Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)
Genre: Crime / Horror
Duration: 61 minuten
Country:
United States
Directed by: Robert Florey
Stars: Sidney Fox, Bela Lugosi and Leon Ames
IMDb score:
6,3 (5.953)
Releasedate: 27 January 1932
Murders in the Rue Morgue plot
"The super shocker !"
The maniacal Dr. Mirakle, kidnaps young women in 19th century Paris and injects them with monkey blood in an attempt to prove the ape-man relationship. His attempts always fail, because the kidnapped women invariably die. Medical student Pierre Dupin discovers what Mirakle is up to, but too late to prevent the kidnapping of his girlfriend Camille. Desperate, he tries to secure the help of the police to get her back. Based on Edgar Allan Poe's book The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
Actors and actresses
Dr. Mirakle
Pierre Dupin
Mlle. Camille L'Espanaye
Paul
Janos The Black One
Mme. L'Espanaye
Prefect of Police
Morgue Keeper
Woman of the Streets
Indian at Sideshow (uncredited)
Reviews & comments
Woland
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- 4810 messages
- 3826 votes
Time for an oldie. Murders in the Rue Morgue is (actually only in name) a Poe adaptation from the early 1930s, starring Bela Lugosi in a convincingly smarmy role as a wandering mad scientist. It's a decent film, with excellent cinematography and, for its time, quite inventive shots. There's also a rather dark torture scene where Doctor Miracle tortures a woman nailed to a cross. But it never really gets gripping. The story and the horror elements remain a bit flat and tame, and the scenes featuring the monkey are also rather dated. I've seen many of these things handled better in other films from that era (King Kong, Dracula, Vampyr, etc.), and the acting and the corny humor were overdone, sometimes bordering on annoying. Decent entertainment for an hour, nothing more.
Translated from Dutch · View original
Onderhond
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- 87623 messages
- 12891 votes
Very lame.
With those old horror films, it's always a bit of a wait-and-see situation. The first five minutes seemed somewhat positive, but it quickly becomes clear that, besides the horror elements, there are plenty of other horses being bet on. The result is an uninteresting mess.
The sets are decent enough, but it just doesn't create much atmosphere. It all looks a bit too polished for that. The film's occasional infusion of humor and the inclusion of a police case certainly doesn't do the mood any good.
I find Lugosi an uninteresting actor, so he can't save the day for me. Some weak effects and a bland story don't help either. After a somewhat okay start, the film fizzles out quickly, and even with its limited 60-minute runtime, it's still a long watch.
1.0*
Translated from Dutch · View original
Roger Thornhill
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- 6074 messages
- 2478 votes
For those interested, the basic premise of an ape murderer is carried over from Poe's original story, only there it involves an orangutan brought from Indonesia by a remorseful sailor but which unfortunately escaped in Paris, so the crime element was added by the Universal writers (including a young John Huston for "Added Dialogue"!) hoping to spice things up a bit. But in my opinion, it didn't quite work out, because while the camerawork, the sets, and the foggy streets may be fine, with such a weak lead actor as the hero, you invite disaster upon yourself. Some effects (the monkey when he walks, the clumsy painted background of the Parisian rooftops as seen from Camille's balcony) are completely inadequate, and I think that even two years after his success in Dracula, observant viewers at the time realized that Bela Lugosi was a very limited actor, with or without the glued-on, continuous eyebrows that, according to the 19th-century criminologist, were a clear sign of a criminal disposition. Historically interesting as part of the great Universal horror period, but in my opinion a decidedly lesser representative of it.
Translated from Dutch · View original
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