‘ Do you think your little candle will outshine the flame of truth?‘
Following the success of Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931, Universal were on the lookout for their next monster hit. And so, they turned to… an ape? Yes, a full year before King Kong climbed the Empire State Building, director Robert Flory had some other poor schmuck in an ape costume climbing the rooftops of Paris…
In 1845 in Paris, Dr.Mirakle (Bela Lugosi), a mad scientist obsessed with the idea of mingling human blood with that of an ape, has designs on kidnapping local woman, Camille (Sidney Fox), to provide the blood for his nefarious scheme. Understandably, her fiance, Pierre (Leon Ames), isn’t keen on this idea.
Loosely based on a short story by Edgar Allen Poe, Murders in the Rue Morgue borrows liberally from German Expressionism (the conclusion is basically lifted wholesale from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari) to create a film that only really exists to give Lugosi a canvas on which to display his scenery-chewing performance at the heart of the film. That’s not to say he isn’t compelling, in fact, along with the set design, he’s pretty much the only compelling thing here, but it’s simply not enough to justify the existance of Murders in the Rue Morgue, even at a running time that barely breaks the hour mark.
While film historians will always find something to enjoy in Lugosi’s exceptional run of Universal horror films, Murders in the Rue Morgue pales in comparison to many of the burgeoning studios more accomplished works.
