It’s always a little sad when a cycle of films ends, especially one that gave Vincent Price his finest haunted-house rent money. But American International Pictures decided to end their so‑called “Poe cycle” not with a bang, but with a long, confused whimper. Gordon Hessler’s Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971) isn’t merely a loose adaptation of Poe’s 1841 short story — it’s the cinematic equivalent of tossing Poe’s manuscript in the Seine, fishing it out a week later, and deciding it would make an excellent umbrella.
The original story, remember, is a tight, clever detective tale, a forerunner of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. What AIP delivers here is part Poe, part Phantom of the Opera, part gas leak hallucination. Hessler and screenwriters Christopher Wicking and Henry Slesar clearly thought they were reinventing the wheel; what they really gave us was a theater prop guillotine, creaky, wobbly, and about as convincing as a wax museum mannequin with the flu.
A Plot with More Holes Than Parisian Cobblestone
The film opens with Jason Robards, graying and already looking like he’d rather be sipping bourbon somewhere else, as theater director Cesar Charron. His troupe specializes in gory Grand Guignol melodramas. They put on Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” for Paris audiences, which is ironic because this movie itself commits cinematic murder against Poe.
Cesar’s wife Madeleine (Christine Kaufmann) is plagued by nightmares of her axe‑murdered mother. Conveniently, her mother’s ex‑lover, Rene Marot (Herbert Lom), believed long dead after a disfigurement accident, returns to slice and dice members of the troupe. The police, led by Inspector Vidocq (Adolfo Celi, apparently on vacation from better movies), stumble around with less grace than a drunk mime.
Hessler wanted to make this story a “play within a play” — an avant‑garde concept. Instead, what we get feels like two unfinished plays colliding head‑on, with the wreckage swept up by Michael Dunn, who plays a hunchbacked stagehand named Pierre. Dunn, a fine actor, deserved better than functioning as set decoration in a picture that can’t decide whether it’s horror, mystery, or a lost rehearsal tape for a college production.
Casting Choices: Or, “Why Isn’t Vincent Price Here?”
Vincent Price was apparently unavailable (or unwilling), which left Jason Robards in the thankless role of Cesar Charron. Robards is a great actor, but horror was not his métier. He spends the film looking like he misplaced his script and is waiting for someone to call “cut.” Hessler himself admitted Robards wanted a different role halfway through shooting — which may explain why his performance feels like a man wandering into the wrong film.
Herbert Lom as the disfigured Marot is a decent choice, but his makeup looks like papier‑mâché left in the rain. Christine Kaufmann does her best, but the script treats her like set dressing between nightmares. And then there’s Lilli Palmer, an actress of real stature, who had most of her scenes chopped by the studio. Imagine paying for filet mignon and being served cold meatloaf — that’s Palmer’s contribution after the editor got through.
A Production Cursed by Its Own Stage Blood
Filmed in Spain, the production looks cheap but not charmingly cheap — just “ran out of paint halfway through the set” cheap. Hessler wanted atmosphere, but what he achieved feels more like abandoned summer stock theater left in the rain. The movie is drenched in flashbacks, tinted dream sequences, and clumsy editing choices that reduce suspense to unintentional parody.
Hessler’s idea of flash‑forwards instead of flashbacks could have been innovative. Instead, AIP decided audiences needed color‑coded sequences, tinting the dreams like a bad art‑house student project. The result is less Vertigo and more “Did someone spill Kool‑Aid on the film stock?”
The Death of Atmosphere
A horror film lives or dies by its atmosphere. Murders in the Rue Morgue should drip with dread, with shadows swallowing every Parisian cobblestone. Instead, it looks like a travelogue where the tour guide fell asleep.
The murders themselves lack impact — poorly staged, poorly lit, and poorly edited. When your film is called Murders in the Rue Morgue, the murders should be memorable. Here, they’re as thrilling as waiting in line at the post office.
Even the Grand Guignol stage sequences, which should have been tailor‑made for lurid spectacle, feel half‑hearted. It’s as if everyone involved was terrified of spilling real stage blood on the rented costumes.
The Editing Guillotine
Perhaps the greatest crime is what the producers did to Hessler’s cut. By the time it reached audiences, large chunks of character development were gone. Palmer’s role was gutted. Subplots disappeared like unpaid stagehands. What was left was a narrative stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster, only with less charm and none of Karloff’s gravitas.
The re‑editing also undercut Hessler’s attempt to blur dream, reality, and premonition. Instead of leaving the audience guessing, the tinting gave everything away, the cinematic equivalent of a magician explaining his trick before performing it.
Dark Humor in a Dead Theater
There are moments so unintentionally funny that you almost thank the film for failing. Robards, in particular, delivers lines as if he’s narrating his own obituary. Lom skulks around like a man whose real horror is being stuck in this contract. And Kaufmann’s nightmare sequences resemble a bad perfume commercial filmed in a morgue.
The irony is that this film, meant to honor Poe, plays like a practical joke Poe himself might have written in a drunken fit: “Behold, a film so dreadful that even the dead rise to complain about it.”
The Final Curtain
Murders in the Rue Morgue was supposed to close AIP’s Poe cycle with a flourish. Instead, it feels like a bad matinee no one wanted to sit through, least of all the cast.
Is it watchable? In the way rubbernecking a car crash is watchable. It’s a curiosity, a cinematic relic of a studio squeezing one more dime out of a literary name. For fans of Poe, it’s an insult. For fans of horror, it’s a missed opportunity. For fans of Jason Robards, it’s a reminder that even great actors occasionally make career choices they later regret — usually with a stiff drink in hand.
Final Verdict
Leonard Maltin might have written something like: Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971). Misfired “adaptation” of Poe classic, with Robards wasted and Lom buried under bad makeup. Pretentious dream sequences and incoherent editing sink what might have been a stylish horror mystery. Some unintentional laughs, but mostly a dreary bore. *½ out of ***.
And if Maltin wouldn’t say it, the dark humor demands it: This film isn’t so much a murder mystery as it is a cinematic autopsy — the corpse being Poe’s reputation.
