Wow! Such a good movie.

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

A middling adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue, this is no better nor worse than a hundred other old-fashioned horror films. In the typical crime thriller mould of American cinema in the '40s and '50s, the plot has a police force investigating various brutal murders. The police in this film appear even dumber than many of their contemporaries, using various haphazard contrivances to question and nearly arrest a number of innocent people. After noticing that the killer may have escaped by swinging from various flagpoles, they immediately visit a travelling circus and question the trapeze artists there. In other instances, they visit people living close to the crime scene - it's obvious that they don't have a clue what they're doing. When the actual killer falls into their hands in the final reel, they still don't believe in him, instead preferring to make up a confession and nearly hang some poor chap who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time! What spoiled this film for me was the fact that I'd already read Poe's short story - so I knew the identity of the killer all along, of course. For those who don't know, the killer is an ape - trained by (in this case) a hypnotist to attack and kill various women. What made this film interesting is the psychology used - like Pavlov and his dogs, the killer trains the ape to kill when it hears the tinkle of a bracelet - a bracelet worn by the intended victims. Other than this clever spin, it's a well-worn story with a nicely-choreographed ending which seems to have come straight from KING KONG. The ape decides not to kill the screaming heroine, and instead climbs up a tall building with her. There's no particular reason for this apart from the sheer spectacle of having a woman in peril and giving the police ample opportunity to gun the ape down and kill it (they also slaughter an escaped lion, obviously there was no animal protection in these days!).The film lacks having a big-name "star" to add glamour to the proceedings - in the '30s version they had a sinister-looking Bela Lugosi, while in the '80s television movie veteran George C Scott played the detective Dupin. Karl Malden is the killer here, and to be honest he's not much cop - neither menacing nor convincing in his role, more laughable really. The monkey suit is also pretty fake-looking. The film does benefit from some surprisingly nasty murder scenes (in one, a man is violently thrown out of a window and down a flight of steps), giving us glimpses of bloody legs which make us imagine a lot worse. Although there is little atmosphere or suspense built up, PHANTOM OF THE RUE MORGUE does have that colourful look about it, all full of vivid (sometimes garish) yellows and reds, much like in HOUSE OF WAX from the same period. They also manage to thrown in a few can-can dancers and a sinister eye-patched foreigner for good measure.While not a particularly bad film by any means, there are just no original distinguishing features which would really make this movie stand out from the crowd or become a minor classic. It simply goes through the well-trodden motions and lacks a vital spark or pace to it. And, to tell the truth, there were so many ape movies made beforehand (THE APE MAN, THE GORILLA, etc.) that this has an air of familiarity about it which destroys a lot of the fun. Check it out for the colourful photography and grandiose look, but you'll realise why this has been all but forgotten in the annals of horror.

***SPOILERS*** Remake of the original "Murders in the Rue Mourge" both in color and 3-D with the added attraction of Charles Gemora repeating his role as the gorilla, he was an over-sized chimpanzee in the original, Sultan. Gemore does an excellent job swinging on fire escapes and rooftops despite being 22 years older and having a touch of arthritis in his arms and legs.It's when there's a series of brutal murders at the Rue Mourge district in Paris that the bumbling Paris police inspector Bonnard, Claude Daphin, feels that the murders were committed by psychology professor Paul Dupin, Steve Forrest! That's only because he happened to be on the scene of one of them. It's when one of Paul's fellow tenants Camille,Dolores Dorn, is found murdered in his apartment house and stuffed up the chimney that Inspt. Bonnard has him arrested for her as well as the two other Rue Morgue murders. While Inspt. Bonnard and the Paris Police are barking up the wrong tree or chimney the real killer, the gorilla, escapes the scenes of his crimes through the Paris sewer system.The gorilla who was a baby when he was caught by one-eyed Jacques, Anthony Caruso, in far off Madagascar was raised by Jacques' boss Dr.Marals, Karl Malden, back at his zoological center outside of Paris. It's Dr.Marals in is his experimenting on the nature of both man and beasts has come up with a way to turn on or off a person's or gorilla's aggressive behaviors. And most of all what makes them violent and how to control that violence. Dr. Marals who's wife left him by killing herself is obsessed with pretty Jeanette, Patricia Medina, who just happens to be Paul Dupin's fiancée! It's in trying to frame Paul in the Rue Morgue murders that the crazed and love sick Dr. Marals thinks he can win Jeanette over! That's if he keeps on fooling the police and Inspt. Bonnard that it's Paul and not him and his pet gorilla-Saltan-who's been doing all the killing!It takes a while and a number of murders for Paul to convince the somewhat muddled headed Paris Police Insector Bonnard to realize what's reallying going on in the Rue Morgue but by then Dr. Marals had kidnapped Jeanette and locked her up, with the gorilla standing guard, in his mansion. With the police hot on his tail Dr. Marals releases his zoo animals, lion tigers and leopards, to distract them with the gorilla climbing up to his secret study room where he's holding Jeanette hostage!***SPOILERS**** Trapped on a tree, after dropping Jeanette to safety below, with nowhere to go the gorilla in refusing to give himself up is then shot down to the ground by a barrage of fire by some half dozen police sharpshooters. But before he finally expires he gets his hands on the handcuffed Dr.Marals who ordered sultan not to surrender but to kill everything in sight and ends up ringing his neck thus killing him instead! The gorilla like we in the audience had realized what a total nut case his master Dr.Marals really was. It's when he started to mess around with Jeanette, whom the gorilla was madly in love with, that Sultan went totally bananas! And it was Dr. Marals as well as his assistant the one-eyed Jacques, whom the big monkey killed earlier in the movie, who ended up paying with his life for it!

Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954) *** (out of 4)The police are baffled by some gruesome murders to local women and they think the case is solved when they arrest Paul Dupin (Steve Forrest). What Inspector Bonnard (Claude Dauphin) doesn't realize is that the real culprit is Dr. Marais (Karl Malden) who has trained an ape to do the killings for him. This remake of the 1932 Bela Lugosi film was Warner's follow-up to HOUSE OF WAX, their first 3-D and color horror film. Most reviews seem to be very mixed in regards to this movie and while it's not quite as good as that Vincent Price classic, I think there are enough effective moments to make it worth viewing. The one thing that really caught me off guard was how ugly and rather violent the movie was. I guess director Roy Del Ruth was wanting to go the extra mile by delivering some violent scenes and while we don't always see the violence the aftermath is on few view. There are several scenes of women badly beaten and bloody and an even more memorable scene has one wannabe hero getting thrown to his death in a violent fashion. Another memorable scene is when a model is being attacked by the killer and we see blood splash across the wall but then it's revealed to be something else. I thought the performances were also good, if nothing too special. Malden doesn't do his greatest work here but there's no question that it's fun to see someone like him in a horror movie like this. Forrest does a good job as the innocent suspect and Patricia Medina makes for a good female lead. We even get Anthony Caruso playing a creepy, one-eyed assistant. There are many flaws with this movie including the police who are downright annoying. Just watch how whenever someone is being attacked and they scream, whenever a police officer is around they simply walk to see what's going on. Had any of these guys actually ran to the scene then the murders would have been solved early on. The Technicolor is another major plus here as are the sets and costumes. PHANTOM OF THE RUE MORGUE certainly isn't a masterpiece but it's good entertainment to kill some time.

Rory Del Ruth directed this film supposedly based on the classic Edgar Allen Poe story 'Murders in the Rue Morgue' though showing only the slightest resemblance. A number of young women are brutally murdered and all evidence points to Professor Dupin (Steve Forrest). However, Dupin continues to protest his innocence but his attempts to prove it to exasperating Inspector Bonnard (Claude Daulphin) are ignored by the abhorrent police officer.I found this movie to be quite entertaining. To begin with the story moves slowly and one has to question where this movie is going? However, the final twenty minutes or so are very tense leading up to an almost blistering and highly exciting finale. Steve Forrest is great as Dupin, the university professor apparently caught up in the middle of a very elaborate murder plan, and commands his role as if it were written for him. Unfortunately the rest of the cast did not seem to perform to the same standard in my opinion with the exception of Karl Malden in the role of Dr. Marais. Even though Malden certainly hammed it up a bit his performance was still of a high quality and during a particular scene gave one of the more fearsome horror performances I have been privileged enough to witness.Phantom of the Rue Morgue's finest quality is in its thriller aspect. As all murders are off-screen and only the aftermaths are shown the film searches out for a different type of brutality and succeeds but unfortunately rather late on. During the first half of the film 'Phantom.' remains a pleasant crime thriller but suffers somewhat from slowness in places. All this changes when it becomes obvious to us all who the killer is and what their motive is for doing so. Upon acquiring this knowledge we are given an insight into one of the more disturbed killer minds in horror and also some marvellous final scenes.Despite the occasional slowness and poor acting I still quite liked this film. Though I must admit I found the first half to be of only average quality and reasonably dull when the story eventually become more interesting 'Phantom of the Rue Morgue' managed to regain my attention. I can understand its low rating on IMDb but I don't think it's a true representation of this film. 'Phantom.' certainly has flaws but is worth watching if only for the blistering finale. My rating for 'Phantom of the Rue Morgue' - 6.75/10