Watch Murders in the Rue Morgue For Free

Best movie of this year hands down!

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Fun, if minor, Universal horror flick which casts Bela Lugosi in his trademark role as a screen icon of pure evil. This is a very loose adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story; the locked-room murder does occur towards the end of the movie, complete with a body stuffed in a chimney, but this is only part of it. Instead, MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE focuses on Lugosi's mad scientist and his Darwinian theories that humans are descended from apes (the setting being Paris in 1845, this idea is widely pooh-poohed). In order to prove this, he attempts to mate a girl with an ape, and his plan involves injecting girls with gorilla blood which results in a series of strange deaths. Lugosi ingeniously dumps the bodies into the river under his house and the victims are simply described as victims of drowning.Of course it's not long before an irritating medical student is on the case to foil Lugosi's plans, but he's interrupted in his task when the ape goes berserk and murders Lugosi itself. This leads to an exciting rooftop finale which acts as a miniature forerunner to KING KONG with the ape kidnapping the young female victim and escaping from roof to roof as her suitor gives chase. A well-placed bullet sends the ape to a watery grave, thus ending the film at the incredibly short hour mark. MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE is an understandably dated film with many aspects to alienate it to modern audiences. Like Dracula, there's no music in any scenes which make it look more like a stage play than a movie. The special effects involve closeups of a cute chimpanzee interspersed with a clumsy man in a poor costume pretending to be an ape and are extremely poor in the modern light.However, all is not lost. As mentioned on the back of the box, the film does recall the classic German Expressionist movies in the use of lighting and shadows, and strange backdrops which really help to give it a unique look. There's a fair amount of brooding atmosphere built up in the backstreets of a dirty Paris and plenty of ghoulish humour in the morgue (as well as some unwanted over-the-top comedy and acting at a police inquest). The film also benefits considerably from one of Lugosi's best roles as a crazed, demented scientist who talks to his pet ape and shocks people at a carnival with his insane evolutionary theories (the irony being, of course, that he was correct in his assumptions). Lugoi's wild-haired mad man gets to wear some great costumes which emphasis his skeletal body and delivers his lines with an evil relish. The same quality cannot be said of the rest of the cast, especially the boring hero and his policemen chums, whom we have no interest in whatsoever. Thankfully Sidney Fox makes for quite a fetching beauty and can scream with the best of them. MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE isn't one of Universal's best movies, but it remains a solid (if dated) piece of entertainment with much to commend it to classic horror fans.

Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) certainly fits the "style over substance" classification. Unlike some others, I would not call it an underrated masterpiece, but for what it is, it's not a bad film. Bela Lugosi hams it up big time while Sidney Fox and Leon Ames are pretty to look at but bland as the lovers brought into peril by Lugosi's plans to mate humans and apes.The expressionistic sets are beautiful and the mood is creepy. There is one genuinely creepy scene where Lugosi tortures a kidnapped street walker until she dies. The climactic chase with Erik carrying the unconscious damsel-in-distress across the rooftops is an obvious homage to the German horror classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).Of course, there is a degree of silliness with the ape, Erik. In some scenes, it is quite obvious we're watching a man in a suit stomping and hopping about.No great film, but fans of 1930s horror will eat it up.

The horror for a young girl held prisoner by a mad scientist today would be that she wouldn't have a cell phone in her hand, but in the case of the poor prostitute here (Arlene Francis), you really feel fear for her. She's first seen screaming as two drunken men fight over her, and all of a sudden Bela Lugosi is approaching her, a nefarious close-up dominating his saunter towards her. The next thing you see is her being held hostage, tied to a cross, screaming in horror. The chills aren't only on her body, but in the viewers as well, as the photography and tense music and editing make the horror all the more real. Lugosi is determined to prove the connection between man and ape, and he is first seen explaining that to an audience which includes the heroine (Sidney Fox). "Your blood is rotten!" Lugosi screams at the poor unfortunate street walker, but he had originally set his sights on Fox and has his man- servant locate her so he can have his gorilla kidnap her for more nefarious experimentation.In a very short running time, the Universal horror classic really makes an impression, and even with his Chico Marxx like hairdo, Lugosi is absolutely frightening. Who'd think that an early 30's horror film without blood, throat slashing and body parts being ripped off could be so frightening? Of course, the music of "Swan Lake" is heard in the background as it was for all of the early Universal horror films, and in playing it rather slowly makes it all the more haunting. The photography resembles the silent German expressionism of films like "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and "Nosferatu" and in a way, this makes it even spookier than "Dracula" and "Frankenstein". A re-make in 3-D pales in comparison to this.

I saw "Murders in the Rue Morgue" when I was just a child in the sixties and wasn't impressed. But now that I've seen the uncut original on Universal's Lugosi collection, I believe "Murders" is one of the most under-rated films from the golden age of horror.Direction by Robert Florey, cinematography by Karl Freund, and art direction by Charles Hall will satisfy the cravings of atmospheric horror fans. And the sources that Florey uses—the Poe story and the silent classic "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari"—dovetail nicely. What seems rather silly in the Poe story (an ape escapes from a sailor to commit senseless murder) is more plausible and horrific when the ape's owner becomes Dr. Mirakle, a mad scientist intent on proving humans and apes are evolutionary cousins. Why else inject ape's blood into nubile young women if not to find a suitable mate for his side show attraction Erik? I was also impressed by the way director/writer Florey zeroed in on one of Poe's themes. The confusion of tongues scene from Poe's story in which people of different nationalities (ear-witnesses to a murder) mistake the ape's language for unintelligible human speech, demonstrates that humans are no different from Erik, another species of savage primate inhabiting the planet. Seeing Dr. Mirakle talk with Erik and translate for the carnival audience doesn't seem as far-fetched today considering the recent research into primate communication.These thematic elements, together with Lugosi's sinister but surprisingly low-key (for him) performance, and the scene in which Dr. Mirakle injects the street walker with ape blood (Arlene Francis made a good screamer), and in which fiendish assistant Noble Johnson (who made an art of playing such roles) cuts the ropes that bind her Christ-like between crossbeams, releasing her body through a trap door into the river, make this one of the most daring of pre-code horror films.The print Universal included in its Lugosi collection looks fine, much better that the one I saw in the sixties. And neither the bland performances of the romantic leads, nor the man in the ape costume detracts from the over all effect. The inter-cutting between the actual animal and the costumed double is really not that jarring when you consider what was being done elsewhere in this era.