Pre-code horror is always a special thing, especially since it was such a brief period. That timeframe was from roughly the advent of sound cinema at the tail end of the 1920’s, through to 1935, when the Production Code went into effect and essentially neutered the movies.
Universal’s 1932 take on Murders in the Rue Morgue takes some liberties that would have been unthinkable three years later. It isn’t graphic in any regard, and will seem very tame compared to today’s standards, but any movie where a scientist is trying to get a woman raped by an ape is pretty icky.
That scientist is Bela Lugosi. And that ape isn’t really supposed to be that, but instead an ape-man hybrid that is the missing link in human evolution. It was odd to see evolution discussed in any way in a film this old. It is even stranger to see this creature be a chimpanzee in close-ups and an actor in a literal monkey suit the rest of the time. Actually, it is a gorilla suit, and it’s not the worst I have seen.
Even if this is pre-code, there is some…well, coded language to talk around the central conceit. I seem to recall Lugosi describes to a carnival audience his desire to “mix [the ape-man’s] blood with that of a young woman”. I’m so dim that I didn’t fully understand what he was getting at until I listened to one of the two commentary tracks on the Shout Factory blu-ray.
The first prospect we see Lugosi consider is a prostitute he has tied to a giant X-shaped crucifix while he extracts her blood for testing. This is some weird imagery, and I’m not sure what the filmmakers were going for. Examining a sample, he discovers she has a venereal disease and decides to kill her. I’d say that was a better option for her than the trial she was going to endure if she was found worthy of his experiment.
Instead, he turns his sights on the comely Sidney Fox, abducting her and killer her mother (Betty Ross Clarke). In a moment that still unnerves today, that body is found stuffed upside down in a chimney. The moment of discovery is a startling visual which will be what I most remember from this film.
The other moment most likely to stay in my memory is when Leon Ames is pushing Fox on a swing. The camera and swing must be on the same platform, as we find ourselves locked in unison with her going up and down. It is a showy but impressive shot and I wonder how they did this back then, with how heavy cameras were.
I have other questions, even if they are minor ones, like a single annoying gnat. Lugosi’s character is named Dr. Mirakle, which lends itself to being pronounced like “miracle”. Instead, everybody pronounces it “Meer-Ack-Uhl”. I was also intrigued and baffled by a moment where we see the apeman carry an unconscious Fox up onto the roof of an apartment building and then into a hole in the sky. I realize this is on a soundstage, but I’m not even sure what was intended by having them go up to the edge of the roof and disappear behind a sky that is obviously solid.
More than anything that confused me is Bert Roach as Ames’s roommate. First, he has weirdly huge, round earlobes that look like earrings in some shots. Also, she seems to coded as gay or bi. In one scene, he cooks for himself and Ames, and complains his roommate doesn’t appreciate his efforts nor bother to come to the table to eat lunch. My guess might seem like a reach, but subjects like this had to be cleverly veiled, even in the pre-code era.
One last thing I found odd is this series of exclamations Ames makes over Fox: “You’re like a song the girls of Provence sing on May Day. And the dancing in Normandy on May Day. And like the wine in Burgundy on May Day.” I was expecting him to start doing a bit like a radio operator in the Pacific theatre in WWII, yelling into a microphone, “MAY DAY! MAY DAY!”
There is a lot to cringe over in Murders in the Rue Morgue, but also almost as much to enjoy, depending upon your tastes. As for myself, I was locked in from the opening titles, which play out over a sequence of illustrations one would assume foreshadow scenes to come. One of these appears to be a giant ape shooting laser beams from its eyes to do something to somebody’s feet. I’m not sure what that was supposed to be but it isn’t part of the plot, and I sure wish it had been.
Dir: Robert Florey
Starring Bela Lugosi, Sidney Fox, Leon Ames
Watched on Shout Factory blu-ray