Daily Movie Rec 11/9/23
Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)
"Here... is the story of man. In the slime of chaos, there was the seed which rose and grew into the tree of life."
Directed by: Robert Florey
Cinematography by: Karl Freund
Country: United States
Plot:
A mad scientist with a traveling carnival abducts women to inject them with ape blood for reasons that I don't remember, but I don't think they were very well thought out. Something something evolution. Based on the short story by Edgar Allen Poe.
Reasons to watch:
Karl Freund's daring, expressionistic cinematography helped shape the look of early horror cinema, and he and director Robert Florey take some impressive stylistic swings in Murders in the Rue Morgue. Despite some very dated effects and tepid acting and dialogue - though Bela Lugosi chews the scenery like only he could - this tense and surprisingly macabre horror film feels undervalued when it comes to Universal Pictures's legendary genre films of the 1930s and 40s. It looks fantastic as it crawls under one's skin.
Where to watch:
The Criterion Channel
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