It’s Halloween season and it’s movie night!

I’m immediately hooked solid when a flick’s philosophical underpinnings are spelled out in the opening dialogue and are obviously words to live by.

In tonight’s film, a casual chitchat suggests;

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

While I accept the probable veracity of the statement, I have yet to have this sentiment pop up in any conversation. That’s most likely for the best. I suspect a life too-filled with “murderer”, “repugnant”, and “complications” in its language is directly linked to a reduced life expectancy.

But in a horror flick? We’re off and running!

Now that line sounds 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 many of the basic elements of great bad film-making;

• A secret cave with shiny, jagged rock walls but a perfectly flat floor (only in the movies can such a geologic 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 is lit by torches, but the electrical equipment works – 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 in this epic is Godzilla!

Great bad Halloween fare

I loved it.