Horrorfest 26: Murders in the Rue Morgue

Of all the Edgar Allan Poe inspired Universal horror films, this one is by far the best. Not only is it the closest to the source material (even though it's not all that close), it's also the only one with real atmosphere and artistic flair behind the camera. Despite the great acting of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in THE BLACK CAT and THE RAVEN, both of those flicks feel flat and bland in comparison to the Universal classics like DRACULA, the FRANKENSTEIN series, and others. This is not the case with MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE -- it seems to fit right along, visually, with the best of them.

This one stars Bela Lugosi as mad Dr. Mirakle, a sideshow carnival hawker with a captive gorilla named Erik to show off to his Parisian audiences. Many claim this film's striking cinematography by Karl Freund (who also shot METROPOLIS) and direction by Robert Florey owe a lot to the German exprossionist films like NOSFERATU and CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI from the 20s. These claims seem to be true, and the set design also seems to be heavily influenced by the trippy, nightmarish style of those earlier films, with the overly exaggerated crooked roof tops and towering windows casting even more towering shadows. But, it's also clear the plot seems to be at least halfway ripped off from DR. CALIGARI, with Lugosi's Dr. Mirakle replacing Dr. Caligari, and a gorilla replacing Caligari's sleepwalking manservant.

Turns out Mirakle has a plot to somehow mate his captive gorilla with a human female. He kidnaps prostitutes from the streets of Paris, tests their blood, and discards them, murdered, into the Seine, if they prove to be unacceptable for his experiments. These experiments remain vague, probably to avoid making the references to bestiality any more over than they need to be. This, coupled with the fact that Mirakle happily spouts pro-evolution claims to an audience of 1840s Parisians, sets Mirakle clearly in the realm of blasphemy.

This movie is genuinely creepy in parts, specifically in an early sequence in which Lugosi kidnaps a prostitute from the street and takes her back to his lair, where he straps her up to a cross and performs sinister experiments on her.

So, the flick is clearly inspired by CALIGARI, but it also clearly serves as the inspiration for KING KONG, especially during the climax, in which Erik the gorilla falls for his latest potential mate, Camille (Sidney Fox). He escapes with her and makes a death defying flight across the roof tops of Paris, swinging from pipes and chimneys as he avoids his would-be captors.

Meanwhile, young medical student and lover of Camille, Pierre (Leon Waycoff) systematically attempts to solve the mysterious murders with the powers of science and deduction. Some saw Poe's short story created the genre of modern detective fiction, which means this is probably one of the first examples of detectives in the cinema.