Pretty Good

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Being an amateur artist I paid particular to the voluptuous actress Veola Vonn as (Arlette)who is posing and playing an artist's model.In the unfinished painting (where work has stopped because the light has gone), the artist has already painted a blue sheet covering her on the bed but Arlette is holding up a green sheet to her body.Also freeze framing the scene where she impulsively gets up from the bed in an attempt to slash the unfinished work, clearly shows she is wearing panties even though she is playing a nude model.Of course censorship took its' toll in 1954.My DVD came with the option of French sub-titles or just English dialogue but I would have appreciated French dialogue dubbed on the soundtrack.For example I like to put on Italian dialogue for my DVD of "Love is a Many Splendored Thing" for the Jennifer Jones/William Holden classic from 1955 as Jennifer sounds really sexy with her voice dubbed in this language.The above user comments do not register when you input "La Phantome de la Rue Morgue" into the search box on IMDb.com only the English title which I found surprising as this is how my copy was sold to me.There are some entertaining scenes so I awarded this film 6/10.

In 19th century Paris, a series of gruesome murders baffles the police. In each case a woman is found beaten to death inside a locked room. Suspicion soon falls on innocent Professor Pierre Dupin (Steve Forrest). Maybe somebody should look at his colleague Dr. Marais (Karl Malden), who has a caged gorilla and bad luck with the ladies.Warner Bros. horror-thriller, originally released in 3D. It's essentially a color remake of the 1932 Murders in the Rue Morgue, but with more ties to Poe than Universal bothered to have. Despite improving in some areas, it's not as good overall. Roy Del Ruth's direction is flat and Karl Malden can't match Lugosi's manic performance in that earlier film. Also, Lugosi's Dr. Mirakle had a far more interesting motivation than Malden's Dr. Marais. But the lack of chimpanzee close-ups and Steve Forrest making a better hero than Leon Ames are both pluses in favor of this over the 1932 film. Comparisons aside, this is a nice time-passer that you'll probably enjoy. Anthony Caruso is creepy as Malden's one-eyed henchman. It's not scary (it doesn't really try to be) but it is entertaining. Look for Merv Griffin in a tiny role as a college student.

As a series of strange murders plague a small area of Paris, the lack of clues force the police to team up with the prime suspect in the case to find the maniac responsible when he claims a friend's trained killer gorilla is responsible and targeting his fiancée.This was a fairly impressive and fun effort that has a lot going for it. One of the better elements here is the fact that there's a large amount of attack scenes on the victims, which really drives this one nicely as these continuous sequences provide plenty of action, shocks as well as generating some sultry teases with the women being targeted being quite attractive overall. As the attacks are framed so the audience doesn't see the culprit, and the only times they are is when they're obscured or casting a shadow on the wall, it leaves a distinct impression, and the fun continues due to the investigation done to recreate the crime at the scene, and the evidence either way makes for some fun times overall. The fact that these investigations point to the main purpose of this one is a little troubling since they can drag on at times especially when they keep trying to pin it on the hero through flimsy circumstances that won't work in any real courtroom. The other real flaw is the romance angle that appears late in the film, which stops the film cold and comes out-of-nowhere to create a really confusing mess, though it does solve the film's murders quite nicely. Overall, this one was pretty enjoyable.Today's Rating-PG: Violence.

I recall watching this as a kid, though not the opinion I had made of it back then. With this in mind, I am baffled by its maligned reputation (the "Leonard Maltin Film Guide" gives it a measly **); mind you, I would not say that I prefer it to the classic 1932 Bela Lugosi version but it is more readily enjoyable (and faithful to its source). The film, in fact, is quite stylish in color – with special care given to the art direction – and a worthy follow-up to Warners' success of the previous year HOUSE OF WAX (1953); like that one, it was one of the numerous genre efforts from the early 1950s to be made in 3-D (though, typically, it was used gratuitously more often than judiciously). The cast is effective, too: Karl Malden adds an Actor's Method sensibility to the lead role of biologist/misogynist, Claude Dauphin is fine as the Police Inspector investigating the various gorilla slayings, Steve Forrest ideal as the handsome hero/accused and Anthony Caruso as Malden's loutish henchman/gorilla keeper. The murders are well-done, suggesting the animal's brutish strength without actually showing it – even the 3-D process comes in handy here as one of the victims throws something at the ape in defense and the latter responds by throwing a chair back at the girl!; there is, however, a goof in the scene depicting the killing of the circus performer (assisting her jealous husband in a knife-throwing act) as she is seen taking off the tell-tale bracelet but is then unaccountably back at her hand in a shot of the mangled (albeit conveniently covered) body! On a personal note, Malta's name comes up a number of times throughout the film: the Maltese cross on a sailor's (eventually revealed to be Caruso) scarf and his inopportune meeting in a dingy tavern with a drunken former 'colleague' (sealing his fate by unwisely disclosing his knowledge of the ape's existence). The latter stages, veering from the Poe tale, actually feel closest to Universal's earlier adaptation – as Malden cannot hold back his obsession with heroine Patricia Medina (engaged to his former student, and presently incarcerated, Forrest), an impulsive move which can only lead to the expected poetic justice of the climax in which the villain meets his own grisly come-uppance at the hands of the trained (read: abused) gorilla. By the way, having included a handful of films during this challenge in which this type of animal was featured as a menace (two more followed in quick succession), I came to realize just how many were made over the years. Finally, as I said in the beginning, this is pretty much underrated both as horror/monster movie and as adaptation of a highly-influential literary work.