Hunchback of the Morgue

Almost exactly 14 years ago I spent a couple weeks in Paris with an accommodating companion, immersing myself as much as possible in all of the films and film history that the city had to offer. What follows is a short excerpt from a lengthy diary that I kept during my stay.

1.08.02

I’ve never been to Europe before, but the two things I know about Paris are that it’s cold in January and that it has hundreds of movie theaters. The most amazing thing to me is that nearly every other theater seems to be a revival house featuring one mind-blowing programming schedule after another. Looking at last week’s city-wide schedule on the internet revealed career retrospectives of David Lynch and the Coen brothers; a program of rare shorts from Walerian Borowczyk, Roman Polanski and others; Peckinpah’s director’s cut of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID; and a number of American films noir that I’ve never seen. French language theaters seemed to be showing the entire history of French cinema, from Méliès to Truffaut to Jeunet. The language barrier wouldn’t deter me from taking in a René Laloux double feature of TIME MASTERS and FANTASTIC PLANET, or more incredibly a Jess Franco double feature of LES TRÔNE DE FEU and LES DÉMONS. Of course I don’t know if any of these films will still be playing when I arrive on the 10th. I’m told that the movie schedules change every Wednesday.

1.10.02

Today was spent recuperating from jet lag, but before we completely crashed I discovered an amazing bookstore right next door to our hotel. It’s called Cine Reflet (14, rue Monsieur-le-Prince) and they specialize in film books, magazines, posters, pressbooks and other memorabilia.  We’re completely wiped out so I snatch up an out of print book on Werner Herzog (in French, but with loads of black & white stills that I’ve never seen) and vow to explore the store more thoroughly when I can keep my eyes open. I pick up a copy of Zurban Paris at a newsstand for this week’s movie schedule and I’m happy to see some holdovers from last week. Jess Franco is gone, but Paul Naschy has taken his place and tomorrow we’ll attempt to catch a screening of LE BOSSU DE LA MORGUE!

1.11.02

We woke up very early this morning for breakfast and a pre-dawn walk. I notice that there are 24-hour VHS/DVD rental vending machines everywhere. You make your selection on a tiny TV screen and then your tape or disc pops out of a slot below. It’s just like an ATM machine. [Ed. In 2002, there were only 11 Redbox machines in the U.S. and they were all in Washington, D.C.] The ads for LE FABULEUX DESTIN D'AMÉLIE POULAIN on video are everywhere and TITANIC seems to the DVD release that’s getting the biggest push. We pop into a newsstand for some postcards and I find two copies of the special Internet & Cinéma issue of Cahiers du Cinéma that contains an article by Tim Lucas that mentions an interview I did with WICKER MAN director Robin Hardy. I was unable to find a copy in the U.S. so this is a fun surprise. It’s pretty cool to open up a magazine in Paris and see my own name on the page. I buy both copies.

We locate the cinema we’re looking for (Le Brady at 39, boulevard de Strasbourg) about an hour before showtime and after checking out the lobby cards for SHIRI, Jean-Pierre Mocky’s L’ALBATROS and the afternoon feature, LE BOSSU DE LA MORGUE, we head across the street for lunch. I’m still having a difficult time believing that a Paul Naschy film from 1972 is actually playing two shows a day for a week, and I’m truly amazed when from across the street I see a line quickly form as the doors to the theater are opened ten minutes before the show. We hurry over and fall in place behind a chaotic horde of street people who are loudly debating the gap between ticket prices and how much change they all have between them. The man behind the ticket counter is having an extremely difficult time making change and he finally dumps his entire coin drawer in a big pile on the counter, a strategy that makes things go even more slowly. My date grips my arm tightly as the crazy behavior on display becomes crazier: a man with some serious facial deformities puts different euro notes over his eyes and compulsively runs his hands over the SHIRI poster on the wall, four older men bring the line to a halt as they hold out handfuls of change to their leader who now refuses to step up to the ticket booth, and a slightly sinister looking young man stands motionless, staring back at the line of misfits winding out the door. We finally make it into the theater, which has a small but surprisingly nice interior. The walls are stained with what appears to be years of cigarette smoke, but the tightly packed seats are clean and well-padded, even on the back where I’m forced to rest my knees. As the lights go down there are about ten crazy old men seated in front of us, but I can hear (and smell) more people file in behind us throughout the show.

