Murders in the Rue Morgue

1971

I’m still not sure how they were able to get away with calling this movie Murders in the Rue Morgue. It actually should have been called Phantom of the Bad Play. It is way more about a caped man stalking some folks then a monkey murderer. But I’m getting ahead of myself on this terrible movie. Let’s start with the beginning.

A theater troupe with French names does a nightly stage version of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The original short story is about the investigation of the death of two women who end up being killed by an escaped orangutan and covered up by her sailor master. Obviously, this wasn’t fun enough for the theater group so they make it about a mad man who tortures women and has a pet gorilla who ends up breaking out and saving the woman and killing the mad man in the end. Oh you silly French.

Now of course, this is a horror movie, so something beyond bad producing has to happen. The leading man in the movie (and on stage) is played by Jason Robards, who is slightly creepy to begin with, so he’s got that going for him. His much younger wife, Madeleine, is his opposite in the play, and keeps falling asleep on stage every night. She has a recurring nightmare of a masked man chasing her through someone else’s house with an ax. Obviously, this makes her a terrible actress, but no one seems to care. On this opening scene, we find out the actor who plays the monkey has been murdered after acid is thrown in his face. It’s unsure if the acid actually kills him, but that doesn’t seem to matter. The “acid thrown in face” is the number one focus of the investigations.

We come to find out that there was a love triangle between Jason Robards character, Cesar, and two others: Madeleine’s mother (Mrs. Madeleine? – they never say her real name) and Cesar’s partner of the theater troupe, Morat. Morat “accidentally” had acid thrown in his face during a stage performance of what seems like another butchered Edgar Allan Poe story. Madeleine’s mom still loved him even though he thinks he is undeserving of love due to his ugly face. She assures him that she “hates handsome men” (which I think is code for “gay men”) and will love him for ever. Unfortunately, Madeleine’s mom loses her head and Morat commits suicide, which makes Cesar look very suspicious, but the police don’t seem to look at him, persumebly because he is a “handsome man.” Stupid French.

More murders begin to happen with the same pattern: acid thrown in the face of someone who is close to Cesar. I don’t even know where people are getting all this acid in the late 19th century, but maybe the French have it manufactured in a fancy warehouse. I didn’t read all of European history. Either way, people are scared, but not scared enough to stop going to the play where all the actors keep getting murdered or hang out in the streets at night.

Not surprisingly, the semi-nude masked man (the mask is semi-nude, not the man) with a cape is the “back from the dead” Morat. He has come to seek revenge of everyone who wronged him. Which actually just ends up being Cesar. The others he just kills for practice. Or fun. You can’t really tell. Morat also has a midget sidekick whose main job is to creep out Madeleine and slow clap at appropriate moments.

In the very slow ending, Cesar tries to kill Morat for real this time, but instead just angers him more. He hypnotizes Madeleine to find out what really happened to her mother. It was actually Cesar who beheaded his beloved, because why not. If you can’t have her, no one else should be able to look at her head. Now that Cesar has finally admitted this, it is now his turn to lose his head at the hand of Morat and his slow-clapping midget.

Madeleine goes back to work as a terrible stage actress (because if you can’t be good, you might as well show up), and of course Morat isn’t satisfied with his beloved look-alike running around France. He attempts to abduct her, which doesn’t work because he tries while onstage in front of hundreds of people. He then tries running away from the police through a street carnival, but that just leaves the police confused. He ends the chase back in the theater, tormenting Madeleine and chasing her all over the building. In the end, he falls off the catwalk onto his ugly face.

Madeleine thinks she is now safe. Her murdering husband is dead. Her stalker is stage splat. Her job seems to be safe. However, the last scene proves she is never safe. Not as long as there is a wandering slow-clapping midget running around. Never.