Tags: murders in the rue morgue

Cold Reads celebrates Writer of the Month for August! For the next four weeks, we will be studying the works of Edgar Allan Poe and celebrating his massive contributions to the horror genre.

Edgar Allan Poe is known for many things, one of which is being one of the leading voices in American Gothic literature. But his work in creating detective fiction as we know it today (along with the likes of Voltaire and E.T.A. Hoffman) is usually overlooked in favor of his more macabre pieces. Without Poe's help, sleuths such as Sherlock Holmes and Sam Spade may never have come into existence. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" marks the first appearance of Poe's famous detective C. Auguste Dupin in a tale of homicide gone completely wild.(read more...)

In 1932, Universal released its first horror film after Frankenstein. It was titled Murders in the Rue Morgue and it was loosely based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe. Murders in the Rue Morgue was the second film that Universal released starring Bela Lugosi. Bela Lugosi plays the mad scientist Dr. Mirakle. Dr. Mirakle works at a carnival in Paris with a giant gorilla named Erik. Mirakle uses his sideshow to promote his own theories of evolution. At night he kidnaps a young street girl and injects her with Erik's blood to test his theories, she dies from the experiment. Dr. Mirakle kills several women for his experiments.(read more...)