Murders in the Rue Morgue

Bela Lugosi in Murders in the Rue Morgue (dir. Robert Florey, 1932)

Lugosi's curly hair as Dr. Mirakle (rhymes with grackle) makes him look like a sinister hybrid Marx Brother. He's a sociopathic doctor who for some reason works for a carnival, traveling around looking for women of a suitable blood type to mate with his intelligent gorilla, "Erik." (I just noticed that if you subtract Erik from Mirakle, you're left with mal.) Aside from how delightfully lurid Lugosi is, the one thing that makes this film a must-see is Karl Freund's cinematography. Almost every frame is an autonomous portal into mystery, from matte shots of Paris rooftops to close-ups of extras in the crowd. Look at this Fuseli-esque arrangement of Sidney Fox, post-ape-attack:



And I have to include a detail shot of Mirakle's stationery letterhead: