Great Film overall

As Good As It Gets

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Blistering performances.

Svengoolie is often the way to go when it comes to the lesser known Olden Days Universal type Horror pictures and he is usually pretty spot on with the choices. This one ... not so much ! He always gives a "who-is-who" spiel but with Rue Morgue he was a little late. The young lady who gets killed on a pre-Hays cross is identified as being played by Arlene Francis of "What's My Line" fame BUT not until well after she is dead and gone from the film. (CHECK FOR SPOILER BOX... OK ... IT'S ON ! whew) Sadly, the plot didn't really clearly tell what was going on and what he was trying to do or even how. Seems he was injecting, not withdrawing, blood... big difference ! (yup, spoiler still active).Leon Ames as young man was a great surprise and a treat to see his younger self. The voice had seemed so familiar. Supporting cast was, as usual, good and interesting. The very corpse like morgue attendant reminded me of my guide in Les Invalides in Paris ! The rather silly chubby room-mate was just plain not needed, annoying and pointless. All of his scenes could have been cut with no ill effect. We won't go into the whole baboon / gorilla / chimp thing. It's just too darn sad to mention ! Lugosi himself - over the top even for Lugosi. The V-shaped-uni-brow and lighting from under the chin didn't make him look scary or menacing .. just foolish. No wonder the poor man turned to drugs ! Unless you are a compulsive "Gotta see them all" for any of the cast or the classic era horrors.. skip this one !

This movie is tagged with genres horror, crime, mystery and romance. But in none of these aspects it really shines. I think it's a curiosity at best. The only interesting scenes were towards the end when the gorilla abducted the girl and was trying to escape with her over the rooftops. Maybe that scene gave movie makers eventually the idea to make King Kong as it really reminded me a lot of the legendary film ape. Plot and characters are not at all interesting. The character of Dr Mirakle is nice and fitting for Bela Lugosi even though I do prefer him as count Dracula. It's a plot with potential and they try to do make it mysterious even though as viewer we already know from the beginning the intentions of Dr Mirakle. I found it boring and predictable most of the time. There was even a bit of humor in it with the 3 men arguing about the language the suspect spoke which was amusing but served mostly a filler in my opinion. How interesting if Dr Mirakle really succeeded in his experiment, now that would have been interesting!

Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) certainly fits the "style over substance" classification. Unlike some others, I would not call it an underrated masterpiece, but for what it is, it's not a bad film. Bela Lugosi hams it up big time while Sidney Fox and Leon Ames are pretty to look at but bland as the lovers brought into peril by Lugosi's plans to mate humans and apes.The expressionistic sets are beautiful and the mood is creepy. There is one genuinely creepy scene where Lugosi tortures a kidnapped street walker until she dies. The climactic chase with Erik carrying the unconscious damsel-in-distress across the rooftops is an obvious homage to the German horror classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).Of course, there is a degree of silliness with the ape, Erik. In some scenes, it is quite obvious we're watching a man in a suit stomping and hopping about.No great film, but fans of 1930s horror will eat it up.

"Murders in the Rue Morgue" is perhaps the most atmospheric film in the Universal canon, which is really saying something. More then any other, it is deeply influenced by "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and other silent horrors. Paris, as portrayed in this film, is composed of dank homes squeeze into each other, with huge sloping roofs. Triangular buildings stab upwards towards the dreary clouds, dark shapes on the skyline. The entire city is obscured in giant walls of fog. The villain's lair, with its single askew window and slithering staircase is the oddest set in the film. The titular morgue is shown with a huge square at the back, rows of corpses on each side, a sinister black cross hanging overhead. Not to mention the movie's frequent use of shadows. On a purely visual level, "Murders in the Rue Morgue" makes perfect midnight viewing.After Lugosi passed on "Frankenstein," this film was devised as a vehicle for him. It's easy to see why the verbose, speechifying Dr. Mirakle appealed to the actor. Even more sinister then Dracula, Dr. Mirakle is Lugosi at his cruelest, darkest level of villainy. The character is an archetypical mad scientist, obsessed with his bizarre studies, utterly immoral in his scientific pursuits. When the experiments fail, he shouts. He lightly chats with the murderous gorilla and has a dark-faced assistant. A mad evolutionist, Dr. Mirakle injects a prostitute with gorilla's blood, dumping the dead bodies in the river through a trap door. Why the film only implies it, there's definitely a suggestion of bestiality in the doctor's work. Just a few years later, in the post-Production Code era, these topics would undoubtedly be off-limits. Surprisingly, the movie doesn't take any particular stance on evolution. The film's hero, Dupin, is a rational medical student, a believer in crime scene forensics, and intrigued by the mad doctor's theories.Dupin, despite his Kentucky accent, makes for a fairly convincing hero. He has a funny back-and-forth with his roommate, turning down dinner in order to study more. His girlfriend takes up a lot of screen time. Their romance is unremarkable but never annoying. She does work fantastically as a damsel in distress, when being threatened by a glaring Lugosi or kidnapped by the ape. Some of the film's comic relief, such as the no-nonsense morgue attendant, has aged very well while other's aspect, like the xenophobic apartment tenants arguing about their different countries of origin, has aged less well. The movie is incredibly well shot, with a POV shot of a moving swing being my favorite. While the gorilla suit isn't horribly convincing, the film handles it well, only using the suit in long shots and cutting to an actual chimp's face in close-up.At only an hour long, the movie zips by. The chase across the rooftops of Paris makes for a fantastically suspenseful climax. The ape attacks are gruesomely tense, while the scene of Dr. Mirakle abducting the prostitute is still creepy. The simple, compact story makes the inevitable conclusion, the mad scientist's creation rebelling against him, deeply satisfying. "Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a surprisingly grim gem from horror's golden age.