Lugosi is magnificent in the oft overlooked Murders in the Rue Morgue

 

---

As the reader can note above, Plan9Crunch recently received a PDF copy of Angels and Ministers of Grace Defend Us! More Dark Alleys of Classic Horror Cinema, McFarland, 2024, by genre author Gregory William Mank. It's an excellent read. Mank's style of blending history, film news, drama, gossip -- and impromptu profiles of film principals -- is on display.  However, there's too much information to write a simple book review. Over the next couple of years, I'll review a chapter on a film, with links to purchase the book. Here's the McFarland link.

Mank can surprise us with gathered facts. Take Murders in the Rue Morgue, 1932, the first chapter of the book. I always thought it failed at the box office. But I'm wrong. It nabbed a modest profit, $63,000, for Universal after the big hits of Dracula and Frankenstein. But nevertheless, it caused professional decay to Bela's career. His inability to get a major role in Frankenstein, followed by the major success of Frankenstein and subsequently Boris Karloff replacing Bela as Universal's top horror star, was the embryo of his troubled screen career.

Mank notes that in post-Dracula Hollywood a serial assaulter/killer of women called "The Ape Man" terrified Los Angeles. The killer was never caught. The author compares this historical anecdote with the emergence of Charles Gemora's creepy gorilla in Murders in the Rue Morgue. Lugosi, after James Whale froze him out of Frankenstein, was assigned the title role of Doctor Mirakle. Robert Florey, edged out of Frankenstein, directed. He replaced the Spanish Dracula's director George Melford, also edged out of a plum directing assignment.

In the essay, Mank relates that Murders in the Rue Morgue caught the attention of the Hollywood code police and state censors. I had always thought that it seemed a tamer film but Mank notes that in its release form it is very pre-code. At the Grand Guignol opening scene, Lady Fatima and her Arab Angels perform a revealing "strip dance" that focuses on the middle front portion of the dancers' bodies. Men leer openly. Various censors scissored this scene.

Also, more provocative is Arlene Francis' short performance. After Mirakle snatches her streetwalker character from the dark streets, we quickly cut to Francis, terrified, screaming, in agony and dying, on an X-shaped cross. A crazed Mirakle is hoping that her blood will match with the blood of Erik, his gorilla. Although it's never specifically mentioned, it's clear today -- and I'm sure in 1932 -- to audiences that Mirakle plans to mate the gorilla with the woman. It doesn't happen, as a furious Mirakle accuses the streetwalker's blood of being "rotten." The death then occurs and Lugosi tells his black servant Janos (Noble Johnson) to drop her into the Seine, which flows below. This scene was scissored by some censors too in 1932.

One more pre-code scene later is when Erik attacks the mother of the film's heroine in her home. The gorilla kills her brutally in a manner that suggests a rape, as Mank notes. The gorilla then stuffs her corpse face first up the chimney and escapes with her daughter, Camille (Sidney Fox), back to Mirakle's lair to possibly "match" her blood with Erik's.

According to Mank's research, Lugosi was withdrawn and mostly silent during film production. Mank surmises that Lugosi may have sensed that Florey didn't like directing him. The director, we learn, would have preferred less Doctor Mirakle in the finished product. Another reason may be that Bela resented Sydney Fox being the nominal star of the film. Fox was alleged to be the current mistress of Universal honcho Carl Laemmle Jr. She's pleasant to look at, but her acting is poor in the film, in my opinion.

Readers may note that I have not mentioned most other principal actors. The reason is nearly all are mediocre and offer virtually no quality to the film. Leon Waycoff (later Leon Ames) is the romantic lead and he is just terrible. He makes David Manners look like an Oscar-quality actor. He giggles and preens with his love, Camille, which is appropriate since Fox's acting trends the same. Later in the film he whines when Camille is in mortal danger.

Ames did enjoy a long career in film. He was an established character actor. I once noticed him in a 1967 The Andy Griffith Show episode, playing a prudish high school principal.

Sidney Fox, as Mank relates, had an unhappy future. She was out of films by 1935 and spent her personal life in an unhappy, on-again-off-again marriage. In 1942 she was discovered dead in her bed with an empty prescription bottle.

