Naschy had a benchmark year, starring in four movies in 1973.
Directed by Javier Aguirre and written by Naschy, Hunchback of the Morgue (1973) is a truly nasty piece of work, a mean-spirited grand guignol of the highest order and one of Naschy’s best films. Essentially a Frankenstein movie told from the point of view of the mad scientist’s (often) hunchbacked assistant, the type of character Dwight Frye played in the Universal classics. “Marginal characters have always held an appeal for me,” Naschy explained in an interview. “The same kind of appeal you find with broken toys. I can readily identify with them. I've felt like a broken toy myself.”
Set somewhere in the Bavarian Alps (but shot in Spain), the story concerns a mentally retarded hunchback named Gotho (!) who works in the morgue of the local medical college. retardation). Poor Gotho’s got it rough: children pelt him with stones, the medical students bully him and the only person who shows him any kindness, a childhood friend named Ilse (Maria Elena Arpon), is dying from a terminal illness. When Ilsa’s body ends up in the morgue and he sees the sadistic medical students about to mutilate her body, Gotho finally snaps and makes short work of them with a hatchet. He escapes with the corpse and hides in the catacombs beneath the ruins of a medieval abbey.
Dr. Orla (Alberto Dalbés), a Frankensteinian scientist bent on creating life artificially) has his funds cut by the college but voes to continue his experiments. He happens upon a stroke of luck when Gotho, who trusts him because he tried to save Ilsa, comes to him for help. Orla sets up shop in the catacombs and uses Gotho to procure corpses for his experiments. Orla’s experiments seem more like alchemy than traditional science, and soon he’s growing a homunculus, a one-celled organism that has the potential to become humanoid. Soon Orla is sending Gotho out on midnight runs for corpses and, inevitably, live bodies to feed the creature.
Hunchback is choc-a-bloc with gruesome, ghoulish moments. Gotho returns to Ilsa’s body to discover it being devoured by rats. When he discovers that three of Orla’s lackeys have disposed of Ilsa’s putrefying remains in the acid bath (no mad scientist’s lair is complete without one) Gotho goes berserk, killing two of them and tossing acid into the face of the third. In a particularly ghoulish later scene, the man is seen mindlessly wandering the catacombs with his murdered comrade lashed to his back with rope, his doleful moans echoing through the tunnels.
Although he’s no Charles Laughton, Naschy gives one of his best performances here, endowing Gotho with an endearing innocence one moment, savage bloodlust the next. Although he is undoubtedly a murderer, the poor, beleaguered hunchback never comes across as evil. If you were Gotho, you’d be carrying severed heads around in plastic bags too. When the end titles roll, you can’t help but be reminded: he did it all for love.
Horror Rises from the Tomb (1973) is Leon Klimovsky’s take of Black Sunday with the gender roles reversed. Like Bava’s classic it opens with the execution of a witch and her warlock lover, only this time the roles are reversed: instead of Barbara Steele’s Asa and Andrea Checchi’s Javuto we get Naschy as a warlock Alaric de Marnac and Helga Line as his equally depraved companion Mabille. After issuing the requisite promise to avenge himself on his killer’s descendants, Alaric is beheaded and his severed head buried separately from his corpse. Centuries later he and his wife are resurrected to reign all kinds of nastiness, devouring the hearts of their victims (including Naschy, in one of his many dual roles).
Despite never taking itself too seriously and taking a playful (though never campy) approach to the material, Horror Rises from the Tomb has some genuinely unsettling moments. Held at bay by a sacred talisman, Alaric ressurrects his victims as zombies and sends them to subdue the heroes. White-eyed and bloody, they generate a genuine sense of dread when they come shuffling in. Also, by this time Naschy’s acting had improved significantly; he has a grand time gloating over his victims and chewing the scenery.
Vengeance of the Zombies (1973), made with Carlos Aured, is the weakest of four, but still a fun (if sometimes befuddling) chiller about Indian mystics using Haitian voodoo to avenge themselves against the British families who wronged them under colonial rule. Naschy plays both a gentle-hearted mystic and his disfigured psycho brother all to the tune of a funky psychedelic jazz score.
Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973), Naschy’s second film that year with Javier Aguirre, tries its level best to be the Spanish Horror/Sexploitation equivalent of the Hammer Dracula films, but it’s an incoherent mess. Evidently production problems abounded and Naschy lacks Christopher Lee’s commanding presence. However, it still has some wonderfully surreal moments that make is passable viewing.
NEXT: Naschy plays The Devil himself!