Coventry Review of Murders in the Rue Morgue

Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)

The Lonely Heart & Blood Club, with Erik the Gorilla!

[6/10 · 26 January 2008]

"Murders in the Rue Morgue" isn't nearly as great as the previous year's horror successes – namely Frankenstein and Dracula – but nevertheless another progressive and remotely eerie chiller for Universal studios. Loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's writings, "Murders…" does feature an old fashioned movie-monster, but the dominating storyline revolves on a mad scientist desperately wanting to prove his awkward theories; even if that means multiple innocent people have to die. Dr. Mirakle, another supremely glorious role for Bela Lugosi, tours around with a carnival and exhibits his pet gorilla Erik to petrified villagers. The traveling show is actually just a disguise, as Mirakle is a scientist obsessed with proving humanity's kinship with the apes and he abducts young women of the street to run tests with their blood. Several bodies end up in the Parisian river, via the trapdoor in Mirakle's lab, but then Erik the gorilla itself points out the next "victim" for the Doctor's experiments. The beautiful young Camille would make a fine gorilla's bride indeed, but her fiancée is a medical student and quickly suspects Dr. Mirakle is up to no good. "Murders in the Rue Morgue" isn't stellar entertainment, but horror fans will definitely appreciate the harshly sexual implications as well as the explicit & brutal sequence involving the young prostitute. The harshness is quite shocking considering the year of release, but the film sadly contains too many overlong tedious parts (the whole picnic scene, for example) and suffers from misfit comical elements (Pierre's roommate, the interrogation of the foreign restaurant owners…). The biggest strongpoint of the film is undeniably Karl Freund's moody & sinister cinematography, which is beautifully reminiscent to the expressionistic style of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Later the same year 1932, Freund himself would make his Hollywood debut as a director, with the genuinely brilliant Boris Karloff classic "The Mummy".