Round Up 1944, Part One: The Tower Of The Seven Hunchbacks

According to the Internet Movie Database, of the 811 films made in 1944, 41 fall under the headings of horror, science fiction or fantasy. They are:

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves 
Between Two Worlds 
Black Magic 
Bluebeard 
Captain America 
Crazy Knights 
Cry of the Werewolf 
Dead Man's Eyes 
Destiny 
El rey se divierte 
Ghost Catchers 
Gildersleeve's Ghost 
House of Frankenstein   
It Happened Tomorrow 
Jungle Woman 
Kismet 
La mujer sin cabeza 
La torre de los siete jorobados   
Once Upon a Time 
One Body Too Many 
Return of the Ape Man 
The Canterville Ghost 
The Climax 
The Curse of the Cat People 
The Halfway House 
The Invisible Man's Revenge 
The Lady and the Monster 
The Lodger 
The Monster Maker 
The Mummy's Curse 
The Mummy's Ghost 
The Pearl of Death 
The Return of the Vampire 
The Soul of a Monster 
The Spider Woman 
The Three Caballeros 
The Uninvited   
Time Flies 
Voodoo Man 
Weird Woman 
While Nero Fiddled 

At long last, a real find! The All Movie Guide's review of the Spanish La Torre De Los Siete Jorobados (The Tower Of The Seven Hunchbacks, Dir: Edgar Neville) makes it sound like a surreal collision between Luis Bunuel and Robert Wiene. In it, the ghost of an murdered anthropologist prevails upon a young man to come to the aid of his niece, who is in danger from a group of hunchbacked counterfeiters operating out of an underground city beneath Madrid that was previously used by Jews hiding from the Inquisition. Other reviews refer to the counterfeiters as a 'secret society', and who can resist the idea of a secret society of hunchbacks? And just check out the wonderful set design pictured above.

I tracked down an article by one Jorge D. Gonzalez and put it through Babelfish for a rough translation into English. He calls the film "one of the strangest and most valuable films of the Post War period in Spain," and waxes particularly effusive about the influence of German expressionism, particularly Caligari, upon the film, its dream-logic atmospherics, and something tantalizingly mistranslated involving (I think) director Neville's interest in Bohemianism and the dissolution of class barriers.

A bit of context. The first Spanish films were made in 1897, but the industry effectively shut down when foreign made talkies killed the market for silent domestic product, as a result of which only one Spanish film was released in 1931. Sound film production, when it arrived in 1935, was soon pressed into political service, with both sides of Spain's civil war injecting propaganda into the movies. When Franco's right wing Nationalists came out on top they exerted strict censorship on the industry through the National Department of Cinematography. The strictures placed on the horror film in particular made it impossible for Spanish film makers to compete with films from other nations, so for the duration of the 30's and 40's they didn't really try -- which is presumably one of the things that makes Edgar Neville's film seem so remarkable. AMG says, "Neville's reputation has grown considerably over the years; some modern critics hail his works of the '40s as masterpieces of personal filmmaking..."

This one definitely goes on my list. Too bad that, by all reports, there's no good way to see it. Sounds like an important film, historically and for genre enthusiasts, so why doesn't someone take an interest?
 
Also, does the word 'conspiranoia' actually exist, or has machine translation invented something wonderful all on its own? I suppose it doesn't work that way, but wouldn't it be nice?