LE BOSSU DE LA MORGUE is of course the French dubbed version of Javier Aguirre’s HUNCHBACK OF THE MORGUE starring Paul Naschy as the title character. I’ve never seen the film before and I don’t speak French but I’m familiar enough with Naschy and Aguirre to know that the comic book plotting won’t really require subtitles in order to be understood. In place of a credit sequence there is a crudely edited barrage of shots from later in the film with the French title superimposed over Naschy getting hit in the head with a rock. The film proper begins in an Alpine lodge where rowdy patrons guzzle from gallon-sized beer glasses to the accompaniment of loud accordion music. So we have a Spanish movie set in Germany and dubbed into French. There are a few onscreen titles that are in English, so this may be an American of British print that has been dubbed for the French market. The 35mm print has seen better days and there are near-constant flurries of scratches as well as rude jump cuts and bad splices at the reel changes, but the flat widescreen framing (not ‘scope as it’s labeled in various books and magazines) looks great, the colors are strong and the picture is sharp. The gory action begins almost immediately with Naschy’s hunchback stalking a Bavarian drunkard who ends up on a slab in the morgue after a few too many of those gargantuan beers. In lieu of an autopsy, the deceased is simply dismembered by the hunchback in gruesome detail. It seems that the hunchback is supplying body parts to a mad doctor who is creating some sort of human stew in a large glass box hidden deep within a labyrinthine torture chamber/medical laboratory. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of secrecy involved since fellow doctors, workmen and even girlfriends are invited down for a peek now and then. Naschy’s hunchback really knows how to pull the babes and it’s his tragic love that causes most of the film’s fireworks, including a show-stopping sequence involving a beautiful corpse and dozens of flaming rats. Naschy reportedly received numerous rat bites while filming this scene, but that’s nothing compared to the treatment suffered by the rats.

There are a handful of other sequences that also border on the surreal, such as the moment when a gang of rowdy doctors in lab coats beat the tar out of the hunchback on the hospital’s front lawn, and of course the heated love scene between the hunchback and one of his lovely paramours. Disturbingly, the scene that provoked the loudest response from my fellow moviegoers depicted a woman being brutally whipped with a leather belt. They laughed and cheered during this extended scene, but apart from the constant zombie-like shuffling up and down the aisles, they were strangely silent for most of the picture.

As the French end credits rolled—set to bouncy Oktoberfest music—nobody in the audience budged. We waited until the lengthy exit music ended before squeezing our way out of our row, but not a single other person got up to leave. It seems they were planted for the day. As we walked out I noticed that the entire back half of the theater was filled with old men. Another quick look at the lobby cards—six of the worst stills imaginable—and we were off. All in all one of the more memorable theatrical experiences I’ve ever had.

––MW

Star Knight

STAR KNIGHT (EL CABALLERO DEL DRAGON, 1985) is a Spanish science fiction film set in the Middle Ages, directed by Fernando Colomo and starring Klaus Kinski, Harvey Keitel and Fernando Rey. It's an oddity that has somehow always been lurking around on various public domain video labels on both VHS and DVD. Woe to the determined Kinski completist.

Keitel plays Klever, a servant to the Count of Rue who lusts after his boss's incessantly nagging daughter, Alba. Klever, whose other goal is to secure a knighthood, has also vowed to slay the "dragon" that has been terrorizing the countryside. All this "terrorizing" is done offscreen and it's soon revealed that the dragon is in fact an alien spaceship on some sort of goat-collecting mission. One afternoon Alba gets fed up with something or another and decides to sneak out of the castle and go skinny dipping in a nearby lake. It just so happens that the goat collector has parked his camper at the bottom of the lake. When he gets an eyeful of Alba, the goats suddenly don't seem so appealing, so he decides to add her to his collection. Alba is soon giving the handsome alien, who she calls IX, an earful of her nagging ("Do something! Don't you love me?! Well prove it! Don't touch me with those awful gloves!" and on and on...).

