Assassins (1974), Oasis Of the Zombies (1982), and Golden Temple Amazons (1986). Finally there are reliable second-stringers Manuel de Blas from Assignment Terror (1969) and The Vampires Night Orgy (1973). De Blas continues to act to this day and he even was in the recent (and much delayed) Uncharted (2022) movie! Then there are Susana Latour from A Bell From Hell (1973) (with Christina von Blanc and Maribel Martín) and Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973) as well as professional warm body Ingrid Rabel from The Dracula Saga (1973). Compared to other Naschy productions, before and after, this one isn’t as star-studded. Argentine import Rosanna Yanni is worth seeing in anything and María Elena Arpón is one of the unsung stars of Spanish exploitation (along with notable almost-stars as Carmen Yazalde, Cristina Suriani, and Montserrat Prous). For Arpón this was probably her biggest starring role this side of Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972). Screen monuments Maria Perschy and Ángel Menéndez both had seen better days.

No Naschy feature is complete without its share of behind-the-scenes anecdotes and The Hunchback Of the Morgue has at least two. For starters, real rats were used in the catacomb lair when María Elena Arpón is laying upon the medical slab and Naschy is fully engulfed by a ravenous wave. Second, and perhaps more disturbingly, as in Thriller – A Cruel Picture (1973) (with Christina Lindberg) a real corpse was used for the beheading scene. That is until Naschy became sickened during the throat slitting on the first take and it had to be replaced with a dummy head afterwards. The Hunchback Of the Morgue did well on the festival circuit and won several awards. Paul Naschy won a Georges Méliès Award for Best Actor on the Festival international de Paris du film fantastique et de science-fiction (International Festival of Fantastic and Science-Fiction Cinema of Paris) at the Théatre Le Palace in Paris. It also collected a grand total of 5 awards (including one for best script) distributed between this and Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974) at the International Fantasy and Horror Film Festival Antwerp (a precursor to the present-day International Film Festival Antwerpen – IFFA) in 1976. Not bad for a Spanish fantaterror that remains underestimated to this day.

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Plot: busload of migrant workers is terrorized by vampires in a remote village.

A good title can mean a great deal of things. It can make or break your movie, or function as a succint summary of its premise. Ostensibly the worse fate that can befall a horror feature is not living up to its title. La orgía nocturna de los vampiros (or The nightly orgy of the vampires, released internationally simply as The Vampires Night Orgy) is one such instances. It works wonderfully as a pastiche of gothic horror and the rest of the time it’s a veritable patchwork of well-worn clichés, conveniences, and contrivances. Worse however is that it never lives up to its sensationalist and porntastic title. Apparently it only has attained any sort of cinematic longevity on the back of its all-star Spanish cast. More Necrophagus (1971) or The Witches Mountain (1972) rather than any of Spain’s enduring fantaterror gems The Vampires Night Orgy is the sort of thing that should have been directed in Italy by legendary provocateurs and all-around madmen Renato Polselli or Luigi Batzella. If only it was as sleazy as its title would suggest or have you think.

It’s fair to say that León Klimovsky was off to a flying start when he filmed his first macaroni western in Spain in 1966. His alliance with domestic horror pioneer Paul Naschy was, of course, legendary for the mad creative synergy between the two and the forging of a veritable classic or two in the process. Having made Vengeance of the Zombies (1973) and The Dracula Saga (1973) fatigue was expected and bound to set in. For The Vampires Night Orgy Klimovsky’s direction was on autopilot and without much of his usual visual flair. Don’t come in expecting aristocratic decadence and opulent smoke-filled interiors of The Werewolf vs the Vampire Woman (1971) nor the macabre playfulness and amiable insanity of Doctor Jekyll and the Wolfman (1972). Thankfully by the following year’s The Devil’s Possessed (1974) León Klimovsky was in fine form again. Truth be told, everybody was kind of tired of the vampire shtick here. Yeah, even American import Jack Taylor, Dyanik Zurakowska, and perennial LWO favourite Helga Liné. Taylor had found steady employment in continental European shlock. Memorable roles of his around this time can be found in his brief tenure with Jesús Franco with Succubus (1968) (with Janine Reynaud), Count Dracula (1970) (with Soledad Miranda), Nightmares Come at Night (1970), and Female Vampire (1973) (where he had the chance to prod Lina Romay).

