I recall the first time I read Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' how ludicrous it felt that he would have come up with a plot in which an orangutan was a murderer. I still can't get over it.
Anyway, here's the story put to film and it seems almost as ludicrous all over again. That's not to say I didn't find it entertaining enough, although I don't think I would have cast Karl Malden as the principal heavy. His character, Dr. Marais, was working on a theory that all living things have a latent killer instinct, while his experimentation in conditioned reflex reaction resulted in using bells to trigger a gorilla's response to kill victims at his command. One of the more comical elements of the story occurred when he pulled out some trinket to hypnotize old Sultan; can you really hypnotize a gorilla?
Inspector Bonnard (Claude Dauphin) also struck me as somewhat comical in the exercise of his police duties. It seemed he was always looking for the easy way out to find the guilty party, on the basis that "it's so much easier to find a criminal who looks like a criminal". That reminded me of a line Benson Fong used in the 1945 film "The Scarlet Clue" when he remarks to Sidney Toler's Charlie Chan - "That's easy Pop, the murderer will be the one with the guilty look". If only it should be so easy.
At least by researching this picture I'm now aware of the Bela Lugosi version of "Murders in the Rue Morgue" from 1932. I didn't know about that one so I'll have to be on the lookout for it. Lugosi strikes me more of the mad scientist type than Malden, who nevertheless got kind of spooky himself when he eventually turned on the girl who jilted him (Patricia Medina).
Anyway, here's the story put to film and it seems almost as ludicrous all over again. That's not to say I didn't find it entertaining enough, although I don't think I would have cast Karl Malden as the principal heavy. His character, Dr. Marais, was working on a theory that all living things have a latent killer instinct, while his experimentation in conditioned reflex reaction resulted in using bells to trigger a gorilla's response to kill victims at his command. One of the more comical elements of the story occurred when he pulled out some trinket to hypnotize old Sultan; can you really hypnotize a gorilla?
Inspector Bonnard (Claude Dauphin) also struck me as somewhat comical in the exercise of his police duties. It seemed he was always looking for the easy way out to find the guilty party, on the basis that "it's so much easier to find a criminal who looks like a criminal". That reminded me of a line Benson Fong used in the 1945 film "The Scarlet Clue" when he remarks to Sidney Toler's Charlie Chan - "That's easy Pop, the murderer will be the one with the guilty look". If only it should be so easy.
At least by researching this picture I'm now aware of the Bela Lugosi version of "Murders in the Rue Morgue" from 1932. I didn't know about that one so I'll have to be on the lookout for it. Lugosi strikes me more of the mad scientist type than Malden, who nevertheless got kind of spooky himself when he eventually turned on the girl who jilted him (Patricia Medina).