A superior Spanish shocker, which charts the life of a hunchback as he is abused by some and falls in love with others. However, being an X-rated horror flick, heavy lashings of gore and general grisliness are added into the mix, to create unforgettable moments and alleviate from the otherwise routine story. The film's strength lies in the evocative and moving musical score, which really helped to set the scene for me, and the atmospheric location of the underground cavern which is brimming with Gothic dread and foreboding. Paul Naschy takes the lead role and brings life and sympathy to his anti-hero, a villain who is drawn into his acts either as a last resort or as a result of someone else's evil.

What could have been just another brutal monster turns out to be a pathetic but deeply just and noble person; moments of Naschy kissing the feet of those he appreciates are at odds to shots of him brutally murdering numerous victims, and in the end Naschy's strong acting means that you can't help but like him, even if he is a multiple murderer and sadist! The strong Spanish supporting cast includes Alberto Dalbes' fine performance as a deranged and evil scientist, genre regular Maria Perschy as a doctor and Rosanna Yanni as a genuinely beautiful love interest - yes, even a hunchback can love!

Once again, this Naschy film's strength is in the numerous plot strands and ideas that it throws into the mix to keep it going nicely. As well as the character study of Gotho, the film includes romance and sex and themes of power and its abuse. The horror elements are also varied and interesting. The film begins with a scene of a corpse being bloodily cut up with a knife and doesn't get any easier to take from there! Corpses have their faces eaten apart by rats, there's a string of gore murders, hijinks involving a severed head, grave-robbing, and a mad scientist, and a convenient acid bath into which many characters fall and are lovingly dissolved in detail. One of my favourite aspects is the monster in the cellar which screams and cries with terrible noises, really building up the unseen terror. When it finally escapes to go on a rampage, the slimy humanoid creature doesn't disappoint in special effects either.

The gore is over-the-top and extremely explicit, even for a Naschy movie. Characters are decapitated and eviscerated (guts everywhere),strangled, dissolved, spiked in iron maidens, have their faces destroyed with acid, and mutilated. However, the film's most unpleasantly memorable scene doesn't involve any special effects whatsoever - yes, it's an unfaked scene of animal violence! This mondo madness occurs when Gotho discovers rats eating his girlfriend and attacks them with a torch (Naschy himself was famously bitten during this ordeal). Cue lots of shots of scampering, squealing, and burning rats; for a rodent lover such as myself, these scenes are really quite hard to take and unnecessarily long with it! Thankfully this is the only example of mondo violence in the film - and in Naschy's long career also.

Otherwise, the action/fight scenes are well-staged and exciting, the acting pretty good all things considered, the effects good, and the atmosphere and suspense strong. Worth checking out for all genre fans and a must-see film for Naschy followers in particular, this more than stands up against the best of his Waldemar Daninsky - werewolf output. Highly recommended.

Paul Naschy plays a hunchback with below average intelligence who works at the morgue. He is in love with a sickly girl who happens to be the only person who is kind to him.

Naschy, who also wrote the script, seems to be inspired by a number of sources. Some have said the central inspiration is "Beauty and the Beast", given the romance between a deformed man and a beautiful young woman. But more obvious sources seem to be "Hunchback of Notre Dame" (with Quasimodo and Esmeralda) and "Frankenstein", though this time the story o told from the point of view of the mad scientist's assistant.

Director Javier Aguirre at this point in his career was known for experimental work, but had also worked with Paul Naschy on the slightly better-known "Count Dracula's Great Love" (1973) earlier the same year. In fact, "Hunchback" came about in part because of a delay on "Great Love" due to a car accident. I hope that over the longer run, the better-known film becomes "Hunchback", because there are some crazy scenes in here.

We start with a crafted miniature model of a Bavarian town, which you have to give them credit for. (The non-model village shots are in Vielha e Mijaran, Catalonia.) And then the makeup. Sure, it does not take much to make a hunch. But some of the other nastiness, especially the mad scientist's creation, are in many ways way ahead of their time.

The realism goes above and beyond what we typically see in films of this type. For one thing, the corpses are allegedly real and Naschy was allowed to cut into them and use them as they pleased. Exactly how that permission was granted seems like a story in itself. But also the rat sequences. There exists a story that some of the rats are really guinea pigs colored to look like rats, but that seems hard to believe -- the two are very distinct looking to anyone familiar with both rodents. Regardless, having so many rodents crawl on multiple actors in abundance had to be a challenge. Even tame, friendly rats would make most people uncomfortable in such huge numbers.

For his role as Gotho, Naschy won the Georges Meliés Best Actor Award for his portrayal from the International Festival of Fantastic and Science-Fiction Cinema of Paris in 1973. According to Mirek Lipinski, Naschy at one point shared the stage with both Peter Cushing and Terence Fisher. If only a photo existed of this powerful trio!

The Scream! Factory Blu-ray (2017) has everything we could want really. The film in both Spanish and English, audio commentary from Naschy experts, and a booklet of valuable information to complement the commentary.

Paul Naschy plays Wolfgang Gotho,a hunchback who supplies corpses to a doctor in his hidden underground morgue.The Doctor then feeds the rotted flesh to his creation of a living head attached to a tank full of guts.Gotho supplies corpses to the doctor in exchange for the promise that the doctor will restore life to the cadaver of his dead lover.This is surely Paul Naschy's best character role which won him awards at the Paris fantastic cinema convention in 1973."The Hunchback of the Morgue" is an extremely gory and atmospheric horror film that should please fans of Eurohorror.The evisceration of the doctor in the morgue,the beheading of the other doctor and the dismembering of the student from the inn are only a few of its gory moments.The locations sets(the catacombs)provide plenty of Gothic atmosphere and the acting is great.Still the scene where Gotho burns the rats feasting on Ilsa's body is pretty disturbing,because apparently real animals were killed during it.Overall,"El Jorobado de la Morgue" is definitely not for everybody.The film is quite explicit in its gore,but if you like Spanish exploitation flicks give this one a look.8 out of 10.