Of course Klever is filled with jealousy and after discovering a way of removing IX's invincible armor, he challenges the alien to a duel. Suddenly IX seems to have second thoughts and releases Alba from the ship. Any sane alien would take his goats and head home, but IX sticks around and risks it all for the love, or whatever, of a mortal earthling.

What about Kinski you ask? Well, until the big cast reunion at the end, Kinski might as well be in an entirely different movie. The advantage of this is that his movie is actually photographed better and he doesn't have to embarrass himself by being in the same scenes as the miserable Keitel or the incredibly annoying Alba. Kinski plays an alchemist who is searching for the "secret of secrets," the elixir of human life, that will make him immortal. Of course IX hears about this and just gives it to him, saving the magician years of toiling away in his basement lab boiling poop and berries.

Keitel, who is one of the few actors to do his own dubbing, performs his entire role with a heavy New York accent. His part seems to be the only one which was written with faux-Shakespearean dialogue (at one point he actually says, "Are ye talking to me?"), making him seem even more ridiculous than he already is. The one exception to all the awfulness, performance wise, is Kinski, who in spite of being dubbed by another actor actually puts some effort into what little he has to work with. He seems to be the only actor that wasn't told he was appearing in a comedy, so while Keitel and Rey perform pratfalls and ancient Abbott & Costello routines, Kinski actually comes out of this train wreck with a little dignity. Kinski's scenes seem to have had a little extra care put into them by the technical crew, and some of them are quite atmospheric and attractive. A few of the locations are striking and some of the earlier scenes have some nicely photographed scenery, but the remainder of the movie is dominated by cheesy special effects and out of place desert locations.

--MW

Wax Mask

WAX MASK (MASCHERA DI CERA) - 1997 

Directed by Sergio Stivaletti 

Screenplay by Lucio Fulci and Daniele Stropa from a story by Dario Argento 

Photography by Sergio Salvati 

Starring Robert Hossein, Romina Mondello and Riccardo Serventi Longhi

The story behind the production of WAX MASK (onscreen title: THE WAX MASK) is widely known among genre fans. The film was to be the first collaboration between Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, with Argento producing and Fulci directing from his own script. Unfortunately, Fulci died during preproduction and the directorial reigns were passed on to special effects artist Sergio Stivaletti. At the time of its release, WAX MASK received less than enthusiastic notices from fans and critics, who often cited the lousy English dubbing and the TERMINATOR-inspired finale as being particularly offensive. Of course, most viewers will find it impossible not to imagine what Fulci would have come up with had it not been for his unfortunately timed passing. This is the film that could have brought him out of his autumnal slump and ushered in a new heyday for the director and his fans. But this was not to be. Instead, those same fans scoffed at the idea that Fulci's pet project was to be realized by a first-time director only known for his special effects work. It is a shame that Fulci wasn't able to complete this film, but it is also a shame that Stivaletti has not been given the credit he deserves.

With an upcoming blu-ray edition from boutique label One 7 Movies arriving on January 31st, it's worth looking back at the film and Image's original DVD release. WAX MASK begins in Paris in the year 1900. A little girl, Sonia, witnesses the gruesome murder of her parents by a cloaked figure with a metal hand. Years later in Rome, Sonia (Romina Mondello) takes a job as a costumer in a wax museum run by Boris Volkoff* (Robert Hossein). The museum is devoted to depicting famous crime scenes and when local residents start disappearing, a newspaper reporter begins to get suspicious. Obviously based on a familiar story, but Stivaletti's film manages to inject quite a bit of originality into the proceedings, avoiding a by-the-numbers remake of MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM and André de Toth's HOUSE OF WAX.

