They'll Rue the Morgue that Brought the Ape Man

It may sound like a good idea to find the Missing Link, but what if it comes for our women? That's not exactly part of Edgar Allan Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue, but it is part of the 1932 adaptation of that story. Attempts to combine scenes from the original with a new tale about a mad scientist and a dashing hero never really mesh but the film is sometimes delightfully weird and ghastly.

Bela Lugosi plays Doctor Mirakle (pronounce with emphasis on the A) with a big, bushy unibrow. He invites attendees of a carnival to view a fantastic ape man he has locked in a cage.

A live chimpanzee is used for closeups while long shots are clearly a man in a suit. Later in the film, that man will carry the lovely young damsel in distress (Sidney Fox) to the top of a building, making me wonder if this was an influence on King Kong.

Her boyfriend and would be saviour is dashing young Pierre Dupin (Leon Ames) seemingly a distant cousin of Poe's Auguste Dupin. He's just a medical student here but the screenwriters (one of whom was a young John Huston, contributing additional dialogue) attempted to throw in a few things to make him seem to have sleuthing instincts. It seems a missed opportunity considering Poe's Dupin was the primary model for Sherlock Holmes.

Lugosi is great in the film and Sidney Fox is so wonderfully shocked when he has the audacity to visit her home uninvited, at an hour late enough for her mother to already be in bed. She doesn't know what horrors await.

Murders in the Rue Morgue is available on The Criterion Channel.

X Sonnet #1782

A spud balloon deceived the hungry maid.
Delivered pearls adorn the lazy lords.
With dowdy dreams, the lucky landed paid.
Awash with sauce, the bowls consumed the boards.
Collecting sharpened sticks, the man prepares.
An army gathers mud to wall the fort.
External guys were donning woes and cares.
A while later, facts were cut in court.
Before the court, the morgue presents an age.
Were man a beast, the crimes at hand were dreams.
Corruption fouled the volume's final page.
Employ your ghosts to mend the crooked seams.
Reprieve arrived to gut the hallowed bank.
A dozen robbers took the ship that sank.