"If one were to classify the Spanish cinema, The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks would surely be included as one of its most beautiful pictures. The significant and the insignificant, the fantastic and the realistic play hide-and-seek in an ancient synagogue hidden underground in an old part of Madrid, the secret redoubt of a group of hunchbacks who counterfeit coins. The leading character of the film is guided to that place by a one-eyed ghost-who wears an eyepatch and likes to tell jokes-in order to save the niece of a very strange individual. The story, which is based on a novel by Emilio Carrere, allows Neville to play with his ironic poetry, the key to his entire work, in juggling two seemingly incompatible concepts: the realism of Madrid's sainete (one-act costume melodrama) with the stylization of German expressionism. The result has the improbable transparency of a children's story." -Emilio Sanz de Soto, Spanish Cinema: 1896-1983