Double assassinat dans la rue Morgue

Not a straight remake of the classic Poe tale, more an odd mixture of `The Phantom Of The Opera' (Herbert Lom is effectively reprising his Hammer Phantom), `Theatre of Death' and Poe's familiar themes of premature burial, `Murders In The Rue Morgue' is an experiment which does not quite work.

Partly this is down to Chris Wicking's script, not best known for his narrative clarity, here he reaches it a new low, with a script obscure in the extreme (at several points it seems to contradict itself). He is not helped by Hessler's direction, the strengths showed in the earlier `Scream And Scream Again' seem to have disappeared, and replaced by sheer shoddiness (some of the murders are very badly staged). A more imaginative director was needed to compensate for the script, especially in the case of the repetitive dream sequences which pepper the film.

By this time Vincent Price had jumped ship and was replaced by Jason Robards Jnr. An odd choice, as aside from being too contemporary for this period setting, he is also, dare I say it, too good an actor for this material. It really needed an actor, who like Price, had a strong sense of irony. As a result Robards just looks flat. Lom comes across much better, but again ham-fisted direction by Hessler sometimes makes him look absurd (the worst offender is when Lom follows Robards; it's staged so badly that a blind man would have noticed Lom).

It's a mess, but despite its many faults it is entertaining enough, the frustrating thing about it is that you get the feeling that given a better script and a more imaginative director (and Vincent Price instead of Robards) this movie could have been very good indeed.

Apart from SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN (1969), this was the one Hessler film I was most looking forward to, also because I failed to grab the single opportunity I had had so far to give it a view; the fact that it was, in all probability, the 87-minute cut messed up by the studio (which I would love to watch, if only for the sake of comparison), keeps gnawing at me even now!

Now, for my thoughts on the film: despite an interesting 'revisionist' premise (with its various subtexts) - inspired by but not based on the Poe original - all in all, I found the film rather dull and Hessler's direction disappointingly lifeless, if pictorially valid (as we had come to expect of him by now). Still, one cannot really blame AIP for straying so far away from the main source: as Hessler himself says in the interview on the DVD, everybody already knew the ending to Poe's story - so it would not have 'worked' had they simply adapted this to the screen. Therefore, the writers had to reinvent the plot – and the way they went about it, i.e. 'working' around Poe's very tale (as it's being presented at a Grand Guignol theater) was actually quite ingenious! Having said that, however, what kind of a story do you 'invent' that could center around the stage if not the old 'Phantom of the Opera' routine?! So, I guess, every 'revisionist' adaptation - however novel – has a downside, too!

While I don't really see Vincent Price in either lead role, it's very much true that – as it is - Herbert Lom was basically going through the paces (having been THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA [1962] for Hammer), while Jason Robards' mind was clearly elsewhere. Truth be told, theirs was interesting casting, but I have a hunch it would have worked even better had the two roles been reversed (as Robards himself seems to have suggested during filming!). The rest of the cast – Christine Kaufmann, Adolfo Celi, Michael Dunn and Lilli Palmer – were up to their (mostly unassuming) tasks, if not particularly outstanding.

The dream sequences (rather cerebral for this type of film) drew attention to themselves, particularly through the use of slow motion - and they were certainly effective, if not exactly creepy. As I have already stated, the theatrical and period atmosphere was well captured, in spite of the low budget, though I never felt like I 'was' in Paris (maybe because I knew beforehand that it was actually filmed in Spain?)!

Not having watched the 'original' version, I don't know whether I would have actually liked this 'Director's Cut' more if I had – which I did, by the way, but I somehow expected it to be better (maybe after the overwhelming positive response the recent discovery of this restored cut has generated?). I certainly don't think it holds a candle to Universal's flawed but fascinating 'Expressionist' version of 1932 (not very popular around these boards, I gather?) – though in all fairness, it's not quite the same movie, so there you are!

In Paris, in the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Cesar Charron (Jason Robards) owns a theater at the Rue Morgue where he performs the play "Murders in the Rue Morgue" with his wife Madeleine Charron (Christine Kaufmann), who has dreadful nightmares.

When there are several murders by acid of people connected to Cesar, the prime suspect of Inspector Vidocq (Adolfo Celi) would be Cesar's former partner Rene Marot (Herbert Lom). But Marot murdered Madeleine's mother (Lilli Palmer) many years ago and committed suicide immediately after.

"Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a boring and dull movie with terrible screenplay and wooden performances. There are many clichés; rip-off of scenes and concepts from "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Sherlock Holmes" and Christine Kaufmann is awful in the lead role. There is one terrible dreamlike scene where Madeleine looks to her dress before jumping into the carriage. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971)

** (out of 4)

British version puts a twist on the story (and previous versions) of Edgar Allan Poe. In this version, a stage troupe is putting on a version of Murders in the Rue Morgue when real murders start to happen. The lead actor (Jason Robards) and Inspector Vidocq (Herbert Lom) try and track down who is responsible. This version of the Poe story has been ripped to pieces over the years but having skipped it for thirty-plus years I was well aware that several liberties were taken. I can't say I blame director Gordon Hessler for wanting to change things around considering there had been several versions of the story already done. The biggest problem is that with the changes nothing too exciting is done and nothing here is as entertaining as what Poe wrote. I think the biggest thing going against the picture is the fact that it's rather dull and only comes to life during the opening sequence and the final one. Everything in between is rather lifeless and really drags to the point where you just simply don't care who's doing the killing. The version I viewed was the 97-minute director's cut, which restores some eleven-minutes that AIP had originally cut out. I don't know the whole history of the film so I can't say which version is better but I have to think that a lot of the material here was just filler. You'd think that having actors like Robards and Lom would have been a positive but it's really not. Yes, it's fun seeing them in a film like this but at the same time both are clearly just here to cash a paycheck. Robards seems extremely uninterested in anything going on and the same can be said about Lom who seems to be rushing through every scene just to get it over with. There are a few good things about the film including its colorful look as well as the atmosphere but this here just isn't enough to recommend it to others.

A little different kind of a horror movie based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe and interestingly so. Much have been altered from the original short story, though. To be exact, not only is it based on Poe, but there is also a great deal of Gaston Leroux's 'Phantom of the Opera' mixed in as well. And to emphasize that matter Herbert Lom, who brilliantly did the phantom role in 1962 British Hammer version, handles a part here with a mask hiding his injured face. Jason Robards is also nice to see in this kind of film for a change after having enjoyed his work before in westerns and dramas.

The plot is set in nineteenth century Paris around a theater troop resembling the historic Grand Guignol theater and is similarly specialized on cruel natured horror plays. The certain theatricality follows everywhere the story takes us and stays in the actors even when they are not on stage. The streets are crowded with a carnival and merry-go-rounds. There is a puppet theater, tricks and hypnotism. Even the real murders are executed in most showy ways. The atmosphere has a dreamy, almost surrealistic quality. And the actual dream sequences (What's a Poe film without them?) are beautifully shot and tinted in red tones. Very beautiful and creepy all at the same.

For an American horror production the film has a surprisingly bright European art film look and feel. Instead of using wholly dramatic studio sets we are treated with daylight locations, streets and parks, which allows the movie breath a bit between the expected horrors. This production was a pleasant surprise from Gordon Hessler and American International and a refreshing addition to their line of earlier Poe films directed by Roger Corman.