Dyanik Zurakowska was a veteran of macaroni western and Eurospy but is known around these parts for her role in the first Waldemar Daninsky El Hombre Lobo epic The Mark of the Wolfman (1968). Other notables include the Spanish giallo The Killer Is One of Thirteen (1973) and the gothic horror The Orgy of the Dead (1973). In 1973 Helga Liné was very much in-demand. In just 12 months she appeared in 9 (!!) movies, five of which were horror (or fantaterror adjacent). The Vampires Night Orgy was the last of those five and it showed. Helga looks visibly tired. After the brooding Horror Rises From the Tomb (1973), the oneiric fantastique The Loreleys Grasp (1973), the swelteringly atmospheric The Dracula Saga (1973), and the campy Terence Young peplum breastacular The Amazons (1973) something had to give. That something was The Vampires Night Orgy. To say that The Vampires Night Orgy is not remotely on the same level as Horror Express (1972), Nightmare Castle (1965) or even The Blancheville Monster (1963) would be putting it mildly. Far from her worst Helga’s able to elevate material that is otherwise bland and below her usual level and elevate it above the mires of mediocrity. It might not rise to the glorious heights of the genre, but The Vampires Night Orgy is far from the worst Spanish gothic horror has to offer.

A group of seven weary passengers – Ernesto (Gaspar 'Indio' González, as Indio González), Godó (Luis Ciges), César (David Aller) and Alma (Dyanik Zurakowska, as Dianik Zurakowska) as well as a family consisting of Raquel (Charo Soriano), Marcos (Manuel de Blas) and their eight-year-old daughter Violeta (Sarita Gil) – en route to an aristocratic family in Bojoni in the Carpathian mountains in Hungary (and not Romania where Transylvania actually is) where they have been contracted for employment. The passengers find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere after their bus driver (L. Villena) suddenly collapses from a heart attack and dies momentarily after. As a man of action Ernesto takes the wheel and opines that the best solution is to travel to the nearby village of Tolnai, a mere 10 kilometres away. After some much-needed food and rest they can then continue their journey to Bojoni, 110 kilometres from their current whereabouts, and still be on time to commence working. In the mysteriously abandoned Tolnai the group takes refuge in the local tavern. There they run into American tourist Luis (Jack Taylor) who’s also mystified by the complete absence of any inhabitants in the village of Tolnai, a ghost town by all accounts. As everybody retreats to their lodgings for the night, Ernesto decides to stay on guard.

The following morning the group is treated to a veritable feast of a breakfast with more fresh food and coffee than they’ll ever be able to consume. The villagers have also returned and the travelers are welcomed by village mayor Bruno (José Guardiola). Before embarking on their voyage to Bojoni the mayor is gracious enough to invite the group to the village’s famous roast, an offer they gladly take him up on. Marcos explains that they don’t have means to compensate the expenses of such hospitality. All expenses will be paid for by The Countess (Helga Liné), a beloved member of local nobility who has the entire village enthralled – but will never be named, her only wish that the group stay in Tolnai a little while longer. The Countess sends out her hulking servant (Fernando Bilbao) to gather the meat for the promised roast, by any means necessary. As you would expect neither the bus, nor Luis’ car, have any intention of starting and the group has no choice but to remain in the village until further notice or until reparations can be made. Whichever comes first. Either way they will be staying in the village longer than they had anticipated. César immediately catches the eye of The Countess and she invites him to her luxurious abode under the pretense of reciting to her the works of Shakespeare, Browning, and O'Neill. Violeta meanwhile has made friends with a local boy named Niño (Fernando E. Romero, as Fernando Romero). As one by one members of the group disappear under mysterious circumstances Luis and Alma conclude that something is very wrong in Tolnai… When they do finally escape and are able to contact authorities in Bojoni, law enforcement officials can’t seem to find Tolnai on the map and dismiss it as a figment of their fevered imaginations.

The plot is a recombination of several classic pulp vampire movies. The bus breaking down is straight out of The Playgirls and the Vampire (1960) and The Vampire and the Ballerina (1960). The characters looking for petrol and repairs in a desolate village was liberally borrowed from Hammer’s The Kiss of the Vampire (1973), the town being inhabited by cripples was an element from Klimovsky’s earlier The Dracula Saga (1973) and Helga Liné pretty much mirrors Erika Blanc in The Devil’s Nightmare (1971) or Delphine Seyrig in Daughters Of Darkness (1971) as the undead sanguine seductress. The abandoned village is something straight out of The Witches Mountain (1972). What truly makes The Vampires Night Orgy interesting as a gothic horror genre piece is that it, at least in part, is the earliest Spanish zombie movie predating Jorge Grau’s The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974) by a single year. While the shambling villagers technically aren’t zombies in the George Romero sense, they do act as such and serve the same sentinel function as the non-carnivorous zombies of the pre-The Night Of the Living Dead (1968) variety. Having the third act play out as a zombie movie was a genius decision on Klimovsky’s part. Liné’s involvement is only peripheral amounting to that of a “special guest star” and that is either to the movie’s advantage or to its biggest detriment. Dyanik Zurakowska isn’t given much to do either – and it’s more than puzzling that the two biggest stars are so little overall narrative importance. Perhaps Cristina Galbó, who was just starting her giallo tenure, would’ve been a better fit instead of Dyanik Zurakowska. Derivation worked to the advantage of The Dracula Saga (1973), but it didn’t here. The schizophrenic score from José María San Mateo - a strange and uneven mix of funky soul/jazz, rustic folk rock, choral and orchestral segments and electronics – is overly cheery one moment and oppressively dark the next. To say that it barely fits a production of this kind is putting it very mildly.