Some actors with small parts who are good are D'Arcy Corrigan as the morgue keeper, Noble Johnson as Janos, Lugosi's strong man, and Arlene Francis in her small role as the streetwalker. Gemora is effective as the gorilla, but Florey made the post-filming error of using shots of a real gorilla in facial closeups. It's a big mistake. It looks forced and lessens the screen impact of Erik.

Lugosi, as mentioned, is magnificent in the film. In the opening scene, viewers can't help cheering the crazed doctor as he defends "science" against the religious intolerants in the audience that boo his Darwin theories. As a mad doctor, he is implacable, full of mad righteous fury in his desire to grab the comely virgin Camille to experiment with. He delivers his dialogue, not just vocally but with strong facial expressions and body movement. Lugosi is the reason this film, which suffers when Bela is not on film, earned a profit.

Florey, as Mank notes, showed off his skill at creating scenarios that matched the plot. He writes: "Cinematically, the film is still a dazzler. Florey and Freund (Karl Freund is the cinematographer) make Paris so Caligari-esque that one almost expects Conrad Veidt's Cesare to step out of the myriad of shadows and join Erik during the rooftop chase. While the film is set in Paris, it as the scent -- perhaps more than any other 1932 Hollywood movie -- of depraved and decadent Weimar Berlin."

Even with the colorless Fox and Waycoff, Florey's scene of Sidney being pushed on a swing is an act of cinema elegance and beauty. Even the scene with Francis, dying in a skimpy garment and tattered boots, crucified on an X-shaped cross, has a dark beauty.

To avoid the stretches of needless comedy and poor acting, I've thought that Murders in the Rue Morgue might have been improved -- and perhaps retain a better legacy -- had Florey began the film with the streetwalker scene and profane crucifixion. It's a well-shot, fascinating horror scene. Its early inclusion would not have hurt the pace too much as the Grand Guignol sequence is very impressive.

Murders in the Rue Morgue is easy to find and buy inexpensively. It occasionally pops up on Turner Classic Movies. Mank did a fine job of telling its history in Angels and Ministers of Grace Defend Us ... and we will explore more films in the book in the future.

-- Doug Gibson

Bela Lugosi -- The Monogramthology, a book review

Book review by Doug Gibson

There's been a literary boom regarding the nine Monogram films of Bela Lugosi. A short while back academics Gary D. Rhodes and Robert Guffey co-authored Bela Lugosi and The Monogram 9 (BearManor Media), which analyzed and deconstructed the films, from Invisible Ghost to Return of the Ape Man. (Our review of that book is here). And ....

Late in the year 2019 arrived Bela Lugosi: The Monogramthology, (Arcane Shadows Press), an anthology of "homage fiction," nine short stories, ranging from a few pages to mini-novellas, each based on the nine Lugosi films: Invisible Ghost, Spooks Run Wild, Black Dragons, The Corpse Vanishes, Bowery After Midnight, The Ape Man, Ghosts on the Loose, Voodoo Man, and The Return of the Ape Man. Bookending the collection are a forward by Drac, Classic Horror Host, and and afterward from his companion, Carita Drac. Both touch on aspects of Bela Lugosi's career and challenges. They are entertaining reads.

When a fellow fan reviews homage fiction, and I am a big fan of the Monogram series, it's important to focus on the author's story. Is it entertaining, well constructed, or does it flow well? My personal beliefs on how the films should be massaged into prequels, sequels, production dramas ... that's really not important.

Reader, if you need to learn the plots, consult Wikipedia or some of the reviews on our blog. This review assumes readers know the plots. There are prequels, sequels and more. I find much to praise in the stories. The authors have created art that manages to capture the spirit of the iconic 9 films. In some stories, characters from distinct films manage to encounter each other. That seems appropriate to this reviewer, given the mystical world of the Monogram, with Bela Lugosi as "God" of each film.

I have minor quibbles with some stories. I have two or three favorites. To apply equal space to the nine story-tellers, each will have a capsule review that includes the name of the story, the name of the author, and a few observations. A main goal of mine is not to cheat the reader of discovering chief plot elements.

