La torre de los siete jorobados

La torre de los siete jorobados*
Edgar Neville
1944 / Spain / 35 mm / 81 min / OV (Spanish)

We salvage one of the masterpieces of Madrid filmmaker Edgar Neville, also a writer, playwright and key figures on the satirical magazine La Codorniz. In 19^th-century Madrid, the young Basilio Beltrán (Antonio Casal) stakes a few coins on a casino roulette, when an enigmatic figure appears and points out the winning numbers. The figure turns out to be the ghost of Don Robinsón de Mantua (Félix de Pomés), who asks Basilio to defend his daughter from a gang of dangerous hunchbacks who live in a network of secret passages and chambers beneath Madrid. Based on the novel of the same name by Emilio Carrere, La torre de los siete jorobados ("The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks") has not lost its capacity for fascination, 70 years after its release. Its combination of comic, fantastic and supernatural elements mark this film out as a pioneer of Spanish fantaterror. Copy courtesy of the Filmoteca Española.

*Not recommended for under-16s.

Check the complete programme of Gandules'18 "Illuminated cinema: Magic, altered states and the occult".