Murders in the Rue Morgue (Robert Florey, 1932)

Bela Lugosi in Murders in the Rue Morgue

Cast: Bela Lugosi, Sidney Fox, Leon Ames, Bert Roach, Betty Ross Clarke, Brandon Hurst, D'Arcy Corrigan, Noble Johnson, Arlene Francis. Screenplay: Robert Florey, Tom Reed, Dale Van Every, John Huston, based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe. Cinematography: Karl Freund. Art direction: Charles D. Hall. Film editing: Milton Carruth. 

Robert Florey's Murders in the Rue Morgue looks great, thanks to Karl Freund's cinematography and Charles D. Hall's atmospheric sets, which were designed in collaboration with an uncredited Herman Rosse. Freund in particular brought his experience as cinematographer on such classics of German expressionism as F.W. Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924) and Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) to the task of re-creating the seamy side of Paris in 1845. Unfortunately, Florey was a comparative novice as a director, and the pacing of the movie is all wrong, static when it should be dynamic, with performances stuck in that peculiarly halting way of early talkies. There are supposedly comic scenes that fall flat: the byplay between the hero, a medical student called Pierre Dupin (Leon Ames) and his friend Paul (Bert Roach), and a routine involving three witnesses to a murder, a German, an Italian, and a Dane, each adhering to an ethnic stereotype. Only Bela Lugosi, as the sinister (what else?) Dr. Mirakle, gives his character any life. Dr. Mirakle is a carnival showman whose act centers on a gorilla called Erik (sometimes played by a chimpanzee and sometimes by the actor Charles Gamora in an ape suit). The doctor believes he can talk with Erik and wants to breed him with a human woman, so with the aid of his assistant Janos (Noble Johnson) he kidnaps streetwalkers, one of whom is played in her film debut by Arlene Francis, now mostly remembered as a panelist in the old game show What's My Line? After failing to find a compatible blood-type (and killing the women in the process) he finds his perfect subject: the pretty Camille (Sidney Fox), whom he spots in the audience at his show with her boyfriend, Pierre. You can guess the rest. Murders in the Rue Morgue has the makings of the best Universal horror classics, but it failed on its initial run. Critics panned the performances, with the exception of Lugosi's. Censors objected to the violence, the depiction of prostitution, and some belly-dancers in the sideshow, and some even to the endorsement of the theory of evolution. It was trimmed from its reported release time of 75 minutes to just over an hour. But it retains some exceptionally creepy moments, and its exciting end sequence anticipates and perhaps even influenced King Kong (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933).