I Watch Films: Murders In The Rue Morgue

Murders In The Rue Morgue

The Theatre Rue Morgue specialises in grand guignol, melodramas with blood and horror and torture, lots of special effects on stage. Unfortunately some of the murders (some based loosely on Edgar Allen Poe stories, the use of masks and hidden figures pulling strings recalling the Phantom of the Opera) leave the stage and enter the real world.

The leading lady has dreams and visions and flashbacks, sometimes of her mother who was killed by an ax-wielding man. A former member of the cast at the time of the mother was hideously disfigured and thought dead. There’s some business about a (stage) magician who is buried alive and fakes his own death. It all comes together in a performance that starts going wrong, then goes right but is too real, and then descends into anarchy.

Watch This: For a ridiculous set of gruesome murders, screaming women, occasional clever tricks and mystery
Don’t Watch This: The mysteries are both transparent and nonsensical