-- The Invisible Cell, by Robert J. Kokai Jr. (from Invisible Ghost) -- This sequel involves what happens soon after Charles Kessler, played by Lugosi, is taken into custody for several murders he committed in a trance after he sees his estranged, thought-dead wife. Kessler narrates an interesting tale heavy on psychology and madness, with a clever twist at the end.

--Spooks Run Wild ... Again, by Dwight Kemper (from Spooks Run Wild) -- This is a pithy, fast-moving story of a production crisis when producer Sam Katzman accuses this mischievous East Side Kids actors of stealing the film. Bela Lugosi, star of the film, uses his talents to discover the truth of the theft.

-- Black Dragons II: Count Dracula vs. a Phantom of the Opera, by Todd Shiba, (from Black Dragons) -- The author takes Black Dragons, a World War II semi-propaganda film that is easily the most convoluted of the Monogram 9 and ... creates a very long short story that manages to be even more convoluted than the movie. I'm not criticizing the author. The wild, ever-changing plot is an intentional spoof on the film. It's done well, and with humor. My only criticism is a few pages could be trimmed from the 43-page story.

-- Happy Birthday Countess, by Gregory William Mank, (from The Corpse Vanishes) -- This is my favorite story. Film scholar Mank, who knows the genre as well as anyone, crafts a short but deeply affecting prequel of how Lugosi's Dr. George Lorenz, the mad scientist of The Corpse Vanishes, met his vain, cruel, mostly unfeeling wife/countess. It's a strong tale of unrequited love turning a relationship into co-dependency, madness and depravity.

-- Bowery After Midnight, by Brian Carney, (from Bowery At Midnight) -- This sequel takes survivors from Bowery at Midnight back to the soup kitchen where Lugosi's character also ran a criminal enterprise, with many murders. It appears that restless spirits are haunting the location. There's a fake spiritualist, a taunting magician, a confused young couple (particularly the man), and a supernatural god who can open, and close horrific passages. Characters from other Monogram 9 films make appearances.

-- The Gorilla Strikes! by Kurt McCoy, (from The Ape Man) -- This 45-page sequel is jarring with its passages of violence and sadism in a carnival atmosphere where Dr. James Brewster, Bela Lugosi's Ape Man, is now living, having survived the previous film; but still needing spinal fluid to appear normal for short periods. I was initially put off by the tale, contrasting its extreme violence with the G-rated implied or mild violence in the film. A second reading, however, made me a big fan. McCoy has crafted very strong pulp fiction. It's as good, even better, than Ed Wood's' pulp fiction produced in the last decade of his life. That is a compliment, by the way.

-- The Bride of Andy Hardy Meets Dracula, by Frank J. Dello Stritto, (from Ghosts on the Loose) -- This is a favorite tale of mine as well. It stays away from the plot and instead imagines how Ava Gardner, on loan from MGM and not a star yet, may have felt while acting in this poverty-row film, her first movie where she's among the stars' names. As a still-young woman better known as Mrs. Mickey Rooney than Ava Gardner, she and Lugosi share a day on the set, and Dello Stritto also imagines how one of Lugosi's most controversial lines came to be.

-- Voodoo Man Returns, by Brad A. Braddock, (from Voodoo Man) -- Braddock, who has written a prequel novel to Lugosi's film, White Zombie, crafts an entertaining revenge tale taking place after the finish of Voodoo Man. Lugosi is resurrected via voodoo, helped by confederates played in the film by George Zucco and John Carradine. Lugosi's mad scientist Dr. Marlowe, is outraged at how his dead wife has been treated by a local judge. The 25-page story generates suspense and reads quickly.

-- The Road to Madness: A Prequel to Return of the Ape Man, by Stefanie Kokai, (from Return of the Ape Man) -- This is a love story, narrated by the woman who once had requited love with Prof. James Dexter, the obsessed scientist who tries to swap brains with a neanderthal in the film. But that's in the future. In this romantic tragedy, the narrator relates how Dexter's life was almost led astray from his obsession by a greater power, love. The story has an interesting twist, involving the narrator, that I'll let readers discover.

This anthology will attract notice from fans of the films interested in sampling the literary additions. However, those unfamiliar with the movies could also be motivated to see the films after reading these tales for a dark night in a warm easy chair or bed.