Whenever I watch movies based on classic literature or short stories, I always feel a little bad having not read the source material. Inevitably, I end up wondering how the movie differs from the book. I could read the book after watching the movie, but I'm generally reading something else. Time passes and I forget/stop caring. But for right now, I really wish I'd read Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue before seeing the movie. From what I understand, they differ quite substantially and the 1971 film seems to borrow just as much from Phantom of the Opera as it does from Poe's tale.
Old members of Cesar Charron's (Jason Robards) theater troupe are getting systematically killed off. Much like in Frenzy, the viewer knows who the killer is very early in the story. This knowledge isn't played for much suspense due to the suddenness of most of his attacks with the exception of a few scenes, but only because we haven't learned what his motivation is yet. Amidst these killings, Charron's wife Madeleine (Christine Kaufmann) is having nightmares. She even falls asleep (or passes out, whatever the case may be) on stage during performances.
It turns out these nightmares are a combination of a forgotten past and an inevitable future and are probably the most impressive aspect of Murders in the Rue Morgue. Director Gordon Hessler shoots them in slow motion and they almost feel like we're floating through the dreams. There's some nifty surrealism (not too crazy, though) with people appearing and disappearing at will and things are just generally askew. While the rest of the film isn't shot poorly by any means, it feels like Hessler had the most control and enthusiasm in his vision for these scenes.
One reason I wish I'd read the source is I'd love to know what the deal with the ape is. It's a man in a costume, but from what I read (briefly) on Wikipedia, the book features a real orangutan. They certainly get a lot of mileage out of the man in the costume, especially when he's running through a carnival pursued by cops, but I can't help but wonder about the orangutan.
The scene through the carnival and the following scene in the Rue Morgue are great set pieces and Hessler does a good job of exploiting those locations. It feels like the material needed to open up to give the movie some life. And maybe that makes sense since a fair amount of action takes places on the confines of the stage.
There's a surprising amount of death in Murders in the Rue Morgue but they don't really mean much to the viewer because the stakes aren't revealed until much later in the film. In fact, there seems to be a bit of confusion as to who the protagonist is which makes things a bit disjointed. Not to mention the fact that there seems to be no way of people establishing if someone is dead or not given how many people seem to be killed only to return moments later. But perhaps the strangest thing is seeing Herbert Lom not hamming it up as Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus (though with a career as long as his, I'm not sure he'd be proud of me saying that):
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