The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

Charles Laughton can do more with a subtle shift of his left eyeball than most actors can do with their entire faces. And as Quasimodo, most of his face is hidden behind a mask. I can only imagine how much time he must have spent in the chair each day to have the mask and body suit applied. But he still had one good eye to use, and that's all he needed.

Esmerelda (Maureen O'Hara) has the "It factor," and even though she's a Gypsy, every man immediately falls in love with her. Gypsies in 15th century France are enemy #1. They are banned from even entering Paris, but her mission is to get justice for her people, and perhaps, she's so beautiful that people will listen to her. The King does, for sure, most everyone else seems to be at least partially sympathetic to her cause.

Anyway, every man must fall in love with her at first sight. It's funny, because O'Hara is a beautiful woman, but all of the actors playing Gypsies are portrayed as dirty and rough looking. O'Hara is always shot in soft lightening. She always stands out as clean and white.

Of course, the main French creep, Frollo (Cedric Hardwicke) falls in love with her, she rejects him, and that puts her life in peril. Fortunately, our hero Quasimodo is love with her, too. He tries to tell her, but he recognizes that he's so ugly, what would be the point? In any event, he's a strong young lad, and he can drop heavy pieces of stone on all the invaders trying to remove Esmeralda from the sanctuary of Notre Dame by force. My favorite part is when he just happens to have a big vat of molten lava brewing, and he knows just exactly how to pour it out of the cathedral's gargoyles on the people below. Brillant move, Q.

I guess I hadn't considered this movie "classic horror," which might explain why I've never watched it previously. It's not exactly "horror," to be fair, but the Quasimodo character certainly fits some sort of trope -- Frankenstein, etc. I also thought of Beauty and the Beast, as well as King Kong and Ann Darrow.

Rating: 5/5 stars

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