It is a performances centric movie

For having a relatively low budget, the film's style and overall art direction are immensely impressive.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I wonder if the Laemmles were trying to tell their new young starlet Sidney Fox something by casting her opposite a man in an ape suit, AND unforgivably giving her top billing over the real (human) star, Bela Lugosi. "Murders in the Rue Morgue" has long been considered the low point of the Laemmle era, loads of atmosphere but ludicrous situations and dialogue to match (some of which was credited to future director John Huston). The embarrassing Sidney Fox had debuted opposite Bette Davis (and Bert Roach) in "The Bad Sister" but is so completely out of her depth here that it's a wonder she lasted two more years. Leon Ames (billed under his real name, Waycoff) debuts in this film (along with future television personality Arlene Francis, who had very few movie credits), but obviously preferred character work over playing romantic leads. Lugosi is truly the whole show, but his character's unhealthy harassment of the tiny Sidney makes him look like a real creep; still, it's the first of his many mad scientists, and his sideshow lecture provides his finest showcase. In viewing this film, I restructured it beginning with the fog-shrouded meeting with the prostitute, followed by her death, then Pierre's first visit to D'Arcy Corrigan's morgue, then the carnival (everything did flow much better that way). Director Robert Florey also completely botches the climax, with three ethnics arguing over which of them is right, and a rooftop chase that creates no tension. Apparently, in creating Ames' character of Pierre Dupin, Edgar Allan Poe virtually invented the fictional detective, about 40 years before Sherlock Holmes, presented as a medical student who conducts his own investigation into the Rue Morgue Murders. In 1942, Universal brought back Dupin (now named 'Paul' rather than 'Pierre'), in the person of actor Patric Knowles, in another Poe adaptation, "Mystery of Marie Roget."

Robert Florey directed this loose adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe short story. Here, Bela Lugosi plays maniacal Dr. Mirakle in 19th century Paris, who is conducting sinister experiments with abducted local women, injecting them with ape blood in order to prove his theory of human-ape kinship. He has so far met with failure, though medical student Pierre Dupin(played by Leon Ames) is determined to solve the mysterious murders, since his girlfriend is the latest abductee... Silly film has some harrowing moments but no credibility, even though Lugosi gives it a good effort. The original short story deserves a better treatment than this...

Murders In The Rue Morgue casts Bela Lugosi as one of the many mad scientists he played in his long career. To make ends meet he has a carnival act, but it's really a blind for some gruesome experiments involving sex. InterSpecies sex that is.If Charles Darwin is correct and man is related to the other primates than it follows, reasons Bela apes should be looking to mate with man given the proper stimulation. So for his horny gorilla he kidnaps women and injects them with simian blood. In the Paris of 1845 Bela's experiments are working pretty good as his ape is let loose on these injected women and the young women of Paris are in danger. Women of all classes as streetwalker Arlene Francis discovers to her tragic regret.King Kong never eyed Fay Wray with more lust than Bela's simian had when he was checking out Sidney Fox. In fact King Kong should prove the hypothesis Lugosi was advancing. The climax of Murders At The Rue Morgue is very similar to King Kong with Leon Ames playing the Bruce Cabot part.Some really great sets and beautiful cinematography are the main attraction of Murders At The Rue Morgue which bares only the slightest resemblance to Edgar Allan Poe's story. Lugosi is fabulously sinister and lustful, he's checking out Fox and the others himself. It's not Dracula for him, but what is?

I saw "Murders in the Rue Morgue" when I was just a child in the sixties and wasn't impressed. But now that I've seen the uncut original on Universal's Lugosi collection, I believe "Murders" is one of the most under-rated films from the golden age of horror.Direction by Robert Florey, cinematography by Karl Freund, and art direction by Charles Hall will satisfy the cravings of atmospheric horror fans. And the sources that Florey uses—the Poe story and the silent classic "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari"—dovetail nicely. What seems rather silly in the Poe story (an ape escapes from a sailor to commit senseless murder) is more plausible and horrific when the ape's owner becomes Dr. Mirakle, a mad scientist intent on proving humans and apes are evolutionary cousins. Why else inject ape's blood into nubile young women if not to find a suitable mate for his side show attraction Erik? I was also impressed by the way director/writer Florey zeroed in on one of Poe's themes. The confusion of tongues scene from Poe's story in which people of different nationalities (ear-witnesses to a murder) mistake the ape's language for unintelligible human speech, demonstrates that humans are no different from Erik, another species of savage primate inhabiting the planet. Seeing Dr. Mirakle talk with Erik and translate for the carnival audience doesn't seem as far-fetched today considering the recent research into primate communication.These thematic elements, together with Lugosi's sinister but surprisingly low-key (for him) performance, and the scene in which Dr. Mirakle injects the street walker with ape blood (Arlene Francis made a good screamer), and in which fiendish assistant Noble Johnson (who made an art of playing such roles) cuts the ropes that bind her Christ-like between crossbeams, releasing her body through a trap door into the river, make this one of the most daring of pre-code horror films.The print Universal included in its Lugosi collection looks fine, much better that the one I saw in the sixties. And neither the bland performances of the romantic leads, nor the man in the ape costume detracts from the over all effect. The inter-cutting between the actual animal and the costumed double is really not that jarring when you consider what was being done elsewhere in this era.