Co-screenwriters Edward Lowe (House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, several installments in the Charlie Chan series), Perley Sheehan, and Lon Chaney himself (who suggested the story and primary cast), took Victor Hugo’s famed romance and cast it as a horror tale. However, cunningly, the trio only permitted the terror to maintain the plot without allowing it to dominate as director Wallace Worsley presents one of the few true tales of love set to screen.
Clopin (Ernest Torrence, Steamboat Bill, Jr.), the plebian King of the Oppressed (known as the “Court of Miracles”) under Louis XI’s (Tully Marshall, Sergeant York, Intolerance, Scarface) tyranny, purchased a little girl by the name of Esmeralda (Patsy Ruth Miller) from a local band of gypsies who has since blossomed into a beautiful young woman. Once a year, the people of France are allowed to bask in revelry without penalty (which is otherwise considered an insult to God and King). It is during such a festival that Jehan (Brandon Hurst, Scarface), a lapsed man of the cloth, spots Esmeralda dancing. Jehan recruits Quasimoto (Lon Chaney, The Phantom of the Opera)–the grotesque, malformed, mentally inept (he proudly flaunts his crown as the King of Fools during the festival) bell-ringer of the Notre Dame Cathedral who is under the guidance of Jehan’s brother, white-robed Archdeacon Don Claudio (Nigel De Brulier, Intolerance, Ben-Hur, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Wings)–to kidnap Esmeralda in hopes of making her his bride. Phoebus (Norman Kerry, The Phantom of the Opera), the newly appointed Captain of the Guard and local playboy, apprehends Jehan’s minion before he can successfully complete his task. Quasimoto is subsequently flogged for his crime. Left to bake in the midday sun in the town square afterward, Esmeralda is the only person to take pity on Quasimoto, bringing him much needed water. Meanwhile, Phoebus woos Esmeralda, her childhood dreams becoming manifest once he invites her to a royal ball. After receiving news that Esmeralda is being courted outside of her class, Clopin interrupts the ball, demanding Esmeralda to return to her own kind. Esmeralda, not wanting to see harm come to anyone, voluntarily leaves the ball in order to thwart a potential class conflict. Shortly thereafter, she elopes to the Cathedral in order to meet Phoebus yet is framed by Jehan as Phoebus is stabbed. After being tortured and told falsely by Jehan (in the wake of her continuing to accept his proposals) that Phoebus has died, she is sentenced to hang. Quasimoto reciprocates the generosity that Esmeralda once showed him by saving her as a class battle ensues.
Lon Chaney is key to the success of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (as he would be for his masterpiece, The Phantom of the Opera). He appears hunched (contrary to popular belief the plaster hump he wore only weighed fifteen pounds verses the rumored seventy-five) as his weight wavers on two tendrilled legs as he peers out of his one good eye. We watch as he (actually stuntman Joe Bonomo) descends the outside of the Cathedral in the most stunning sequence of the film. Yet, throughout the remainder of the production, though only exhibiting half the stature of the surrounding cast due to his deformities, he retains the audience’s focus due to the convincing nature in which he portrays the figure of Quasimoto (he interviewed invalids as part of his research for the role).
Brandon Hurst’s rendition of Jehan, cast in black next to his benevolent brother, Don Claudio, is delightful as the Iago-esque antagonist which, understandably, is overshadowed by the character of Quasimoto. Though Jehan doesn’t possess as much narrative prowess and relevance in Hugo’s text, Worsley brings him, with incendiary purpose, masterfully to the screen.
Though the production is not without flaws. Worsley only follows his actors with the camera, the cinematography lending little to the overall content of the film, which runs overlong, becomes too preoccupied with its excessive cast of extras, and exhibits a few lapses of narrative plausibility, such as Claudio’s Court of Miracles, instead of the Royal Court, objecting to the union of Phoebus and Esmeralda.
Yet, these minor quibbles with the work are not enough to detract from the overall potency of the script, especially with the aid of Chaney’s performance, because–by the film’s climax–Worsely presents one of the most riveting visions of love ever to grace the silver screen. Only one other film, Lynne Stopkewich’s 1996 Kissed, presents an arguably truer, more succinct cinematic representation of the term and its philosophical import.
Trivia tidbit: The Hunchback of Notre Dame was the first production to implement intercom technology, since standard in film today, between director and crew.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
