Eureka Entertainment has re-issued ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ / ‘The Black Cat’ / ‘The Raven’: ‘Three Edgar Allen Poe Adaptations Starring Bela Lugosi’, in a 2-disc Blu-ray edition as part of The Masters of Cinema Series.
This trio of classic 1930s horror films—’Murders in the Rue Morgue’, ‘The Black Cat’, and ‘The Raven’ – is also distinguished by a trio of factors regarding their production. Most notably, each film is based on a work by master of the macabre Edgar Allan Poe. Part of the legendary wave of horror films made by Universal Pictures in the 30s, all three feature dynamic performances from ‘Dracula”s Bela Lugosi, with two of them also enlivened by the appearance of ‘Frankenstein’s Boris Karloff. And finally, all three benefit from being rare examples of Pre-Code studio horror, their sometimes startling depictions of sadism and shock a result of being crafted during that brief period in Hollywood before the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code’s rigid guidelines for moral content.
Director Robert Florey, who gave the Marx Brothers their cinema start with ‘The Cocoanuts’ in 1929, worked with ‘Metropolis’ cinematographer Karl Freund to give a German Expressionism look to ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1932), with Lugosi as a mad scientist running a twisted carnival sideshow in 19th-century Paris, and murdering women to find a mate for his talking ape main attraction. Lugosi and Karloff teamed forces for the first time in ‘The Black Cat’, a nightmarish psychodrama that became Universal’s biggest hit of 1934, with ‘Detour’ director Edgar G. Ulmer bringing a feverish flair to the tale of a satanic, necrophiliac architect (Karloff) locked in battle with an old friend (Lugosi) in search of his family. Prolific B-movie director Lew Landers made 1935’s ‘The Raven’ so grotesque that all American horror films were banned in the U.K. for two years in its wake. Specifically referencing Poe within its story, Lugosi is a plastic surgeon obsessed with the writer, who tortures fleeing murderer Karloff through monstrous medical means.
Significant and still unsettling early works of American studio horror filmmaking, these three Pre-Code chillers demonstrate the enduring power of Poe’s work, and the equally continuous appeal of classic Universal horror’s two most iconic stars.
‘Three Edgar Allen Poe Adaptations Starring Bela Lugosi’, is out now and can be purchased at https://amzn.to/3sDKJ9T
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