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