Follow a hapless hunchback who yearns for love, but finds himself in the middle of a murderous feud between the Pope and the king of France when each orders the hunchback to kill the other.

Follow a hapless hunchback who yearns for love, but finds himself in the middle of a murderous feud between the Pope and the king of France when each orders the hunchback to kill the other.

讲述绝症少年寻找失踪父亲，他的父亲在失踪前发现了一把可以打开通往异次元世界的钥匙。

讲述绝症少年寻找失踪父亲，他的父亲在失踪前发现了一把可以打开通往异次元世界的钥匙。

This poor, deformed boy was a hungry thief, made the sex-xlave of a haughty dominatrix Matsu, herself a former servant who had been raped by the master's son. Now old and rich, she seeks a replacement for her abandoned (and assumed dead) hunchback infant son. While denying incest, she humiliates and rapes him, getting extra pleasure by painfuly manipulating his hump. This "tomb of flesh" was the visible answer to the pregnant girl's prater to mark her hated, unborn child. 　　The virginal Minstreal is also in love with the hunchback. He tells her "I'll always be a stranger, existing only for others. Always feared, a mere object of interest, until finaly, I'll be a laughingstock... I'm like the one who's 'it' in hide-and-seek. I chase them and they run away laughing. He remembers childhood dreams of incestuous or forbidden lust. Since the town's birth records were mysteriously stolen the truth of the susbected incest in unknowable. However, rumors persist that the baby, like the defomed and abandoned Oedipus, was saved by the servant ordered to desert him. These and other rumors are whispered by a chorus of ancient hags and crippled, male masseurs. 　　The hunchback is depicted as the ultimate outcast: born of rape, abandoned, deprived of his inheritance, despited, sexualy desired, and abused, and finaly murdered. Two women, one his grotesque, sexualy depraved mother (described as "an aging bride"), the other a virginal, young minstrel wearing a middy blouse (described as "a girl student"), fight viciously over his body and his memory. 　　The play also works as an extended metaphor or allegory for Japan's relationship with the West, especialy America. Like the poor servant raped by her rich master, and also like her deformed, despited child, modern Japan was an innocent youth which desired and feared the powerful, rich West. Hating yet desiring the rapist, Japan became a grotesque parody of the West, learning the worst lessons of sadistic imperialism, militarism and colonialism. The atomic holocaust - a final gift of contamination from the idolized/demonized rapist - created another deformed baby, a living tomb of memories, a tomb of twisted flesh. The abandoned, hunchbacked child re-emerged as the global outcast, the atomic-contamined pariah, the child of rape and incest, filled with self loathing, lacking identity, simultaneously loving and hating the parent-rapist.

Col. Barclay is found dead and his wife is arrested for the murder, but Holmes is convinced a missing door key will reveal the true killer.

Le court métrage se compose d'une série d'images fixes à l'encre et au fusain, inspirées des gravures médiévales, qui défilent sur un fonds musical, et s'accélèrent au fil de l'histoire. La princesse du royaume, assise sur un trône élevé entouré par une foule nombreuse, reçoit la visite de nombreux prétendants princiers. Pendant la cérémonie, un pauvre bossu tente de parvenir jusqu'à elle afin de lui offrir un bouquet de fleurs, mais les autres prétendants le brutalisent sous les rires cruels de la foule. Il doit alors révéler le secret que dissimule sa bosse.

本片是西班牙经典幻想片之一。当年美国演员查理-卓别林（Charlie Chaplin）看过此片后称西班牙导演Edgar Neville是“他所遇见过的最会讲故事的人”(“the best storyteller he ever met”)，并对此片的评价甚高。《乡村之声》也对此片有过详尽的介绍。 　　La Torre de los Siete Jorobados is a 1944 Spanish mystery film directed by Edgar Neville. It is based on a novel by Emilio Carrere. In 19th century Madrid a young man plays roulette. A mysterious character helps him by pointing with his walking stick the next number where the ball is going to fall. The protagonist is the only one able to see him. The mysterious man turn out to be the ghost of an archaeologist and ask the young man to defend his daughter from a gang of hunchbacks. 　　Explore the labyrinthian depths and secret alleys of the Walter Reade's annual survey "Spanish Cinema Now" (December 8 through 26), and you'll find a mini retrospective devoted to Edgar Neville (1899–1967). The aristocratic Neville was a friend of Luis Bunuel and Charlie Chaplin (whom he met while in Hollywood directing Spanish-language talkies for MGM), with a reputation as a raconteur that's fully justified by the playful narratives of his best-known movies. Those showing include Life Hanging by a Thread (1945), a whimsical comedy of alternate destiny; two murder mysteries: the farcical Carnival Sunday (1945) and philosophical The Crime on Bordadores Street (1946); as well as a neorealist account of a demobilized cavalryman, The Last Horse (1950), and a color musical, Flamenco (1952). 　　The most fabulous of Neville's fantasies is The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks (1944), a supernatural shaggy-dog story in which, egged on by a dignified one-eyed ghost, a handsome if clueless Madrid bon vivant stumbles into a lost subterranean world. This secret city, built by Jews escaping the Inquisition, is populated by a cabal of sinister, coin-counterfeiting kyphotics, as well as a number of cobwebbed mummies and a mad archaeologist. The movie was evidently based on a horror novel but Neville's attitude toward this fantastic material is beyond bemused. (Village Voice)