Yesterday we covered “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” & learned that Edgar Allen Poe’s short story broke the ground for crime fiction. It was both the first detective story in history & the first locked-room mystery in history. But I had no idea that Hollywood eventually turned it into a movie.
While that last statement’s true, it’s not accurate. Hollywood didn’t turn “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” into one movie. Over the years, Hollywood turned it into four movies.
(1) In 1914, Hollywood produced a silent film.
Unfortunately, that’s all that’s known at IMDB headquarters. No info other than Poe got the writing credit.
(2) In 1932, Hollywood produced a movie about a mad scientist seeking to mingle human blood with that of an ape. To conduct his experiments, he kidnapped unsuspecting women & murdered them.
Sounds pretty much like “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” to me.
Robert Florey directed the movie & shared the writing credits with Poe. Florey directed a couple more low budget horror films during his first twenty years in Hollywood without much hoopla.
During the 1950s he achieved a level of success when he directed the TV show Four Star Playhouse.
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” movie starred Bela Lugosi, who made a career of playing Dracula & drinking people’s blood. Plus Lugosi played dozens & dozens of other evil characters on both the stage & screen.
Side-note: Lugosi volunteered for military service during World War I. Commissioned a lieutenant, he was wounded three times.
That’s Arlene Francis tied up in the scene below, with Bela Lugosi inspecting her. For most of the 1960s, I watched the What’s My Line? show on TV. Arlene Francis was one of the four regular panelists throughout the show’s successful run. She’s wearing blinders because that’s what the panelists did when that week’s mystery guest star appeared. Until today, I had no idea she was an actress prior to being in that show.
(3) In 1971, Hollywood produced a movie based on Poe’s story & set it in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century.
An Inspector Vidocq investigates a series of unexplained murders that occur in a theater. In it, the stage actors wind up becoming the murder victims.
Gordon Hessler directed the movie.
Jason Robards starred in the movie along with Christine Kaufmann, who gained more notoriety marrying Tony Curtis when she was 18 than she did as a Hollywood actress. Although she did rack up an impressive film career in Europe.
Jason Robards on the left 
Christine Kaufmann
Christopher Wicking & Henry Slesar shared the writing credits with Poe.
(4) In 1986, Hollywood produced a movie about a detective who comes out of retirement to help his daughter’s fiancé prove he didn’t commit a series of murders.
Jeannot Szwarc, who also directed Jaws 2, directed this version. The movie starred George C. Scott, Rebecca De Mornay, & Val Kilmer.
David Epstein shared the writing credits with Poe.
Only one trailer exists for “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” movies & and that’s the 1932 version. Interestingly, more than a dozen amateur trailers exist on YouTube – plus a couple dozen audio books.
Here’s the 1932 trailer:
Hope you enjoyed this little side trip into the world of Edgar Allen Poe & the Rue Morgue. If you missed the first part, click the button below.
Barry Bowe
America’s Best Crime Writer &the author of the classic outlaw biker saga Born to Be Wild.
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