Murders in the Rue Morgue *** (1971, Jason Robards Jnr, Herbert Lom, Lilli Palmer, Adolfo Celi, Michael Dunn, Christine Kaufmann, Maria Perschy) – Classic Movie Review 2682

AIP assembles a grand cast headed by Jason Robards Jr, Herbert Lom, Lilli Palmer and Adolfo Celi for director Gordon Hessler’s bloody, well-made 1971 horror movie Murders in the Rue Morgue.

American International Pictures assembles a grand, first-class international cast headed by Jason Robards Jnr, Herbert Lom, Lilli Palmer, Adolfo Celi, Michael Dunn, Christine Kaufmann and Maria Perschy for director Gordon Hessler’s bloody, well-made 1971 horror movie Murders in the Rue Morgue. It’s a lusty revision of the famed 1841 Edgar Allan Poe short story, reinvented to be about a group of players at a penny dreadful thriller-play theatre becoming targets of a real murderer.

The heavily reworked tale by screen-writers Christopher Wicking and Henry Slesar is mixed with elements of The Phantom of the Opera and adds the historical character Eugène-François Vidocq, a criminalist, whose life story inspired Edgar Allan Poe. But it is still set in Paris, despite being made on Spanish locations, in Toledo and Madrid.

Adolfo Celi plays Inspector Vidocq, who investigates a series of unexplained murders at the Grand Guignol-style theatre, where the players have become real-life victims. Jason Robards Jr plays Cesar Charron, the owner of the theatre in the Rue Morgue where he performs the play Murders in the Rue Morgue with his wife Madeleine Charron (Christine Kaufmann), who is suffering from nightmares. Vidocq’s prime suspect would be Cesar’s former partner René Marot (Herbert Lom), but he murdered Madeleine’s mother and committed suicide…

Also in the cast are Peter Arne, José Calvo, Luis Rivera, Marshall Jones, Maria Martin, Ruth Plattes and Rosalind Elliot.

The score is by Argentine composer Waldo de los Ríos.

The film was was heavily re-edited by the US producers before its release, tinting the flashback scenes. Hessler said that he was ‘appalled when I saw the theatrically released version’. He wrote a five-page letter to AIP’s Samuel Arkoff complaining about the changes, but by then the film was already on release. AIP removed a lot of Lilli Palmer’s scenes. ‘It was like she was an extra in the film’, said Hessler.

It is the fourth film of the Edgar Allan Poe short story after a silent version, the 1932 Bela Lugosi version Murders in the Rue Morgue and its 1954 remake Phantom of the Rue Morgue. And it was remade again for TV in 1986 as The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

Gordon Hessler said that he felt the story was so familiar to audiences that it needed to be reinvented, so he and writer Christopher Wicking decided to do it as a play-within-a-play, with a mystery happening around a theatre putting on a production of The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Their new storyline took plot elements of The Phantom of the Opera.

Hessler said that Vincent Price ‘was very upset that he wasn’t in the film’ and thought it was because Price was having contractual fights with AIP at the time. It’s a shame that he wasn’t in the film, because it proved the final film of AIP’s Poe cycle, his franchise, entirely associated with him.

Murders in the Rue Morgue was released by AIP on July 21, 1971,

‘We may have had too much fun, it’s hard to tell,’ said Robards.

The cast

The cast are Jason Robards Jr as Cesar Charron, Herbert Lom as Rene Marot, Christine Kaufmann as Madeleine Charron, Inma de Santis as young Madeline, Adolfo Celi as Inspector Vidocq, Maria Perschy as Genevre, Michael Dunn as Pierre Triboulet, Lilli Palmer as Mrs Charron, Peter Arne as Aubert, Rosalind Elliot as Gabrielle, Marshall Jones as Luigi Orsini, María Martín as Madam Adolphe, Ruth Plattes as Orsini’s assistant, Xan das Bolas as Orsini’s assistant, José Calvo as Hunchback, Víctor Israel as Coachman, and Rafael Hernández as member of repertory company.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2682

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