Predictably for a special-effects-man-turned-director, the movie opens with a showcase of gore effects. In fact, the camera lingers maybe a bit too long on the details of the crime scene, causing me to worry that Stivaletti was going to ignore the old less-is-more adage and neutralize the power of his impressive effects by showing too much. In past interviews Stivaletti was often vocal about directors whom he felt hadn't done his effects justice and I was a little concerned that he might not be able to pull it off that well himself after finally being given the chance to direct. Well, luckily that didn't turn out to be the case. After getting past the over-the-top opening it becomes apparent that Stivaletti is just as interested in creating a believable period atmosphere as he is in creating believable effects. The rich period setting immediately harkens back to the Gothic heyday of Italian horror. Certain shots and sequences were reminiscent of Riccardo Freda's TERROR OF DR. HICHCOCK, THE GHOST and other technicolor classics of the Italian Golden Age. Regular Fulci collaborator Sergio Salvati once again proves himself to be a world-class cinematographer. The photography is beautiful and Stivaletti and Salvati make great use of many very interesting locations and spectacularly designed sets. I'm sure they weren't given much of a budget, but what they've accomplished here as far as the look and atmosphere could compete with many films done on a far grander scale.

The extraordinary visuals are complemented by lead actress Romina Mondello. Looking a bit like a wax figure herself, Mondello is perfect in this role, evoking some of the same qualities as Daliah Lavia in THE WHIP AND THE BODY. Not many of the other actors are particularly outstanding, but there are no sore-thumb performances and Robert Hossein (CEMETERY WITHOUT CROSSES) gives a curiously restrained portrayal of the villainous Volkoff. Adding to the classiness of the production is a very beautiful orchestral score by composer Maurizio Abeni.

Unfortunately, everything you've heard about the dubbing is true. It is a major drawback and probably one of the biggest reasons that the film isn't very popular with English-speaking audiences. It's a real shame since the other technical credits on the film are so outstanding. Well, almost all the other technical credits. The delicate period atmosphere is shattered on a few occasions by some very intrusive and inept (even by 1997 standards) computer graphics effects. What makes it even more regrettable is that every one of those CGI atrocities is completely unnecessary. Thankfully, these shots are very brief and are easy enough to ignore. On the other hand, I can't agree at all with the criticisms of the TERMINATOR-inspired finale. True, Cameron's film was probably the major reference point for Stivaletti in this scene, but it falls right in line with the turn-of-the-century science fiction concepts that are found throughout WAX MASK and I think it works beautifully. The effect is executed well enough and the TERMINATOR reference is fleeting at best.

Image's long out-of-print DVD release was presented as part of their EuroShock Collection in 2000. The non-anamorphic image is letterboxed at about 1.77:1 and the soundtrack features a Dolby Digital 2.0 mix. The picture quality was acceptable for the time, but looks bleary and artifact-ridden to eyes accustomed to blu-ray. The blacks are often overly dark and muddy, and the vibrant colors are plagued by all sorts of digital noise and aliasing. The soundtrack has a limited range and very few directional effects, but it's clear. Unfortunately, the dubbed voices are recorded at a much higher volume than the music and sound effects, which creates a rather jarring effect. The upcoming blu-ray release will reportedly feature an Italian language track, but unfortunately without subtitles.

The Image DVD contains a very brief still section, which is billed as a "behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the special makeup effects." While it does contain stills of Stivaletti's make-up effects, it also contains a few interesting (and not so interesting) film stills and non-effects behind-the-scenes shots. None of the photos are captioned and while most people won't need help identifying Dario Argento, some might not know that is Sergio Stivaletti posing alongside his creations. Also easy to miss is a shot of Stivaletti posing with his frequent employer Lamberto Bava.

Hopefully the upcoming remaster will make the dated Image release obsolete and bring some new eyes to this overlooked movie. It's definitely a must-see for all of those who were disappointed with Argento's own period Leroux adaptation, PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. It's a shame that the film received such bad word of mouth when it was released, because WAX MASK was one of the more impressive directorial debuts in Italian horror cinema since Michele Soavi's STAGEFRIGHT. Stivaletti didn't return to the director's chair until 2004 with a shot-on-video Mario Bava-inspired anthology film THE THREE FACES OF TERROR.

*I kept expecting a character name Bela Volgosi to appear, but no such luck.

--MW