{"id":671,"date":"2023-06-08T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-08T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=671"},"modified":"2026-09-27T15:47:50","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T18:47:50","slug":"minor-super-villain-296-the-hunchback-of-hollywood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=671","title":{"rendered":"MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 296: THE HUNCHBACK OF HOLLYWOOD"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Captain America Comics 003, 1941)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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The Hunchback of Hollywood is a villain in the same classic vein as Clayface: dressing up like a horror character and using murder and fear tactics to shut down a movie production. Also like Clayface, the production is within the hero’s range due to the studio taking advantage of the castle-rich landscape of the Eastern US <\/p>\n

(the castle in question is said to be near Camp Lehigh, home base of Steve “Captain America” Rogers and Bucky “Bucky” Barnes so this isn’t one of the famed castles of New York State. But it might have been originally – Camp Lehigh’s official location is in Virginia, now<\/i>, but a lot of the stories imply that it’s closer to NYC, with officers commuting to homes in Manhattan, soldiers casually visiting Coney island etc. I have no idea when the location was finalized and it’s very frustrating!)<\/p>\n

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Much as Clayface was actually Boris Karloff-adjacent horror star Basil Karlo, the prime Hunchback suspect is the even more on-the-nose Goris Barloff.<\/p>\n

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Unlike<\/i> Clayface, the Hunchback is not Barloff at all, nor any other crazed horror actor. Rather, it’s Craig Talbot, star of the film and dues-paying American Nazi, who objects to the film’s anti-authoritarian allegory, ad that’s why unlike Clayface you’ve never heard of him: because he’s a filthy Nazi.<\/p>\n

Number of Episodes of the “Super-Villains of Hollywood” podcast: <\/b>A two-part episode structured like a whodunnit, with the first running down the careers of Barloff and Talbot and a few other weakly defended suspects and the second detailing the actual crimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Captain America Comics 003, 1941) The Hunchback of Hollywood is a villain in the same classic vein as Clayface: dressing up like a horror character and using murder and fear tactics to shut down a movie production. Also like Clayface, the production is within the hero’s range due to the studio taking advantage of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[535,320,793,24,23,20,201,7,433,79,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bucky","category-captain-america","category-hunchback-of-hollywood","category-marvel-comics","category-minor-super-villain","category-murderer","category-nazi","category-the","category-treason","category-trend-based","category-villains-of-hollywood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=671"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":672,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671\/revisions\/672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}