MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932)
Having little to do with Poe and less to do with good film-making, Bela Lugosi’s first post-Dracula horror outing sees him cast as Dr Mirakle, part-sideshow huckster, part-mad scientist, who intends to prove the theory of evolution by letting his pet gorilla get up close and personal with a virginal young woman. Unfortunately, most of this plot gets lost in the midst of a tremendous battle for our attention between one of filmdom’s sorriest ape-suits, and a pair of false eyebrows with a mind of their own.
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[Edited to add: I have now slightly revised, re-formatted and added screenshots to The Mask Of Fu Manchu and White Zombie.]
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#1 by El Santo on December 18, 2009 - 7:37 pm
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“Having little to do with Poe and less to do with good film-making…”
Murders in the Rue Morgue, summed up perfectly in a single subordinate clause.
#2 by MatthewF on December 20, 2009 - 3:56 pm
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Bless Charles Gemora. Never since has one man forged himself such a long film career simply through the virtue of having his own monkey suit.
And a crap monkey suit at that.
#3 by El Santo on December 20, 2009 - 8:14 pm
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Crash Corrigan came pretty close.
#4 by lyzard on December 20, 2009 - 8:52 pm
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Well, there was a whole series of them: Charles Gemora, Crash Corrigan, Emil Van Horn, George Barrows, Bob Burns…
As Bugs Bunny would say, it’s a livin’.
#5 by Luke Blanchard on December 21, 2009 - 12:48 am
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Not having Murders in the Rue Morgue to hand, I was prompted by your review to watch a British Lugosi film, The Dark Eyes of London (1939). I can’t call it a classic, but it’s worth a look, with at least one genuinely creepy sequence.
In the poster above your footnote there’s a strong suggestion that the ape has sexual designs on the woman. In other respects I think the poster owes a debt to John Henry Fuseli’s painting The Nightmare.
#6 by lyzard on December 21, 2009 - 12:59 am
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Yes, it’s interesting: all the other associated lobby cards are just stills that have been tinted or coloured; but that looks like a deliberate attempt to sell the film using material they weren’t allowed to put in it.
I quite like DEOL too.
#7 by EGM3 on December 21, 2009 - 8:45 am
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On the topic of ‘earliest detective stories’ a good candidate is ‘Doebrah and the Elders’ found in the Catholic Old Testament book of Daniel. In it a girl is falsely accused of a crime for which she could receive the death penalty and Daniel serves as her lawyer, tripping up her accusers and showing them to be guilty. It’s very much an early Perry Mason story, if nothing else.
#8 by Alaric on December 21, 2009 - 10:24 am
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Regardless of when the actual first individual detective story was written, I think Poe has an excellent claim to having invented the genre (as a genre). Not only did he write three C. Auguste Dupin stories, all of which are true detective stories, but several of his other stories, such as The Gold Bug and The Sphinx, included “detective story-like elements” (for want of a better term).
#9 by Camassia on December 21, 2009 - 6:43 pm
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EGM3, aren’t you thinking of Susanna and the Elders? That was the story about the woman that two guys accused of adultery after she refused to sleep with them. Deborah was in the Book of Judges. (Though I suppose her story, involving a woman murdering her husband by driving a stake through his head, could be seen as an antecedent to the horror movie…)
#10 by EGM3 on December 22, 2009 - 8:37 am
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Ah, Camassia, you are right. It was Susanna. That’s what I get for not looking it up first. Thank you for correcting me. Anyhow, it’s an Old Testament story from the BC’s so that qualifies it as an early detective story. BTW, the story following might also be considered a mystery, only it uses a rather MacGyver-ish method to expose the culprits.
#11 by professorKettlewell on December 26, 2009 - 6:31 am
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Alaric: I think Poe is pretty widely recognised as inventing the ‘modern detective’ genre (to the extent that there’s a bit in ‘A Study in Scarlet’ where Holmes disrespects Dupin and makes Watson mad), but I’d also argue that the idea of ‘detective fiction as existential epistemology’ (i.e. What do we know? How do we know it? How can we prove that we know it?) starts with ‘Crime and Punishment’……
#12 by penis enlarging on January 2, 2010 - 7:25 am
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I know somebody out there will not agree with me or even laugh at me for saying this but for me murders in the rue morgue is one of the best films. It is absolutely one of my all-time favorite film.
Please I’m looking for anyone to argue with. Have a good day everyone.
Regards,
Peter C. Trape
#13 by Read MacGuirtose on January 2, 2010 - 3:38 pm
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How… bizarre… An actual relevant comment by someone who’s apparently, if not necessarily read the post, at least glanced at it to know what it’s about… but which has a spam link in the username. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. Interesting new way of getting spam past filters, I guess, albeit one that takes a bit more work from the spammers…
#14 by lyzard on January 2, 2010 - 3:57 pm
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If only he’d used his powers for niceness, instead of spamming!
Anyway, I’m perversely impressed enough to leave it there until Nathan notices.
#15 by MatthewF on January 3, 2010 - 3:19 am
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Spam shmam, what if it’s just his name y’know?
#16 by lyzard on January 3, 2010 - 5:36 am
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Then it’s time for an intervention. (The authorities here stopped people calling their kids “Ned Kelly” and “Jesus Christ” during the past year, apparently.)
#17 by Read MacGuirtose on January 3, 2010 - 1:45 pm
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Had to Google “Ned Kelly” to find out why that would be an objectionable name… he may be notorious in Australia, but he’s not really known here in the States… (or at least, I’d never heard of him; I admit that doesn’t necessarily imply that everyone else hasn’t…)
#18 by The Rev. D.D. on January 4, 2010 - 7:22 am
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Well if he’s not known in the States he’s not important, right? We’re the center of the world, after all; we’re too important to worry about what those damn foreigners are getting up to in their own countries. As long as they don’t come here and bomb our planes and TEK UR JUBS!!!
I’m feeling sarcastic this morning, it seems.
Bonus points if anyone figures out that reference…
#19 by MatthewF on January 4, 2010 - 9:53 am
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This would explain why that Heath ledger Ned Kelly movie a few years ago wasn’t a hit in America.
Also, it wasn’t very good.