Whereas The Werewolf vs the Vampire Woman (1971) and The Dracula Saga (1973) were both highly atmospheric in their predilection towards aristrocratic decadence and sweltering Mediterranean eroticism, The Vampires Night Orgy on the other hand goes for a completely different kind of atmosphere. The very opposite of what Klimovsky’s earlier entries in the vampire genre had aimed for. The Vampires Night Orgy isn’t pretty to look at – and that’s exactly the point. Everything here is decidedly colorless and decrepit looking. The entire production bathes in shades of black, grey and brown and is thoroughly pervaded by a sense of muck and earthtiness the way only Spanish productions tend to be. The presence of both Helga Liné and Dyanik Zurakowska notwithstanding The Vampires Night Orgy is, despite its international English language title, deeply and decidedly unerotic. So unerotic that even the obligatory foreign market nude scenes feel needlessly tacky and tacked on. Clearly the psychotronica/psychedelia of Vampyros Lesbos (1971) was a thing of the past and leagues better than plotless brainfarts as Female Vampire (1973). Klimovsky on a bad day is still better than Jesús Franco at his best. The Vampires Night Orgy works because it defies expectations and conventions. It’s a vampire film that plays out as an old-fashioned zombie movie. That it’s generally closer to The Fury of the Wolfman (1970) than to The Dracula Saga (1973) only works to its advantage. The Vampires Night Orgy is only moderately animated and nowhere near the best Iberian horror.

The Vampires Night Orgy is a decidedly ugly looking affair. The eye-bleeding color and verdant landscapes that usually are rampant in Spanish horror is notably absent here. This lack of sprawling colors encompasses every aspect of the production. The entire feature is kind of drab and not even the pairing of Liné and Zurakowska, neither of which are shy about baring skin and putting out, can liven up this quaint little genre exercise. The most interesting aspect of the feature are the vampires themselves. When they are initially introduced they seem to abide by the classic conventions, but once the plot progresses it becomes increasingly evident that they aren’t your typical bloodsucker. While they do sprout fangs they can withstand the light of the sun and move in herd-like packs in the way the cinematic living dead tend to do. The premise in itself is interesting enough as often with vampire movies there’s always a nearby hamlet where superstition reigns and who will warn travelers of the ominous undead threat. In The Vampires Night Orgy that nearby sleepy farming village, frozen in time somewhere around around 1490, has been vampirized in its entirety. Instead of the undead, often (but not always) members of nobility and the upper class, having to ensnare their desired victims here the entire town bends to The Countess’ will.

Klimovsky would return to the nebulous world of the undead with the vastly superior Strange Love of the Vampires (1975) (with Emma Cohen) lighting up the screen. In The Vampires Night Orgy the twilight world of the undead isn’t the usual decadent, gaudy feast of sweltering eroticism and sanguine appetites – but instead it is rather drab, colorless and dank looking. It pretty much is Spanish horror without its usual vitality and phantasmagoria of bright color and the reddest of blood. Which doesn’t make any less enjoyable or entertaining. Nor Dyanik Zurakowska nor Helga Liné raise the temperature despite baring an equal and gratuitous amount of flesh and Jack Taylor, his usual suave self and the obligatory American star, was in far better movies both before and after. The Vampires Night Orgy isn’t your typical Meditterranean potboiler but it isn’t some overlooked classic either. It isn’t even a sub-classic. It’s closest counterpart is the ill-fated Paul Naschy El Hombre Lobo feature The Fury Of the Wolfman (1970), a potentially good concept marred by a suboptimal production design and direction. Klimovsky, ever the professional, wasn’t able to liven up what charitably could be called a serviceable but otherwise uneventful gothic horror throwback. Spain has offered the world far better gothic horror revivals than this rather daft looking romp.