It’s Movie Night and I’m hooked solid when the flick’s philosophical underpinnings are spelled out in the opening dialogue and are clearly words to live by.

“Dealing with a murderer is not only repugnant, but it can lead to…complications.”

I have always found this to be true.

Doesn’t that line sound like something Charlie Chan might have said? But no, it’s one of the many pearls of wisdom included in the Euro-trash classic; The Hunchback of the Morgue. This is another inexplicably overlooked candidate for adaptation to a Broadway musical.

Check out this snappy exchange;

“Sulphuric acid!”

“Yes. We’ll be using it to dispose of the anatomical parts and other organic things.”

Let’s ponder that for a moment, shall we? …”other organic things”… what could “other organic things” possibly be? And do we really want to know?

This film has so many of the basic elements of great bad film-making;

• A secret cave with jagged rock walls but a perfectly flat floor (only in the movies can such a geo-miracle exist).
• A fully functional mad doctor laboratory (with much gurgling and bubbling equipment) in said secret cave.
• Sporadic electricity (besides most of the acting). This state-of-the-art laboratory (with much gurgling and bubbling equipment) is lit by torches – go figure.
• Whispering. Everyone in the film whispers. Everyone, everywhere, all the time. I’m guessin’ the actors are actually moonlighting golf commentators.
• A hunchback with a foot fetish and the ability to climb tile-roofs like Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief.
• A student nurse whose apartment has dead animals and a Modigliani hanging on her walls. Clearly student nurses make damn good money in Europe and have a remarkable range in taste.
• Grave-robbing, decapitation, artificial life (besides most of the acting).

The only thing missing is Godzilla!

I loved it.