Phantom of the Rue Morgue

I have read all of Edgar Allen Poe's works, I don't think there is a faithful movie adaptation anywhere, of course if there was, most movies would be about 15 - 20 minutes long. The Phantom of the Rue Morgue is a fun movie especially if you can see it in 3-D as I did twice when I lived in Los Angeles. I have been watching 3-D movies for 40 years, and I search for them constantly.

I am also a Karl Malden fan and I think every movie he is in is great, and he overacts almost as well as Vincent Price, whom I consider the King. The color, photography and 3-D effects are absolutely great. Too many people expect a "slasher" type movie, "Phantom" was made before that type of movie was invented, and is very literate compared to today's movies.

As with all 3-D movies, "The Phantom of the Rue Morgue" needs to be seen in 3-D, to really appreciate it.

Look for a 3-D festival, or revival, and go see it. I wish Warner Brothers would release all of their 3-D movies on DVD in "3-D for shutterglass" versions. I would buy them all.

Although not in the same league with Warner's HOUSE OF WAX, at least this version of the Edgar Allen Poe story has some interesting ingredients that make it passable entertainment. First and foremost, the always dependable KARL MALDEN as a sinister man terrifying Paris with his ape and a pleasant supporting cast that includes CLAUDE DAUPHIN, PATRICIA MEDINA and a very young and slim MERV GRIFFIN.

David Buttolph's music adds some flavor to the improbable Poe story and the sets and costumes provide additional quality. But the basic story is so silly that none of it seems quite credible. You just have to suspend your disbelief long enough to enjoy the tale, expanded a bit from Poe's original short story with only modest returns.

STEVE FORREST, as a man wrongly accused, gives the film's most earnest performance but it's KARL MALDEN and his ape companion that you're most likely to remember.

At any rate, a vast improvement over the stilted '32 version directed by Robert Florey with a very young Leon Ames as the romantic lead and Bela Lugosi providing the only thrills.

As a series of strange murders plague a small area of Paris, the lack of clues force the police to team up with the prime suspect in the case to find the maniac responsible when he claims a friend's trained killer gorilla is responsible and targeting his fiancée.

This was a fairly impressive and fun effort that has a lot going for it. One of the better elements here is the fact that there's a large amount of attack scenes on the victims, which really drives this one nicely as these continuous sequences provide plenty of action, shocks as well as generating some sultry teases with the women being targeted being quite attractive overall. As the attacks are framed so the audience doesn't see the culprit, and the only times they are is when they're obscured or casting a shadow on the wall, it leaves a distinct impression, and the fun continues due to the investigation done to recreate the crime at the scene, and the evidence either way makes for some fun times overall. The fact that these investigations point to the main purpose of this one is a little troubling since they can drag on at times especially when they keep trying to pin it on the hero through flimsy circumstances that won't work in any real courtroom. The other real flaw is the romance angle that appears late in the film, which stops the film cold and comes out-of-nowhere to create a really confusing mess, though it does solve the film's murders quite nicely. Overall, this one was pretty enjoyable.

Today's Rating-PG: Violence.

A top notch horror thriller for it's time when it was released in the 1950s.....not a slasher film, those types of movies were not even considered during that time period....story concerns some very brutal murders of beautiful young women in and around some Paris France nightclubs in the very early 1900s....women are mutilated and the local gendarmes (police) are mystified....how could they be so badly beat up and decimated....the local police question everyone and the local inspector pays too much attention looking for suspects at the local college.....no clues are to be found.... finally after another gruesome murder a local student is implicated since he was near the area looking for the murderer himself...the local cops are very anxious to pin the murder on the student since they have no other suspects and the heat is on to find the killer (s). After some serious head scratching the student, Steve Forrest puts two and two together and figures that no man could be physically capable of crashing through glass ceilings and mutilating and stuffing corpses up a chimney and severing limbs....the evidence points to an animal such as a gorilla...naturally the local gendarmes do not believe it a first. After the gorilla escapes from his local pen at the zoo and murders again, police have to release Forrest from custody. Evidence points to the local zoo and its curator Professor Marais (Karl Malden) Police quickly rush to the zoo to find the ape carrying around another potential victim, the fiancé of Forrest. The cops kill the gorilla and in a somewhat funny scene the ape lands on Malden and gives him a Mike Tyson working over...ugh!! This film was released in 3D in 1954 during a period when Hollywood was trying to figure out how to keep its audiences away from television.....3D was a silly gimmick that gave a few thrills by wearing plastic glasses to enlarge and somewhat make more believable the image on the screen...it looked like the image was coming right at the viewer more explicitly than in regular format. All in all this is a good, decent horror thriller for it's time...the music composed by David Buttolph is pretty good and adds a touch to the mystery. The guy in the gorilla costume is very believable and you feel almost compassionate seeing the gorilla in his cage responding to affection from the fiancé of Forrest. Decent little thriller.

I recall watching this as a kid, though not the opinion I had made of it back then. With this in mind, I am baffled by its maligned reputation (the "Leonard Maltin Film Guide" gives it a measly **); mind you, I would not say that I prefer it to the classic 1932 Bela Lugosi version but it is more readily enjoyable (and faithful to its source). The film, in fact, is quite stylish in color – with special care given to the art direction – and a worthy follow-up to Warners' success of the previous year HOUSE OF WAX (1953); like that one, it was one of the numerous genre efforts from the early 1950s to be made in 3-D (though, typically, it was used gratuitously more often than judiciously). The cast is effective, too: Karl Malden adds an Actor's Method sensibility to the lead role of biologist/misogynist, Claude Dauphin is fine as the Police Inspector investigating the various gorilla slayings, Steve Forrest ideal as the handsome hero/accused and Anthony Caruso as Malden's loutish henchman/gorilla keeper. The murders are well-done, suggesting the animal's brutish strength without actually showing it – even the 3-D process comes in handy here as one of the victims throws something at the ape in defense and the latter responds by throwing a chair back at the girl!; there is, however, a goof in the scene depicting the killing of the circus performer (assisting her jealous husband in a knife-throwing act) as she is seen taking off the tell-tale bracelet but is then unaccountably back at her hand in a shot of the mangled (albeit conveniently covered) body! On a personal note, Malta's name comes up a number of times throughout the film: the Maltese cross on a sailor's (eventually revealed to be Caruso) scarf and his inopportune meeting in a dingy tavern with a drunken former 'colleague' (sealing his fate by unwisely disclosing his knowledge of the ape's existence). The latter stages, veering from the Poe tale, actually feel closest to Universal's earlier adaptation – as Malden cannot hold back his obsession with heroine Patricia Medina (engaged to his former student, and presently incarcerated, Forrest), an impulsive move which can only lead to the expected poetic justice of the climax in which the villain meets his own grisly come-uppance at the hands of the trained (read: abused) gorilla. By the way, having included a handful of films during this challenge in which this type of animal was featured as a menace (two more followed in quick succession), I came to realize just how many were made over the years. Finally, as I said in the beginning, this is pretty much underrated both as horror/monster movie and as adaptation of a highly-influential literary work.