The Letterbox

RUE MURDERS IN THE MORGUE


Tim Lucas’ article about


MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE [VW 111:42] was one I’d been an- ticipating since I got an advance peek at the cover on your website. It is pretty much common knowl- edge that Florey’s vision had the knife fight and “Bride of Science” sequences nearer to the begin- ning of the movie, but Tim care- fully reconstructed Florey’s vision using logic and clues and cues within the film itself. In the earliest years of AOL’s


Classic Horror Film Boards fo- rum, one of its members (Tim Casey aka “LaserTim”) sent me a tape of MURDERS with these sequences switched to the begin- ning of the movie, so I had an


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idea how the movie was changed by that modification. But Tim’s changes are much more com- plex. This afternoon, I recon- structed the movie using Tim’s theories, switching scenes and sequences from my laserdisc version onto a blank VHS tape. Not only did I get a greater in- sight into what Florey originally had in mind via Tim’s reconstruc- tion, but I found a few other scenes that I believe should be resequenced elsewhere. Tim is correct when he fol-


lows the opening credits and es- tablishing shot of the Seine river (with the legend “Paris 1845”) with the sequence (about 21m into the movie) of police pulling the third victim from the water. I don’t know if Tim noticed, but the boat that passes through the establishing shot (under the


“Paris 1845” legend) is the very same boat we see passing by as the body is dragged ashore, lend- ing more credence to Tim’s ob- servation. The next scene occurs at the morgue, where the body is given the bureaucratic once- over before Pierre Dupin arrives to look it over for himself. It is after this sequence that


Tim places the knife fight and Bela Lugosi’s tour de force “Bride of Science” sequence. Again this makes perfect dramatic sense. Tim follows this with the


“macaroni” sequence where Dupin’s roommate Paul nags him before the morgue keeper


Peter Cushing writes to a friend about the greasy lapels of his fellow roomers in FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED.

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