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.
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.