It's Movie Time!
Today's post is about Lugosi's follow up to Dracula, another horror film, this one establishing the tropes of films about mad scientists.
From 1932, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe and directed by Robert Florey, this is Murders in the Rue Morgue.
Welcome to Paris in the year 1845.
Ah, Paris! A city of wonder and beauty and romance and the bodies of dead women floating in the Seine.
Wait! The what of who is what in the where?
Young women are being abducted off the streets of Paris and turning up dead in the river.
Which is harshing that whole romantic Parisian vibe.
The perpetrator of this abductions and murders?
It is Dr. Miracle, a mad (Mad? Yes! MAD, I say!) scientist.
Mirakle has a talking ape named Erik and the not so good doctor wants to create a girlfriend for Erik.
By injecting them with ape blood.
Which so far is just killing the women he abducts.
Well, Paris has a handy dandy river for flushing away dead bodies. Mirakle leaves that dirty work to his hulking man servant Janos.
What kind of self respecting mad scientist doesn't have a hulking man servant?
Meanwhile, Dr. Mirakle is pulling down some coin by showing off Erik the talking ape as part of a carnival side show.
A side show attended by Pierre Dupin, a young, naive medical student and detective, Pierre's fiancée Camille L'Espanaye, and their friends Paul and Mignette.
Dr. Mirakle and Janos immediately take notice of the beautiful and enchanting Camille.
Dr. Mirakle attempts to engage in conversation with Camille but since he mostly deals with women tied up and screaming in his laboratory, his small talk needs work and Camille is appropriately creeped out.
Undaunted (because mad scientists don't need daunts), Mirakle sends Janos out to follow Camille and found out stuff like where she lives, her favorite color, her hobbies, make sure she's a suitable mate for Erik the talking ape.
Are you all weirded out by this yet?
So Pierre is poking around into the death of a prostitute whose body was found in the river and discovers she's just one in a series of women found dead in the river.
Pierre bribes the morgue keeper at the Rue Morgue to provide him with vials of blood from the victims and discovers there is... blood in the blood? Huh? Blood that is NOT human mingled with blood that is.
Meanwhile, Dr, Mirakle makes another play for Camille who is really creeped out that this weird scientist knows where she lives and just has a sort of offputting vibe.
Realizing that charm is not working, our not so friendly evil doctor sends Erik to kidnap Camille.
Pierre hears Camille's screams and rushes to her apartment where she lives with her mother but Erik is too fast and escapes with Camille. And her mother is missing.
The police arrests Pierre for kidnapping Camille and possibly also her mother.
OK, so let's review.
- A giant talking ape abducts Camille
- The police think Pierre did it.
What the hell? Really?
Well, that story of a talking ape escaping the crime scene seems a bit preposterous, right?
Until the body of Camille's mother is found stuff up a chimney, her dead hand clutching a mass of monkey fur.
Leading the Paris police to an alarming conclusion:
Mon Dieu! Le ravisseur est un singe !
My God! The kidnapper is an ape!
Pierre and the police rush to Mirakle's hideout where all sorts of havok is unleashed with gun fire and an enraged ape. The police shoot Janos and Erik snaps Mirakle's neck before he grabs up Camille to take her up...
The Empire State Building? Wrong country and not built yet.
The Eiffel Tower? Right city, wrong decade.
Erik clambers up to the roof of a dockside house where Pierre shoots him with a gun and saves his fiancée from peril.
The end!
Murders in the Rue Morgue suffers from some poor acting except Bela Lugosi is on point chewing up the scenery as the epitome of the mad scientist.
The overall look of the film evokes a strong sense of morbid dread and terror.
After the success of Dracula, Universal Studios was keen on making Bela Lugosi the face of the studio's horror films. He was originally approached to appear in Frankenstein but Lugosi was put off that the studio wanted him to play the monster who had no dialogue. Instead the role went to Boris Karloff who took off as a major horror film star. Movie posters would often bill him as simply "KARLOFF" and it was enough to fill movie theater seats.
One wonders what Lugosi's career would've looked like if he had been less short sighted and taken the role of the monster.
Director Robert Florey was also originally attached to direct Frankenstein but that fell apart and he directed Murders in the Rue Morgue instead.
The film only features a few elements from the Edgar Allan Poe short story. The screenplay was written to bolster the part of Dr, Mirakle when Bela Lugosi signed on.
Bela Lugosi was concerned that after Dracula he might be typecast in vampire roles. But after Murders in the Rue Morgue, Lugosi was frequently cast in the role of the sinister doctor, the mad scientist.
Such as the film I will post about next week. After two weeks looking at movies from the very start of Bela Lugosi's rising stature as a Hollywood movie star, next week we arrive at the nadir of his life and career.
Working in tandem with Ed Wood, we arrive at Bela Lugosi's swan song, Bride of the Monster.
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