Halloween season
simply isn’t Halloween season without a regular dose of classic Universal horror (1923-1963). Every day this October, I’ll be giving you a steady IV drip of it by counting down Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal
Horrors!
#24. The Hunchback of
Notre Dame (1923- dir. Wallace Worsley)
I’ve always had trouble viewing The Hunchback of Notre Dame as a horror movie, because the
implication is that Quasimodo—a disabled man whom almost everyone treats like
complete shit—is a monster. The true monsters of the picture are the so-called
“normal” people who whip and mock him. Fuck those assholes. There is great
satisfaction in witnessing Quasimodo’s revenge, as there is in witnessing the
tenderness between he and Esmeralda, Lon Chaney’s sensitive performance as the title
character, director Wallace Worsley’s lush and epic images, and Joe Bonomo’s
incredible acrobatics as Chaney’s stunt-performing stand in.
