him the corpse of the murdered prostitute, is also animalistic and displays morals and ethics as base as that of an unthinking primate. The homeless people camped out by the river are referred to as “waterfront rats” by one of the civilized gentlemen earlier in the film; indeed, they look like vermin, particularly the old woman (portrayed by Tempe Pigott) who delivers these lines about the recent spate of murder victims: “Women, all of them. Life is hard. The river is kind, the river is soft. It rocks them to sleep and asks no pay.” These onlookers express no real remorse at the discovery of yet another murdered woman in their neighborhood, only stoic curiosity, as if they’re resigned to trag- edy as a way of life. Their economic despair has rendered them nothing more than their moniker implies: “waterfront rats,” too busy scrounging to survive to indulge in any human compassion be- yond a certain quiet envy... envy that this anony- mous streetwalker has obtained the restful rigor mortis of death while they’re still forced to deal with the rigors of life.
At one point in the film, Pierre is standing on Camille’s balcony talking to her about Paris and the people who live there. Camille says, “Wouldn’t it be fun to know all that was going on inside those houses?” Pierre re- plies, “Perhaps it’s just as well that we don’t know. Think of what all those walls are hiding!” In con- text of the entire film, it’s very clear what they’re hiding: the bestial side of man, the original primate consciousness from which humans have supposedly evolved.
In a private conversa- tion with Paul, his room- mate and fellow medical student, Pierre admits that he sympathizes with Mirakle’s theories of evo- lution and finds him to be a “fascinating man.” Paul responds with blustering frustration at this heresy. When Pierre refers to “what all those walls are hiding,” he’s actually re- ferring to the civilized ve- neer of modern society
23
that chooses to keep the savage side of human nature hidden away in the shadows rather than confront the obvious: that there’s a little bit of beast in all of us, that evolution is more than just a theory but a fact.
The entire movie is about hidden fears. At the beginning of the film, the civilized ladies and gentle- men of Paris observe Arabs and American Indians on display. A barker refers to the Indians as “Blood- thirsty savages from the wilds of America! See the redskins scalp their victims!” The gentlemen in the audience mock the performers because, subcon- sciously, they fear it’s only circumstance and envi- ronment which separates them from a similar position, that they’re somehow related to these inferior beasts, that perhaps they themselves should be on display.
It’s the fear of being related to an ape that causes Sir Arthur Jermyn, the protagonist of H.P. Lovecraft’s 1920 short story “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family,” to com- mit suicide. The theme of this pulp story is so simi- lar to that of Robert Florey’s version of MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, one wonders if the director
Mirakle and Janos dispose of the “woman of the streets” (Arlene Francis in her screen debut) after she fails her blood test.
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